The Twin Cities, the University of Minnesota, and CHGS and its many co-sponsors welcome a visit by Lisbon-based German-Jewish media artist DANIEL BLAUFUKS
Film clips, artist talk and scholarly roundtable discussion
Tuesday, October 13
5:30 - 6:00 PM -- Film clips from Als Ob / As If
6:15 - 7:30 PM -- Roundtable discussion with panel of scholars and artists
Panel to include University of Minnesota faculty Gary Cohen (History), Paula Rabinowitz (English), Alice Lovejoy (Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature), and Leslie Morris (German, Scandinavian and Dutch); and David Harris (RIMON: The Minnesota Jewish Arts Council, an initiative of the Minneapolis Jewish Federation)
Weisman Art Museum
Meet the artist and film screening
Thursday, October 15
10:00 - 11:30 AM Coffee with the artist
10:00 AM - 5:00 PM Als Ob / As If Film installation on the Czech city of Terezín / WWII Jewish camp-ghetto of Theresienstadt
Weisman Art Museum
Daniel Blaufuks is an acclaimed artist working in Lisbon and exhibiting internationally. His exhibition, "All the Memory of the World, Part One," has as its theme the creation of memory through media. In other words: the use of film and photography to create memories, even memories that are actually fictional. Please read more about this exhibition here.
At the center of the exhibition is "Als Ob / As If," a monumental 4-hour film installation. In Als Ob, Blaufuks combines footage he shot in 2014 in the Czech city of Terezín, which was formerly the Jewish ghetto of Theresienstadt, with footage from Nazi propaganda films.
The contemporary clips are of everything that makes up the life of a normal city. They are reflected in clips from the fake documentary "Theresienstadt" made by the Germans in 1944, which pretended to show how normal the city/ghetto/concentration camp was. In the propaganda film, we see the elderly passing by, children playing, and chess-playing men. Combining clips from these two films is powerful, especially as Blaufuks purposely filmed some scenes in the same locations that the Nazi video depicts.
Blaufuks was born in Lisbon in 1963 to a family of Jewish German refugees. He studied at Ar.Co (Centro de Arte e Comunicação Visual), Lisbon, at the Royal College of Art, London and at the Watermill Foundation, New York. He exhibits widely and works mainly in photography and video, presenting his work through books, installations and films.The documentary "Under Strange Skies" was shown at the Lincoln Center in New York. His exhibitions include: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, Palazzo delle Papesse, Siena, LisboaPhoto, Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon, Elga Wimmer Gallery, New York, Photoespaña, Madrid, where his book Under Strange Skies received the award for Best Photography Book of the Year in the International Category in 2007, the year he received the BES Photo Award as well. He published Terezín with Steidl, Götingen. In 2011 he had a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro and in 2014 at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Lisbon. For more information see http://www.danielblaufuks.com
Event organized by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, co-sponsored by the Center for Austrian Studies, Center for Jewish Studies, Center for German and European Studies, College of Liberal Arts, Department of Art, Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature, Department of English, Department of German, Scandinavian & Dutch, Department of History, Department of Spanish & Portuguese, Institute for Advanced Study, Weisman Art Museum, and Macalester College. Additional support from RIMON: The Minnesota Jewish Arts Council, an initiative of the Minneapolis Jewish Federation.
