Transart Institute Proposal
Ira
Hoffecker
Proposal
In my work
so far, I have been investigating the different identities cities, like Berlin,
take on over a period of time. I am interested in how different societies
transform and change city spaces over the course of the centuries. My work
examines the relationships between people and cities by responding to constant
change, reconstruction and restoration in the urban landscape. Places are
overlaid with multiple histories, and in my previous painting work, layers of
paint have covered and obscured, as a metaphor for forgetting and suppressing,
but each coat of paint was also informed by the previous layer.
For my
first project at Transart Institute I would like to explore a completely new
medium for me: sound.
Still
working with the same theme, identity, I would like to compare events from the
past and juxtapose those to current events: the darkest element of the German
past was the time of the Nazi regime, during which horrible crimes were
committed, during which the attempt to wipe out the entire European Jewry was
almost accomplished.
I was
looking for someone who had survived the Holocaust, and had the pleasure to
meet Dr. Peter Gary in December 2015. He was born in 1924 in Poland and was
arrested by Nazis in 1941 together with his mother, who was shot when she tried
to protect him. Gary survived the Warsaw Getto, was then sent to Majdanek, then
Dachau and, finally, Bergen-Belsen. At the age of 21, he was liberated from
concentration camp in April 1945 and survived the Shoah.
From my
conversation with Dr. Peter Gary, I have about 2 hours of recorded material.
During the next months I would like to edit this interview to gain about 10 min
in which he talks about his experience at the concentration camp.
I would
like to juxtapose this recording of Gary’s experience of living under the
atrocities of the Nazis and juxtapose this piece to a recording of voices of
right wing extremists who are currently on the streets of Dresden and Leipzig,
every Monday evening, demonstrating against the politics of the German
government, demonstrating against accepting any refugees from Syria or other
countries.
In addition
to these two sound loops, I would like to create three further sound loops. One
with the voices of the Nazis at the famous Wannsee Conference where, in 1942,
the ‘Endloesung’, the ‘Final Solution of the Jewish Question’ had been
discussed by senior officials of Nazi Germany.
In a forth
sound loop I would like to include the voice of Hitler, his famous ‘Prophecy’
in which he talks about the extinction of the Jewish race.
For the
fifth sound loop I would like to record my own voice reading Paul Celan’s
famous poem ‘The Death Fugue”. Paul Celan, born in 1920 in Romania, was one of
the major German-language poets after the Second World War who had survived the
Holocaust.
My sound
piece with 5 different sound loops could be presented with 5 head phones
hanging from the ceiling. For each loop I could do an extensive write-up to
explain the background and the content of each loop.
By
presenting these 5 loops together I am hoping to remind the listener of the
past, to explain the propaganda of the Nazis and their aggression and
incitement to extinct the Jewish people and I want to juxtapose the consequence
of this aggression to current propaganda against people who would need our help
and support.
I can
imagine and would be interested in writing my thesis for Transart Institute
about this piece and this theme.
I would
like to continue to paint as well. I would like painting to be my main medium,
however, for my MFA am thinking of an installation with all kinds of work,
including several conceptual art pieces such as the sound piece and my
paintings in one room that talk about German identity after the Second World
War. An artist I did some research on is Tatiana Trouve and I saw her work in
Berlin in March 2016. Her installation inspired me to work with several
mediums, namely sound, painting, photography and sculpture for my MFA
installation. All pieces will talk about identity.
My
mentors during my residency at Takt Berlin (Jan to March 2016) have all
recommended that I start to work on very big canvases. I need to create a body
of work that is coherent. 4 to 6 big paintings that are all the same size, talk
about the same subject matter and are supposed to be hung together in one room.
I would still talk about historic layers and different identities over time,
however, abstract my paintings more. By overlaying lines and shapes I still
talk about layers. For my current solo exhibition at the Jewish Zack Gallery in
Vancouver, I had especially created a body of work that talks about Berlin’s
former Jewish quarters, the Scheunenviertel and Spandauer Vorstadt.
For my MFA
with Transart Institute I would like to focus on the story and different
historic layers of Camp Moschendorf. I would like to take elements out of the
maps I have and create 4 to 6 big canvasses within this year to come.
There are
two more conceptual art pieces I would like to discuss in more detail and in
person in Berlin. I had done an interview with an artist from Syria who had
come to Berlin in the fall of 2015. I am thinking of creating a video piece
with this material but would like to discuss this piece and a couple of other
ideas in person in Berlin.
Bibliography
- Biro, Matthew : Anselm Kiefer, Phaidon Press
Limited, London, ISBN 978 07148 61432, March 2013
- Dr. Norbert Kampe: The Wannsee Conference and the Genocide of the European Jews, House of the Wannsee Conference, Berlin, ISBN 978-3-9808517-8-7
- Huyssen, Andreas : Twilight
Memories, Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia, Published in Great Britain by
Routledge, 1995, ISBN HB 0415 909341 1,
- Peterson, Abby: Wounds
That Never Heal: On Anselm Kiefer and the Moral Innocence of the West German
Student Movements and the West German New Left, University of Gothenburg,
Sweden, Cultural Sociology, Academic Journal, September 2012, ISSN: 1749-9755
-Saltzman, Lisa: Anselm Kiefer and Art after
Auschwitz; Cambridge University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-521-630-33-9
