WOLGALIED at Halle 14
One of the works I am
showing at HALLE 14 is a preliminary video sketch or construction which I made
in 2009
during the process of formulating
a work called The Long Silence and which was a temporary public art
installation made at former prisoner of war camp (1941- 45), Falstad Centre in
North Trøndelag, Norway.So I think it is
relevant to explain something of the final works intention and context.The Falstad centre
has status as a national war monument in
Norway
, and functions as museum and
centre for peace studies.
The work was on
exhibition from June to September 2009 and a documentation of this can be found
on this site..
The starting point for this installation was based on an eyewitness
account by former prisoners Julius Palatial and Knut Gjørtz concerning the Jewish
prisoner Cantor Grabowski, who had been before his arrest in 1942, cantor at Trondheim
Cathedral.
A fine tenor, Grabowski had been educated
in, but had fled from
Poland
and the Nazi oppression, finally settling in
Trondheim
As I understand it, his reputation as a singer was known to
the German officers, who
on one occasion commanded him to stand in the Falstad
courtyard and sing German
songs. The power of his song seems to have had a remarkable
effect on both prisoners and German officers and guards. His rendering of
Franz Lehar’s “Es steht ein Soldat am
Wolgastrand” (apparently a song which had iconic status
among the SS),
ended in a hushed silence shared by all who were present.
This long reverential silence was only finally broken by one
of the guard dogs, who
sensing that something extraordinary had taken place began a
wolf-like howling.
At this, the SS officers seemed to awake from a trance, and
in their rage (perhaps
they felt that they had been victims of Jewish, black
magical trickery), commanded
the Jewish prisoners to shake the late autumnal leaves from
the single birch tree
(which still stands in the courtyard), and using their
mouths only, pick up the fallen
leaves and crawl back and forth across the courtyard with
the leaves in their mouths, leaving them in a bundle in the courtyard corner.
Within this abominable act, - the treatment of .Grabowski
and the Jewish prisoners,
I felt there was an element of transcendence - the resonant
silence after the song was sung, and which for some short moments was
experienced within a common level of
consciousness by both
master and slave.
The final work ”The
Long Silence”, was an installation presented in 3 containersset up as one
space, and placed on the site where Grabowski sang that day.It consists of small
oil-lamp constructions which project portrait images taken from the centre’s
archives, of both victims and assailants.
In the work I engaged
an opera singer to sing Wolgalied and I filmed his mouth as he sang. This singing
mouth was then projected onto a large fan, which revolved with varying
intensity according to the volume of the singer.
The breeze that the
fan created, made the flames of the oil lamps, and hence the small portrait
images, dance and shimmer.
What
you will see her at
HALLE
14, is part of the making process involved. But this fragment opens up another
passage of my thought. Here there is another site specification, - the fact
that it is shown in
Germany
.
The song has completely other references which are open where the Grabowski
story was so specific. The fact that I am performing, and obviously miming,
introduces an absurd element which is underlined by the fact that the fan has
been mounted upside down.
What interests me is
that this sketch, left to its own devices, runs over and away in all
directions, trampling over all of my well meant intentions in creating a
meaningful and contemplative installation to commemorate a dark and tragic
event.
Its sheer disrespect
interests me. It is ridiculous, but at the same time it is ominous and
oppressive.
A drawing for Leipzig
Bells idea for his
second exhibition contribution "" A drawing from
Leipzig"("' A drawing from Leipzig"") is to illuminate the
staging of a moment in his work which never took place, but could have been or
still could possibly take place, with a non work showing the creation of a
drawing, which however, does not exist as such.
Instead,
Bell
takes up the issue of what a drawing he would have
made about
Leipzig
bein fact come to
Leipzig
.
A suitcase full of drawing equipment which
would have contributed to the creation of the
work is shown.
A projector that projects
the resulting drawing on the wall – indefinitely, an ongoing video animation
with portraits of Mahler, Bach and Mendelssohn Bartholdy - never enters the
actual condition but reverses time and again, deconstructed itself. And Roddy
Bell is sure that he, if he actually had come to
Leipzig
,
would have made make probably something completely different.
Born in 1951 as a
British citizen in
Burma
,
lives and works since 1978 in
Oslo
(
Norway
)