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Grenzerfahrung

Installation utilizing hand-crafted objects in clay, juxtaposed with appropriated, disused factory objects, that represented personal narratives involving the Holocaust.

The Installation was created as part of the Römhild International Ceramics Symposium ‘Panta Rhei’ (‘Everything Flows’, Heraclitus), and touring exhibition: Galerie Handwerk Koblenz (2013), Stadtmuseum Weimar (2013), Wasserschlossmuseum Chemnitz (2012), Museum Schloss

Brief Description

Grenzerfahrung is an installation of hand-crafted objects in clay, juxtaposed with appropriated, disused factory objects, alluding to personal narratives involving the Holocaust. It was created at Panta Rhei, the ninth International Ceramic Symposium, Römhild, Germany, a biennial event whose international participants are selected by invitation through a jury of experts, including practitioners, critics and museum directors. International participants included: Professor Marc Leuthold, State University, New York; Professor Wangzi Yang, Beijing University; Chi-Chi Hsu, Taiwan; Professor Velimir Vukovic, University of Belgrade; Danielle Schlagenhauf, Switzerland; Kyra Spieke, Germany.

Research Rationale

Grenzerfahrung combines ceramic elements that are self-authored, created in collaboration with audiences, and ready-made materials appropriated from the factory site; factory materials representing the industrialization of the Holocaust while handmade clay objects symbolise the humanity of the victims of the Nazis. Drawing on work by Anselm Kiefer, Paul Celan and Ai Wei Wei, the installation is informed by a Duchampian methodology of ready-mades, Giorgio Agamben’s work on biopolitics and human rights and Emmanuel Levinas’ ethical and existential philosophy to develop a new ethical understanding of craft/ceramics, through a phenomenological, embodied narrative.

Strategies Undertaken

‘Grenzerfahrung’ consists of a series of interlocking shelf units from the factory site, which interrupt the space, alluding both to the site of the divided Germany of the Cold War as well as the bunks of the concentration camps. The firing of the ceramics in a variety of kilns alluded to the crematoria of the Nazis, which had been built using kiln-building methodologies. Local and industrial clay bodies convey the compromised narrative of place and bodily memories: wedding rings, hearts, piles of human bone ash - icons of life that were corrupted by the Nazis are re-appropriated and remade in clay symbolizing the possibility of people working together in the face of a factory of death.