[-empyre-] Monika Weiss -- Shrouds, 2012-2013 (as addendum to Lamentation)

Ana Valdés agora158 at gmail.com
Sat Oct 6 00:15:42 EST 2012 

Thank you Monika! I feel a deep sympathy with your writing and your
work. Mourning and lament make heavy bonds :) I am back in Uruguay
after 34 years of exile in Sweden and I meet now many women who has
been in jail with me. We feel a deep connection, having shared those
terrible years make us friends and sisters. A kind of fraternity in
the grief.
I don't know if Hackitectura is still working as a group, Write me off
list and I can provide you with their mail adresses.
Ana

On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 11:02 AM, Monika Weiss <gniewna at monika-weiss.com> wrote:
> I would love to get in touch with them, if you think possible.
> This has been and continues to be my main project (in other cities as well)
> since last year and it would be interesting to consider a collaboration with
> them, should they be interested.
> I  feel a deep connection to your writing Ana by the way.
> Monika
>
> On Oct 5, 2012, at 8:53 AM, Ana Valdés wrote:
>
> A group of friends of mine, the architect group Hackitectura,
> www.hackitectura.net
> work with maps and try to make a cartography of the memory (or the
> lack of it) mapping social relations, inmaterial networks, political
> issues.
> One of their main pillars is the work with communities wanting to
> recover the hidden stories of the cities, the place where the real
> estate or the market converge with the lives of the people living
> there. Your remarks about the real state and the commerce and
> corporate world reminds me about the debate on gentrification and it's
> consequences. With gentrification the stories of the people are
> erased, shiny new white surfaces substitute the cracks of the fabric,
> the holes in the walls, the peeled tiles, the age, the wrinkles of the
> skin.
> Ana
>
> On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 9:52 AM, Monika Weiss <gniewna at monika-weiss.com>
> wrote:
>
> Today is the real estate and the commerce and the corporate world--- memory
>
> of a city does not constitute a value, unless it's a negative value, because
>
> it becomes a threat to the powers.
>
>
> Nationalism of any kind does not interest me. Instead, is the redefinition
>
> of otherness as sameness.
>
>
> I grew up seeing an empty square of ground located centrally in my own city
>
> of Warsaw, which used to be a royal castle.  After 1945 Soviets prevented
>
> Poland from rebuilding the castle, so that there was no national monument to
>
> speak of. But in the seventies, when the entire city was up and rebuild from
>
> zero to its simulacrum (as you know Germans reduced entire Warsaw to an
>
> ocean of rubble by systematically exploding and burning all buildings and
>
> bridges while Soviets watched this spectacle from the other side of a a very
>
> narrow river of Vistula, during Warsaw Uprising in August 1944) -- When I
>
> was growing up in seventies the rubble, gray like our grand zero in 2001,
>
> created a stark contrast to the rest of the city, a reverse monument, a
>
> whole, a living wound.
>
>
>
>
>
> On Oct 5, 2012, at 7:41 AM, Ana Valdés wrote:
>
>
> Beautiful text, Monika! When I was a child (I was a very precocius
>
> reader :) and read history of Rome and Greece. My favorite was the
>
> history of Carthage and I was shocked how the city was erased and the
>
> Romans threw salt in it to avoid the Carthagineses should build it
>
> again.
>
> These horrible fate of a city was a nightmare for me and I asked my
>
> grandfather if our city could have the same fate and my grandfather
>
> tranquilized me, it happened in the old times, nothing similar could
>
> happen now.
>
> But he was wrong and he wanted spare me the grief, of course.
>
> I visited the city of Guernica in Spain some years ago and I tried to
>
> imagine the eerie atmosphere of the city when the fascist bombs fell
>
> over the city.
>
> It was these atmosphere the thing Picasso tried to paint in his painture.
>
> I searched the city of Guernica trying to evoke the day when the
>
> city's heart was ravaged.
>
> And what about the mourning today? It was a planted tree and a post
>
> telling the day and the time of the attack. Nothing more.
>
> Ana
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 1:24 AM, Monika Weiss <gniewna at monika-weiss.com>
>
> wrote:
>
>
> From a text I wrote about my current ongoing this year project "Shrouds".
>
>
>
> Do cities remember? Maps of cities are flat, yet their histories contain
>
>
> vertical strata of events. Where in the topography and consciousness of a
>
>
> city can we locate its memory? Maps of the Polish city Zielona Góra depict
>
>
> an empty unmarked rectangular area located on Wrocławska Street, across from
>
>
> the Focus Park shopping mall. Located centrally within the city this area
>
>
> looks abandoned, being composed mostly of broken masonry and wood debris.
>
>
> Inquiries to citizens of Zielona Góra indicate that many of them do not know
>
>
> the history of this abandoned area, including those who grew up near the
>
>
> site.
>
>
>
> Invited by a local museum to propose a project, I arrived to Zielona Góra
>
>
> (Gruenberg) knowing of the past history of the unmarked yet centrally
>
>
> located ruined site. On June 9th this year I flew on a small airplane to
>
>
> film this territory and its surroundings. The flight marked the beginning of
>
>
> my new project that will eventually develop into a film and a multi-layered
>
>
> dialogue with the citizens of Zielona Góra. During the Second World War the
>
>
> site was a forced labor camp, which later became a concentration camp
>
>
> designated primarily for Jewish women. The camp was developed on the site of
>
>
> the German wool factory, Deutsche Wollenwaren Manufaktur AG, which supplied
>
>
> the German war machine with military clothing.  (It has since been converted
>
>
> to a shopping mall.)  During the war about 1,000 young women worked there as
>
>
> seamstresses and eventually became prisoners of the concentration camp
>
>
> complex governed by KZ Groß-Rosen.  Towards the very end of the war the
>
>
> prisoners were sent on one of the most tragic of the forced Death Marches
>
>
> where many of them died.
>
>
>
> Looking down from the airplane we see well-kept buildings surrounding the
>
>
> ruins of the former camp, as though it were an open yet forgotten wound in
>
>
> the body of the center of the city. During the performative phase of the
>
>
> project, I invited a group of young women from Zielona Góra to spend some
>
>
> time in silence on the site of the camp, wearing black scarfs which later
>
>
> were taken off and left behind amongst the ruins. Their presence evoked the
>
>
> absence of the prisoners.   In the dual video projection installation at the
>
>
> BWA, (an exhibition that initiated the project in June), the faces of these
>
>
> young women look towards us in silence. In another part of the projection we
>
>
> observe a torso of a woman wrapping bandages onto her naked chest in a slow,
>
>
> fragile gesture of defense, or perhaps caress. Her body stands for our
>
>
> common body, anonymous as if it were a membrane between the self and the
>
>
> external world. Awareness of our marginality becomes elevated into the realm
>
>
> of meaning through our brief encounter with memory and history.
>
>
>
> “Shrouds” considers aspects of public memory and amnesia in the construction
>
>
> of the space of a city and its urban planning. As part of this project,
>
>
> citizens of Zielona Góra are invited to propose how we choose to remember,
>
>
> (or not) the women prisoners who perished there, and how this fulfilled the
>
>
> goals of a systematic destruction of an entire population. Over the course
>
>
> of this year citizens of Zielona Gora are also invited to respond to a
>
>
> questionnaire in order to propose their own ideas for the development of the
>
>
> area, whether as a site of commemoration, or through other forms of
>
>
> dialogue. Earlier this year, after over 50 years of gradual decay and
>
>
> abandonment, the site has been sold by the city's officials to an
>
>
> undisclosed developer. Yet the larger debate in Zielona Gora, a dialogue
>
>
> about the site of the former camp and about the city's memory and amnesia,
>
>
> as well as about the meaning of citizenship and response-ability shall
>
>
> continue, to some extend, thanks to "Shrouds".
>
>
>
>
> http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150988884644656.448736.179396834655&type=3
>
>
>
> http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150988885089656&set=a.10150988884644656.448736.179396834655&type=3&theater
>
>
>
> http://bwazg.pl/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1455&Itemid=46
>
>
>
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> "When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth
>
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>
> will always long to return.
>
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> empyre forum
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> M o n i k a   W e i s s   S t u d i o
>
> 456 Broome Street, 4
>
> New York, NY 10013
>
> Phone: 212-226-6736
>
> Mobile: 646-660-2809
>
> www.monika-weiss.com
>
> gniewna at monika-weiss.com
>
>
> M o n i k a   W e i s s
>
> Assistant Professor
>
> Graduate School of Art & Hybrid Media
>
> Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts
>
> Washington University in St. Louis
>
> Campus Box 1031
>
> One Brookings Drive
>
> St. Louis, MO 63130
>
> mweiss at samfox.wustl.edu
>
> http://samfoxschool.wustl.edu/portfolios/faculty/monika_weiss
>
>
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> _______________________________________________
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> --
> http://writings-escrituras.tumblr.com/
> http://maraya.tumblr.com/
> http://www.twitter.com/caravia158
> http://www.scoop.it/t/art-and-activism/
> http://www.scoop.it/t/food-history-and-trivia
> http://www.scoop.it/t/gender-issues/
> http://www.scoop.it/t/literary-exiles/
> http://www.scoop.it/t/museums-and-ethics/
> http://www.scoop.it/t/urbanism-3-0
> http://www.scoop.it/t/postcolonial-mind/
>
> cell Sweden +4670-3213370
> cell Uruguay +598-99470758
>
>
> "When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth
> with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there you
> will always long to return.
> — Leonardo da Vinci
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
>
> M o n i k a   W e i s s   S t u d i o
> 456 Broome Street, 4
> New York, NY 10013
> Phone: 212-226-6736
> Mobile: 646-660-2809
> www.monika-weiss.com
> gniewna at monika-weiss.com
>
> M o n i k a   W e i s s
> Assistant Professor
> Graduate School of Art & Hybrid Media
> Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts
> Washington University in St. Louis
> Campus Box 1031
> One Brookings Drive
> St. Louis, MO 63130
> mweiss at samfox.wustl.edu
> http://samfoxschool.wustl.edu/portfolios/faculty/monika_weiss
>
>
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cell Sweden +4670-3213370
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"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth
with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there you
will always long to return.
— Leonardo da Vinci

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