09/08
Het Bos
Ankerrui 5-7, Antwerp
Anna Dasović - ‘So, on behalf of my country and from the bottom of my heart’ (2019, 11’)
20:30
On 11 July 2015, Dasović attended the burial of the remains of 136 people in Potočari, Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Their remains had been excavated over the course of the preceding year from mass grave sites in the area. In some cases, peoples’ remains were found dispersed over primary, secondary and tertiary mass graves. These people were all killed during the genocide that took place in Srebrenica, Eastern Bosnia in the summer of 1995. So, on behalf of my country and from the bottom of my heart brings news media images and found mobile phone footage together with footage from Dasović’s own phone, all of which was taken during the burial ceremony that simultaneously marked a 20th anniversary commemoration of the genocide in Srebrenica. This annual burial is the single only annually documented and televised mass funeral assembly in the world to date.
‘And he knew that those who had witnessed these things might be too stunned to speak’ (2015, 18')
The film consists of 16mm fragments of ‘Special Film Project 186’, assigned by US Army Air forces to a crew of cameramen and movie directors – mostly from Hollywood – with the task of producing “the most complete and comprehensive propaganda color film of the war ever made.” The project was never completed. Although primarily documenting the (nightly) Allied aerial bombing campaign on Germany, a few reels of film depict the consequences of Nazi terror in Buchenwald concentration camp promptly after its liberation in April 1945.
Their declassification in the 1960’s, mark a significant moment in which Holocaust discourses began to take shape throughout the West, still dominant today. The work addresses the manner in which the representation of the Holocaust is constantly inscribed onto our retina- while revealing its deep connections with Hollywood from 1945 onwards- and questions its use as political currency to legitimise current political (in) action and warfare today.
Their declassification in the 1960’s, mark a significant moment in which Holocaust discourses began to take shape throughout the West, still dominant today. The work addresses the manner in which the representation of the Holocaust is constantly inscribed onto our retina- while revealing its deep connections with Hollywood from 1945 onwards- and questions its use as political currency to legitimise current political (in) action and warfare today.
+ ‘Jurisdiction - A Hundred Years Before the Law’ (2015, 24’) by Robert Glas
For the film Jurisdiction, Alexeïeffs invention, the pinscreen, is rebuilt and used to display a series of x-rays of trucks with stowaways.The camera explores the footage and the pinscreen. Simultaneously a voice-over reads ‘Before the Law’, divided in 8 parts and interwoven with commentaries, written over the course of the hundred years this story exists. Doing so a radical politicised interpretation of the text is reconstructed and subsequently deconstructed.The ultimate conclusion remains unchanged: Access is impossible.