HOLOCAUST EDUCATION
SPECULATIVE CARTOGRAPHIES EXHIBITION OF COUNTER-MONUMENTS AT THE HALIFAX PUBLIC LIBRARY There is a great deal of media attention to public monuments, specifically, those that commemorate difficult or contested histories. Within the world of public art, the concept of the “counter monument”—as it has been advanced by artists in post-war Germany—has provided a fertile terrain for art practice that engages in and contributes to these public debates. To understand monuments as contested sites is to debate their meaning and to accept that meaning is not fixed at the moment of a work’s creation but will change over time and with new audiences. In collaboration with the AJC in November 2020, during Holocaust Education Week, a group of artists, curators and scholars of genocide and memory studies explored this idea of counter-monuments in the exhibition Speculative Cartographies—Mapping Five Unmarked Mass Graves in the Forests of Eastern Poland. This work was both a physical exhibition nested within the architecture of Halifax Central Library, and a permanent virtual exhibition that can be accessed here: www.countermemoryactivism.ca/speculative-cartographies. This work was completed in collaboration with The Zapomniane Foundation, Poland (zapomniane.org/en/about), who research unmarked mass-graves of Jews murdered during the “Holocaust by bullets”, at locations other than death camps such as forests, villages, or rural areas. Direct excavation is prohibited by Jewish Halacha (religious law), therefore all data about these sites are collected using non-invasive technologies such as LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), GPR (Ground Penetrating Radar), along with archival research and oral histories. The work that we created is dedicated to drawing out knowledge archived in landscape. Working with different ways of
ANGELA HENDERSON Angela Henderson is a Canadian artist and educator based in Kjipuktuk (Halifax, Nova Scotia). Her work often explores transitional spaces where morethan human ecologies emerge within urban interstices. Freed from the economy of production, Henderson explores these spaces as temporary spaces for site-specific durational activities that include embodied mapping, installation, sculpture, and radical pedagogy.
SOLOMON NAGLER Traversing the borders of narration and abstraction, Solomon Nagler’s film work invites us to explore the inner-selves of the characters he presents. Landscapes and symbols are continually blended, raising questions of identity and internal memories. His work also includes 16mm celluloid installations that engage with experimental architecture in galleries and public space. He currently lives in Halifax where he is a professor of film production at NSCAD University.
mapping that use data produced by non-invasive archeological tools, as well as 16mm film, traditional archives and subjective maps drawn from local oral histories, the works in this exhibition all engage in alternative approaches to memorialization. Material traces of violence recorded in the landscape simultaneously reveal connections between human conflicts and transformations of the natural environment. The following is a description of the works that were presented during this exhibition. Further photo documentation and full videos that were presented in the exhibition can be viewed on the above website. All photos of works installed in the library were taken by Steve Farmer. S
FORAY | ANGELA HENDERSON | Materials: Cotton String, Fallen Branches, Graphite, Cotton Paper This research with the local ecology in the forested sites of human trauma queries how nature can bear witness. How can artistic processes mark these locations? Can sculptural work function as both an artwork and a tool to map these spaces? Often the first step in identifying the precise location of mass graves is walking with a witness. They appeal to landmarks that were present at the time of these atrocities. Building on these processes of situating oneself and looking for landmarks, this work begins with the identification of witness trees. By consulting with a researcher from the Zapomniane Foundation and using the arm span of her body to mark these trees, Henderson circumnavigated these sites using string. In this way a border was created to demarcate these sacred spaces, while also providing a visual record of these sites. Foray lays out the coordinates and circumference of each site’s witness trees in black string, while white string marks the distance between each of the witness trees. Henderson uses perspectival drawings and found objects from the forests of Nova Scotia to configure these first-person maps. 16
Shalom
W I NTE R 2021
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