Jewish Australian artist Jane Korman created video installation of her family dancing in front of Holocaust landmarks to show different point of view.
A YouTube clip depicting five people dancing to the tune of Gloria Gaynor's song "I will survive" in front of Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz has resurfaced at the center of a trans-Atlantic controversy.
Australian Jewish artist Jane Korman filmed her three children and her father, 89-year-old Holocaust survivor Adolk, in the video clip "I Will Survive: Dancing Auschwitz."
The clip depicted the Korman family dancing in front of Holocaust land marks in Poland, including infamous entrance sign to Auschwitz death camp reading "Arbeit Macht Frei," a Polish synagogue, Dachau, Theresienstadt, and a memorial in Lodz.
Her father at one point in the clip even wore a shirt on which the word "Survivor" was written.
During a recent family visit to Israel Korman said that she thought of the idea after she encountered hatred toward Israel and Jews in Australia and added that she wanted to give her concerns presence during the heritage tour of Poland she recently took with her family, and take a different approach to the matter.
Many Jewish survivors have reacted gravely to the video, accusing her of disrespect. Yet Korman told Australian daily The Jewish News that “it might be disrespectful, but he [her father] is saying ‘we’re dancing, we should be dancing, we’re celebrating our survival and the generations after me,’ - the generation he’s created. We are affirming our existence.”
When the video was first released in December 2009, Melbourne media reacted strongly to the video and even accused Korman of using the Holocaust to promote her art.
“I wanted to make artwork that creates a fresh interpretation of historical memory,” Korman told Jewish News.
Apparently the video installation, which was exhibited in an Australia art gallery, was also picked up by several neo-Nazi websites in which they wrote "look, the Jews are still dancing in every corner. We aren't through with them; we will finish them in the next Holocaust."
 | YouTube video clip 'Dancing Auschwitz.' |
Korman's mother, who was also a Holocaust survivor, refused to join the trip because Poland held too many bad memories, Korman said and added that her father, on the other hand, mostly supported her idea of an artistic venture.
This is the second part of the 'Dancing Auschwitz' video installation series. This video shows Marysia and Adolek Kohn, the Wysokiers, Leda Gringlass and me (Jane Korman) when I was a little girl dancing freely with my parents and their friends in a forest outside Melbourne.
This footage illustrates how both dancing, and my parents attitude to life, have been woven into my own life. Growing up, I was always present while my parents danced. As an adult, it seemed a natural process to merge the two influences that have shaped my life that of my parents' story and that of dance hence the project, Dancing Auschwitz.
Music: 'Dance Me to the End of Love' by Leonard Cohen. Soundtrack from 'Various Positions,' 1984
This footage illustrates how both dancing, and my parents attitude to life, have been woven into my own life. Growing up, I was always present while my parents danced. As an adult, it seemed a natural process to merge the two influences that have shaped my life that of my parents' story and that of dance hence the project, Dancing Auschwitz.
Music: 'Dance Me to the End of Love' by Leonard Cohen. Soundtrack from 'Various Positions,' 1984
This clip complements the previous two clips in the series 'I Will Survive: Dancing Auschwitz.'
In June 2009, I, together with my father, my four children and niece, travelled to Poland to retrace my parents' past. While on a cattle wagon at Radagost Station in Lodz, my father experiences flashbacks. He reenacts the memory of his three-day journey in a similar cattle wagon, heading to Auschwitz, 65 years earlier, and appears to enter a trancelike state. In his native tongue, he carries on an improvised dialogue with the imaginary peasants he passed on the way.
This clip also raises my own personal concerns as a Jew. I ask my father: 'Do I look like a 'JEW?' I ask my mother: 'If you had your time again, would you choose to be Jewish?' and I ask my daughter: 'What did you feel when you returned to Australia?'
In June 2009, I, together with my father, my four children and niece, travelled to Poland to retrace my parents' past. While on a cattle wagon at Radagost Station in Lodz, my father experiences flashbacks. He reenacts the memory of his three-day journey in a similar cattle wagon, heading to Auschwitz, 65 years earlier, and appears to enter a trancelike state. In his native tongue, he carries on an improvised dialogue with the imaginary peasants he passed on the way.
This clip also raises my own personal concerns as a Jew. I ask my father: 'Do I look like a 'JEW?' I ask my mother: 'If you had your time again, would you choose to be Jewish?' and I ask my daughter: 'What did you feel when you returned to Australia?'
HERE is the story covering this from TheStateWereIn 3SEP10
Worrytrain - For Auschwitz
From the "Fog Dance, My Moth Kingdom" album (2007)
http://www.myspace.com/worrytrain
A fusion of neoclassical music and electronic noise by Joshua Neil Geissler.
Over the last five years Worrytrain, living outside of Chicago, has quietly surfaced. From tapping cinematic and experimental fields, to blending genres such as modern classical and noise. The instruments most often heard are mandolin, piano and cello making melodies that are often gentle yet violent.
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