In a time when all witnesses to the Holocaust will soon have perished, one possible route for commemoration is a return to images, asking what testimony they can give? This book seeks to answer the question of how images can bear witnesses, by examining them as multifaceted entities produced, reproduced and resituated in conflicting political and historical situations. Through a reading of three works that reinterpret archival material and position it in a new time and context, Beyond Witness seeks to explicate this relation and unfold the implications of that movement. In the three archive-based works, "Respite" by Harun Farocki (2007), "A Film Unfinished" by Yael Hersonski (2010), and "The Specialist: Portrait of a modern criminal" by Eyal Sivan (1999), the materials are reactivated and reinterpreted. The films are based on archival materials which are reworked visually and aurally. The
pieces of footage discussed are understood as incomplete; like individual testimony that is dependent on context. Footage produced as internal Nazi propaganda and the video recording of a politically charged trial in the aftermath of the Holocaust now mean something else. Photographic images, moving or still, are bound to their contexts and conditions of production and presentation. Therefore, the testimony of images can be grasped through their archival conditions, context and framework (conditions for production) and means of representation (voice, narration and gaze). These means offer the framework for the analysis through which the testimony of images can be understood.
Cover image: A drawing from the book Rundor by artist Astrid Göransson included in a democracy monument for the Swedish Parliament in 2022.
Public Memory, Public Art - Reflections On Monuments And Memorial Art Today
Edited by Annika Enqvist, Karolina Modig, Rebecka Katz Thor, Joanna Zawieja.
What does it mean to remember through art? The anthology Public Memory, Public Art – Reflections on Monuments and Memorial Art Today presents 25 texts that explore and discuss memorial art in our common spaces. The anthology includes texts on monuments, memorials, memory, democracy, power, and oppression and have a Swedish focus with an international perspective. The book is published in collaboration with the Public Art Agency Sweden.
English version:
Enqvist, Annika, Katz Thor, Rebecka, Modig, Karolina & Zawieja, Joanna, eds. Public Art, Public Memory, Stockholm: Art & Theory, 2022. ISBN 9789198672077
Swedish version:
https://statenskonstrad-bokhandel.se/sv-se/article/4576/offentligt-minne-offentlig-konst
Enqvist, Annika, Katz Thor, Rebecka, Modig, Karolina & Zawieja, Joanna, red. Offentligt minne, offentlig konst, Statens konstråd, 2022. ISBN 9789198747157
Blick, rörelse, röst: Festskrift till Cecilia Sjöholm
Katz Thor, Rebecka & Wallrup, Erik, eds. Blick, rörelse, röst: Festskrift till Cecilia Sjöholm, Stockholm: Södertörn University Press 2020.
This festschrift was produced during the pandemic time of 2020 in order to celebrate our esteemed colleague Professor of Aesthetics, Cecilia Sjöholm, on her 60th birthday on March 8th 2021.