Zimzum Issue 1

1
One of the primary
sources of inspiration for
my initial photographic projects was
Rainer Kubatzki’s book: Standorte und
Topographie in Berlin und im
brandenburgischen Umland 1939 bis
1945 (2001). Subsequent to my
reading the book, I collected
documentations made in locations that
were transformed into organic/
normalised parts of the urban
landscape in Berlin.
Along the process, I was examining
other historical events that occurred
during WWII.
This examination allowed me to
broaden the senses of crime scene, and
to regard the concept of normalisation
from different situations and events as
massacres, executions, etc.
The photograph seeks to unravel the
scene, to untie the structure.
IN KREMS, I COLLABORATED WITH
DR ROBERT STREIBEL. MOST OF
THE FINDINGS WERE BASED ON HIS
PAST STUDIES.
Transforming shows how memory is
formative and is one of the primary
practices for preserving normalisation.
Memory teaches the subject in
accordance with models of thinking
and creating, and also with regard to
what its visual reflection will look like:
Positive, visible, monumental,
victimising, free, decadent, etc. The
memory connects the past and the
future in a “systematic” way. It is a form
of commemorating the past and
designing the future.
In a groundbreaking essay on the
nature and power of memory from
1989, Pierre Nora discusses the
transience of memories, explaining how
Memory is constantly
on our lips because it no
longer exists.
reverberates in Michel Foucault’s
influential theories of ironic “countermemory”
and “effective” history with
its moments of intensity, its lapses, its
extended periods of feverish agitation,
its fainting spells. Nora supports
Foucault’s “counter memory” that
becomes a milestone in modern
western academies.
Considering the brutality that Nora
speaks about going through
deconstruction, I am trying to evaluate
what elements are necessary to produce
normality. This debate was and is
relevant in every culture, since it is a
crucial means to rewrite history.
Moreover, it may even work as a tool to
substitute written history into another
narrative that is more befitting the
current political atmosphere.
Nevertheless, Foucault’s approach
introduces practices of remembering and
forgetting in the context of power
relations, focusing not only on what is
remembered and forgotten, but also how
it happens, by whom, and to what effect.
THE THESIS
DEVELOPED FROM
A COMBINATION
OF ARTISTIC AND
HISTORIOGRAPHICAL
RESEARCH
CONDUCTED
BETWEEN
2013 AND 2017
I plan to continue this research and
create an archive of collective portraits.
An archive in terms of visible forms of
knowledge: a collection of images that
intends to illustrate a plethora of things
in a systematic or problematic way.
The initial project began as
photographic research, focused on the
aesthetics of contemporary images of
places used as forced labour camps
during WWII. I have investigated
campsites in Poland (as part of a CK
ZAMEK residency in Poznan), Greece
(ArtAmari residency in Crete) and,
recently, with AIR Kunsthalle Krems,
Austria.
As an artist-in-residence, I was able to
research and photograph drawing on
local knowledge. This involved
collaboration with historians,
archivists, and local people and city
planners. Usually, projects divide into
three phases:
a Research
b Photography
c Introducing the project to the public
through exhibitions and artist talks
In Crete, the situation was different,
and the project was presented in the
form of research and information in an
academic context, as well as in the
central archives and the local
population. The overriding feeling was
that there is neither sufficient curiosity,
nor any concrete knowledge about any
of the events that took place during
WWII. Most of my knowledge was
gained through meeting people in their
natural environment and by listening
to their own subjective experiences.
THE ARCHIVE
CONTAINS
1.000 IMAGES FROM
FOUR DIFFERENT
COUNTRIES
Stela, testimony of Gerakari massacre, Crete,
Greece. Photo: Hadas Tapouchi, 2016
The research will provide a theoretical
frame for the work that I have carried
out to this date. It will present a theory
that aims to shed light on a
normalisation process in which images
are deconstructed and reconstructed
over many years. The focus of this
project has gradually broadened from
an interest in a specific historical
dimension to a preoccupation with the
subject of archiving and storing - how
we “write” and accumulate our
histories and memories, both as
individuals and as a culture.
Additionally, one is
inevitably confronted with
obsessions, particularly in
Continental Europe, with a
dialectic mechanism of
memory and of loss. The
archive contains 1000 images
from four different countries,
while each one exposes many
layers of the city or landscape
that were mostly hidden or
unknown to its inhabitants,
and the revelation itself
attracted significant public
interest. It reveals as well the
many competing narratives
that emerge after a conflict.
However, it also specifically
contextualises these new
experiences in a colossal
historically unique system in
which all “others” were
victims.
Screen shot: Mapping Krems
AS PART OF AN ARTIST-IN-
RESIDENCE PROGRAMME IN THE
WINTER OF 2016, I WAS ABLE TO
EXTEND MY WORK TO THE CITY
OF POZNAN, POLAND (FORMERLY
POSEN).
The image was taken in Poznan, Poland during the CK ZAMEK artist residency
in Poznan. The exhibition stretched over dozens of public spaces around the city,
for example, in bus stations, trams and on billboards.
Screen shot from a video documentation: Hadas Tapouchi, Poznan 2016
Phenomenon memory
The phenomenon of complicity
branched all over Europe, as it took
place in several locations and was an
enormous exchange network of humans
and goods - normalisation happened
everywhere. Significantly, this is why a
“transforming project” could be used in
any post-conflict situation. As I
demonstrated in the case studies above,
memory is a global concept and the
research represents the official narrative
clash, as it encourages facing new
narratives and new memories. Through
understanding the power of narrative
visibility, I am creating an aesthetic
theory.
The challenge of visualising
“disciplinary power” in art
Throughout this research, I demonstrate
the tense intertwining of disciplinary
power and everyday life, and how it is
perceived as an obvious situation. Power
strives to be understood as something
unreachable; by means of its very
banality, it assumes a double character
of being overexposed and invisible/
hidden at the same time; it operates
according to its own unfathomable but
unquestioned (by entire societies) rules.
The research deals with the problem
of two major issues: Firstly, the city
(and landscape) as the manifestation
of normalisation. Secondly, the city’s
generally hidden and unspoken
codes that regulate the order
imposed on, and derived from, the
city.
Michel Foucault’s publication
Discipline and Punish (1975) deals
with control and normalisation as a
combination of strategies to practice
maximum social control with
minimum use of force, including
the way in which normalisation
constructs idealised human
behavior. This is analogous to the
process of change as discussed by
Foucault:
The man described
for us, whom we are
invited to free,
is already in himself
the effect of a subjection
much more profound
than himself
The equilibrium between the present
and past is disturbed because the
discontinuity creates very different
narratives. Memory has couple of ways
of being treated: personal or collective;
and it is activated freely through
nostalgia, similarity, and metaphor.
Memory for Nora is a paradigm
suffused into contemporary culture.
The establishment of worship as
cultural initiation, memorial buildings,
flags, anthems and memoir writings are
a single phenomenon. The discussion
concerns historic preservation as a
phenomenon of a strong sense and
cultural identity. Pierre Nora writes:
Memory takes root
in the concrete, in
spaces, gestures, images,
and objects: history
binds itself strictly to
temporal continuities,
to progressions and to
relations between things.
The linguist James E. Young has looked
at the modern concretisation and
aestheticisation of memory and
national narratives in relation to
Germany in his publication The
Texture of Memory. In the work, he
touches upon the consequences of these
first prototypes that emerged as dozens
of “counter memorial” projects became
the standard for subsequent Holocaust
memorial competitions in Germany.
Young discusses the work by German
artist Horst Hoheisel, who constructed
a huge fountain to commemorate a
similar fountain donated to the city of
Kassel by a local Jewish entrepreneur,
Sigmund Aschrott, in 1908. The Nazis
destroyed this fountain, and Hoheisel
buried his version of the fountain
beneath the ground. And as in the case
of the fountain, Pierre Nora warned in
his book Between Memory and
History:
The less memory is
experienced from the
inside, the more it exists
through its exterior
scaffolding and outward
signs
In his work, Hoheisel solved the
problem by streaming the water flow
towards the ground. Hoheisel had
already been known for his negativeform
monument in Kassel, a simple but
provocative anti-solution memorial
proposed in the contest: an antimemory
sculpture, which illustrates
that to not have a memory, or to not
remember, is to shatter the object.
Hoheisel’s submission for the
Holocaust memorial competition in
Berlin was even more radical. He
suggested demolishing the
Brandenburg Gate, burying and
dissolving all the remains over its
former site, and finally covering the
entire memorial area with granite
plates. The memory’s history critique
Methodological photography
The photographs are typological, warm,
inviting, and even discreet. Thus, they
stand in contrast to the shocking and
ghoulish images known from that
period, and which are being used to
this day to describe history in a one
dimensional narrative, an untouched
narrative. Everyday life is underlined
through the use of colour photography
and the occasional inclusion of
pedestrians, who sometimes may
even look at the camera. History
stands at the centre of the research,
not as an abstract goal in itself, but
rather as an instrument to understand
contemporary reality.
The photographic medium I am
using in order to visualise historical
data is the medium format colour
film. It enables me to gain hyperrealistic
images. The idea behind it is
to empower and emphasise my topic:
normalisation. The use of hyperrealistic
images is intended to stress
the reason for speaking necessarily
about the present, then the past. The
past is inherent in the image/reality,
and there is no need to highlight it
more than it already is. Normalisation
and memory are types of power that
are free from any law. They constitute
power in the sense that people do not
need any authority to control them.
This power is no longer imposed from
above through outright coercion,
but by disciplining people to serve
power themselves. Not only prisons,
also urban and landscape aesthetics
such as nature, hospitals, schools, and
museums are the only physical and
visible evidence that demonstrate a link
to any architectural form.
Public meets Art
The objective of photographing and
thus documenting is to encourage
observers to integrate their own
historical knowledge into an everydayorientated
perspective and sensitise
them to the process of normalisation,
where experiences of violence are
hidden or ignored and eventually
re-absorbed. In my research, I use
images as site-specific installations,
reflective of the historical occurrence,
culture and memory. I want to bring
this to light through various modes of
representation, neutralised in everyday
life. The site-specific works installed in
the public sphere - bus stations,
billboards, newspapers - do not
interrupt, or draw attention to, the
relevance of daily life. Much of my
knowledge was acquired within
residencies, conferences and artist talks
that I held, and situations in which I
had the opportunity to interview
people from different fields, as well as
reading and listening to memoirs.
How art meets the public: how can the
artistic, theoretical materials enter the
public, make it visual and, by doing so,
make it real, substantial. The public
performance is to ask the community
to observe the obvious, to re-think and
re-ask what part they play in the public
sphere, what their role is in the
representation of collective memory.
Hadas Tapouchi is a visual artist,
founder and editor of Zimzum
newspaper. She is based in Berlin.