Is it immoral to look at the perpetrators’ perspective of genocide? Does it equal forgiving or could it also provide useful insights? Three WW2 remembrance centres, Westerbork (NL), Bergen-Belsen (DE) and Falstad (NO) have (remains of) the camp commander’s house on their premises. Until recently they remained silent about the houses and the people who lived there. With right extremism and holocaust denial on the rise, time had come to claim the sites and the narrative.
Paradox was invited to develop online stories for a young and culturally diverse audience. The first auto-biographically inspired narratives made with filmmakers Jongsma+O’Neill (NL-US), writer Simon Stranger (NO) and photographers/ filmmakers Jakob Ganslmeier & Ana Zibelnik (DE-SI), have recently been put online. The outcome of the project for Bergen-Belsen by spoken-word artist Onias Landveld (NL) and Jakob Ganslmeier will follow in the late fall. Many stories draw on the past, while referring explicitly to parallels with the (Ukrainian) present.
Paradox is inviting you to a preview of the Houses of Darkness online project. On September 15, Pakhuis de Zwijger, the University of Amsterdam and Paradox will host an event that, next to showing excerpts of the (visual) stories, will be offering a glimpse into the debates, questions, and creative processes that shape the project.
Join the conversation presented by Bahram Sadeghi and Lars Boering jointly looking at how mobile media based visual storytelling has been implemented for sensitive and controversial stories.
Why to look at perpetrators at all? How big is the gap between educational work at memorial centres and the fastly growing online distribution of right extremism? Meet visual artists Ana Zibelnik and Jakob Ganslmeier showing their video installation of Poetry Is out of Place for Falstad.
Creative storytelling duo Jongsma+O’Neill developed an innovative Instagram documentary, fully based on animation by Jure Brglez (SI). His Name Is My Name is the moving story of Eline Jongsma, finding out that her great-grandfather Gerrit Jongsma had been the NSB (nazi) mayor of Krommenie.
What differences in interpretation of the holocaust exist among today’s European population? Who and what shapes the image and the legacy of a former concentration camp and how can artists, departing from the perpetrators perspective, open that up? Find out how spoken-word artist Onias Landveld and photographer/filmmaker Jakob Ganslmeier are addressing some of these issues in a sneak preview of A Mirrored Image, the first part of their work for Bergen-Belsen, to be launched in November.
And meet historians Ingvild Hagen Kjørholt (chair of the Houses of Darkness programme, NO), Rob van der Laarse (chair of the Cultural Sciences capacity group at UvA, NL) and curator/producer Bas Vroege (director of Paradox, NL), drawing the larger picture of the project and its relevance.
Detailed information on programme and speakers as well as booking for the event via the button below. September 15, 20 – 21.30h, Pakhuis De Zwijger, Amsterdam. Grote Zaal PDZ, free entry.
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