Wartezeit

Bremen, 2009

Audio Installation

Mp3 players and headphones lie on a table in a room resembling a waiting room. On the audio track a story is to be heard. The story is intended as a reply to the oft posed question of whether the father of the storyteller survived the concentration camp, to which he was deported as a four year old, or not. The extravagant answer takes the form of a fairytale-like family saga, in which one episode follows the next and puts the listener on hold for nearly half an hour, until it finally returns to the original questions.
The wait for an answer, to which the voyeurism of the enquirer receives no relief, stands allegorically for the storyteller’s wait for involvement on behalf of the listener with the actual circumstances and persistent consequences of the holocaust.