say
why you are here /
sag warum di hier bist /
dic cur hic
2 Channel Video installation / performance,
2009
Dual
channel installation in Hallein, Austria, a former satellite
labor and displaced person camp outside Dachau. In this
project, I constructed an "eruv" - a ritual perimeter
made from string and traditionally demarcates Jewish
neighborhoods according to Sabbath law. This
boundary line followed the perimeter of the village and
was projected on east and west facing screens of
an atelier
in the local salt mine. Text in both English and German
was provided for the audience articulating my attempt
at re-Judaizing this rural village in lower Austria in
relation to my own family history and new expressions
of Jewish diaspora and rootlessness.
This
projects lifts the medieval German (Lutheran) / Latin
positing, Dic Cur Hic, “Say, when asked,
why you are here.” I found this both at the heart
of Libeniz's moral order (define your situation) and
in the correspondence
between Walter Benjamin and the German scholar of Jewish
mysticism, Gershom Scholem. "Here" for me was the transitive
position of the Semitic other, the encountering of a stranger.
| Credits |
A
video installation by Yoni Goldstin
Guidance:
Anna Konik, Clemens Kowalski, Ahmad Habash,
Steven Matthewson, Mareika Weber
production:
Kamil Malinowsky, Zora Rux, Kevjn Kelly,
Beste Erener, Hanna Hofsteatter
2009
internationalen sommerakademie für
bildende kunst in salzburg
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| Format |
High
Definition Video
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