And Europe Will Be Stunned
Mittwoch, 15. April 2015 - 18:30 Uhr
Semper Depot - Atelierhaus der Akademie der bildenden Künste
Film Presentation and Discussion with Yael Bartana, S?awomir Sierakowski and Friedemann Derschmidt. Media laboratory of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in cooperation with the Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna.
The appointmemt of the Israeli artist Yael Bartana as curator of the Polish pavilion at the Venice biennale seemed to fit the title of the trilogy she was exhibiting: ?And Europe will be stunned?. Yael Bartana is not the first non-Polish artist to have represented Poland at the Biennale. This time however the topic of the work is unusually controversial. The trilogy deals in complex ways with questions of ?homeland?, ?belonging? and ?return? in connection with the Shoah. A fictive ?Jewish Renaissance movement? allows the ?return? of the (murdered) polish Jews to Poland – and Europe will be stunned! The artist thereby makes ironic use of the formal and figurative language of nationalism and the Israeli-Zionist narrative.
Yael Bartana is an Israeli artist who workes and lives in Amsterdam, Tel Aviv and Berlin. Her films, installations and photographs explore the imagery of identity and the politics of memory. Her starting point is the national consciousness propagated by her native country Israel. Central to the work are meanings implied by terms like "homeland", "return" and "belonging". Bartana investigates these through the ceremonies, public rituals and social diversions that are intended to reaffirm the collective identity of the nation state. In her Israeli projects, Bartana dealt with the impact of war, military rituals and a sense of threat on every-day life.
S?awomir Sierakowski is the founder of "Krytyka Polityczna", a movement of left-wing intellectuals, artists and activists based in Poland, and Director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Warsaw. Currently, he is a Bronis?aw Geremek Visiting Fellow at the IWM.
Friedemann Derschmidt (Chair) is an artist and filmmaker living in Vienna. Together with Karin Schneider and Tal Adler he curated exhibitions and filmfestivals as well as an artist residence program in Austria and Israel. He was heading the research project MEMSCREEN at the Research Lab for Film and Television at the Academy of Fine Arts, where he also holds the position of a senior artist.
Please register: http://www.iwm.at/events/event/and-europe-will-be-stunned/