Always glad to be out of service
28 Jan - 27 Mar 2005
The phrase "always glad to be of service ..." concluded the correspondence of the company J.A. Topf & Söhne from Erfurt with their customer, the department for construction of the SS, which utilised Topf & Söhne's cremation chambers in the concentration and extermination camps. However, most letters of companies loyal to the Nazi regime could have ended with the phrase "always glad to be of service ...".
After the 2003 exhibition "Images of Remembrance and Disappearance" focussing the so-called "culture of remembrance" the central theme of this exhibition's artists is the function of the industry in the Holocaust. Special emphasis will be put on the significance of technical and economical developments on the extermination of millions of humans. This monstrous crime would not have been possible without the industrial extension of the railway network and of producing chemical products, the construction of transportation logistics in Europe, connected to the war and forced labor, a will to destruction never seen before and bureaucratic subordination.
The longlasting discussion over the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, is now silent: The memorial will be opened in May 2005. Those artists, however, who are concerned with the Holocaust because of an inner motivation and without public commission, will not be silent.
The selected artists mainly deal with familiar companies or people or with facts illustrating that the "wheelwork" existed because of particular interests, and that it developed from seemingly harmless beginnings to the crime in a formerly unknown scale.
Furthermore, the artists inquire after today's approach to the past, after guilt and responsibility of the individual, as well as after strategies of repression and possibilities of expiation and reconciliation; they elucidate that admonishing, remembering and recollecting are possible and necessary in different ways.
The selection of the artists and their works is based upon previously realized projects which have been revised, updated and extended for the exhibition.
Curator: Dr. Barbara Barsch
Artists:
Yael Katz Ben Shalom
Uriel Orlow
Heidi Stern
Renata Stih and
Frieder Schnock
Tanya Ury
www.ifa.de
© Image by Renata Stih, Frieder Schnock
Memorial to the Murdered Jews in Europe (draft)
After the 2003 exhibition "Images of Remembrance and Disappearance" focussing the so-called "culture of remembrance" the central theme of this exhibition's artists is the function of the industry in the Holocaust. Special emphasis will be put on the significance of technical and economical developments on the extermination of millions of humans. This monstrous crime would not have been possible without the industrial extension of the railway network and of producing chemical products, the construction of transportation logistics in Europe, connected to the war and forced labor, a will to destruction never seen before and bureaucratic subordination.
The longlasting discussion over the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, is now silent: The memorial will be opened in May 2005. Those artists, however, who are concerned with the Holocaust because of an inner motivation and without public commission, will not be silent.
The selected artists mainly deal with familiar companies or people or with facts illustrating that the "wheelwork" existed because of particular interests, and that it developed from seemingly harmless beginnings to the crime in a formerly unknown scale.
Furthermore, the artists inquire after today's approach to the past, after guilt and responsibility of the individual, as well as after strategies of repression and possibilities of expiation and reconciliation; they elucidate that admonishing, remembering and recollecting are possible and necessary in different ways.
The selection of the artists and their works is based upon previously realized projects which have been revised, updated and extended for the exhibition.
Curator: Dr. Barbara Barsch
Artists:
Yael Katz Ben Shalom
Uriel Orlow
Heidi Stern
Renata Stih and
Frieder Schnock
Tanya Ury
www.ifa.de
© Image by Renata Stih, Frieder Schnock
Memorial to the Murdered Jews in Europe (draft)