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‘Shoe Test #2’ is a 14.30 min video projection that combines moving image, text and durational performance. It was first shown as part of Coventry Peace Festival in 2011, with a subsequent screening at NoiseFloor Festival 2012

‘Shoe Test #2’ is part of a series with the over-arching title ‘Shoe Tests’ that explores the parameters of extreme endurance and forced labour imposed on inmates at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. The works draw from testimonies of prisoners made to run the notorious shoe-testing track as punishment. The track was designed to examine the durability of materials for military footwear and prisoners carried 30 kilos packs of bricks while undergoing the tests. The video highlights the processing of transmitted memory from the perspective of a second-generation child of a holocaust survivor.

In this work the body in trauma is interpreted through an anticipatory sequence of meditative actions, interspersed with the slogan, attributed to Heinrich Himmler, that alludes to notions of moral excellence, conformity and conduct. The work reveals the performed re-enactments of humiliation and submission and the cynicism of Himmler’s words.

‘Shoe Test #2’ is the prelude to a performance and participatory workshops for the shoe test track and roll call area at the Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum in 2014. This project, developed in collaboration with Dr. Horst Seferens at the Museum, will be the first time since 1945 that the track has been utilized. As a child of a survivor from Sachsenhausen, Saxon is piecing together the complexities of inmates’ experiences and memories and asks how we continue to remember, translate and begin the process of liberation through ritual re-visiting of sites and their narratives and the legacy of inter-generational trauma for future generations.

The video is now distributed by Lux, London. Its initial screening at Coventry Peace Festival 2011 was followed by a panel discussion led by Professor Andrew Rigby, looking at the current impact of the concentration camps and Coventry’s role as City of Peace and Reconciliation.