Gegenüberstellung [Confrontation]

Installation, 2019

Two heavy and quasi sculptural slide projectors cast images shot by persons unknown—images that the artist found on flea markets and then integrated into her stock—onto screens set up facing one another. Thus both in its form and content the installation raises the matter of confrontation—in this case confrontation with the history of the Nazi regime and with how to tackle it. Eyewitnesses and the perpetrators of crimes are seemingly brought face to face. Their height, age, stature, and appearance play no role. Among the everyday scenes from the Nazi era projected in this work there is a photo of a newly wed couple as well as a portrait bearing Christmas and New Year’s greetings.
The screens consist of black backdrops to which are fastened semi-transparent white curtains that cannot be opened, not even an inch. Both the harsh light of the projectors and time itself will cause the slides to fade away, just as the persons and moments they depict have been lost from view; and their disappearance is intentional, for it is often objects, after all, which outlast time at a place. Back then, curtains kept peeping eyes apart from whatever was going on outside the door, and vice versa. Likewise the images and the memories of those who claim to have seen nothing at the time will grow dim. These curtains hide nothing. The viewers too are confronted with the images for as long as the projection lasts.

Fotos: Jens Weyers,
Tandem- Haifa- Bremen, Städtische Galerie Bremen