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Reinhard Kropf & Siv Helene Stangeland
The Naked Garden, 2008, rendition of biotope analysis, wall perforation, installation view, photo: Eduard Constantin
of Farocki. Respite is a so-called found film, resembling the works of
Péter Forgács. The film was shot in the Westerbork transit camp in
Netherlands, which delayed the delivery of the Jews and the gypsies
to the work and death camps in Germany. Albert Gemmeker, the SS
commander of the Westerbork camp, charged Rudolf Breslauer, one
of the inmates, with filming. Gemmeker wanted to get a false, propaganda
image, while Breslauer wanted to picture the everyday life in
the transit camp, allowing every aspect to demonstrate the “utility“
of the institution, the necessity to keep it in operation for as long as
possible. To that end, he also employed elements of the art of film.
With a didactic intention, Farocki emphasizes this aspect through the
inter-titles he inserts in the film. For example, he underscores the
fact that Breslauer avoided taking close-ups with the inmates’ faces,
in order not to let the fear inscribed on their faces show (there is only
one close-up of this kind in the entire film, that of a gypsy girl); some
of the images are staggering, for example, the way that the inmates
help from the inside to close the wagon doors or the way that those
sent to a certain death smile. The space that the exhibition takes
place in is an integral aspect of the installation itself. Fortezza refers
almost blasphemously to one of the past possible uses of this building
which lacks a specific function; it is known that the Germans,
at that time, took over any fortresses of that kind and turned them
into concentration camps, as with Breendok, Belgium, or with
Thereisenstadt, in the Czech Republic. In fact, in the Thereisenstadt
model-camp, Kurt Gerron, an inmate himself (later executed in
Auschwitz, just like Breslauer), created a similar film. The muteness
of Respite emphasizes the fact that the viewer is condemned to passivity,
so the only thing he can do is to see. Through this, Farocki
demonstrates the stakes of the act of “just seeing“.
The post-political is closely connected with the social role of affects,
with the “soul“, and accordingly, the exhibition Soul at Palazzo delle
Poste in Trento doesn’t indulge itself in sweet things. The functioning
of Nazism and, these days, of populism, can’t be imagined without
the exploitation and the conscious manipulation of the soul, thus
without the power disposing over an exact knowledge of its intimate
workings. Already at this time, the soul and the unconscious had
begun to be put in the service of the media. Nazism and the total
dictatorships were the avant-garde of this operation. During the first
half of the 20th century, they unscrupulously used these instruments
developed, not lastly, due to the technical advances of the avantgardes
and modernism. The intimidation used by terrorism, like
those pretending to be against it, works today under this same sign,
as an underlying fight for the “soul“. The Israeli Roee Rosen creates
transgressive works; his confessions, as a male artist, are being read
aloud by women working illegally in Israel and who don’t even know
the language; he also records his little boy while giving the famous
Nazi salute. 2 Valerie Mréje interviews people who trespassed the
precepts of their religions, but who got away with the consequences
of their gestures: absolutely nothing happened. The exhibition
thus embodies the hope that the soul is capable of escaping even
the obligation imposed on it by dogmatic or religious precepts.
The critical art practice is especially important in border regions
(Eastern Europe is such a place) or in a state of crisis (such as in
Israel, Palestine, or Guantanamo Bay). One of the curators of the
exhibition organized in the former Palazzo delle Poste building, Hila
Peleg, is from Israel and, perhaps due to her origin, she deals with
the problems appearing in the Israeli contemporary art which are
inseparable from the fact that the genesis of the Israel state is, among
other things, the effect of the Second World War and the Holocaust.
Critical regionalism, in this context, does not just have the positive
meaning of an exploration of local identities, but it also weaves
together with nationalism, with tasteless “Heimat“ culture, and the
lack of a homeland. 3 These issues have been approached at Rovereto
first and foremost by Adam Budak. Similarly, however, in the exhibition
catalogue, T. J. Demos compares the European Union and the
post-Schengen situation with the concentration camps themselves. 4
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