Observatoire de l'imaginaire contemporain - Shoah

Période historique:

2010 +

Figures et Imaginaires:

témoin

Objets et pratiques culturelles:

film

Problématiques:

identité

Contexte géographique:

Europe

Champs disciplinaires:

cinéma

histoire

Vendredi 20 Avril 2018

Évènement:

Fiction, historiographie et témoignage

Type d'évènement:

Table ronde

Teaser:

Johanne Villeneuve aborde la tension entre représentation et documentation au cinéma à partir du film Le fils de Saul (László Nemes, 2015) qui porte sur la Shoah.

Pour citer ce document:

Villeneuve, Johanne. 2018. « Conférence de Johanne Villeneuve ». Dans le cadre de Fiction, historiographie et témoignage. Table ronde organisée par Figura, le Centre de recherche sur le texte et l'imaginaire. Montréal, Université du Québec à Montréal, 20 avril 2018. Document audio. En ligne sur le site de l’Observatoire de l’imaginaire contemporain. <https://oic.uqam.ca/fr/communications/fiction-historiographie-et-temoignage-conference-de-johanne-villeneuve>. Consulté le 1 mai 2023.

Node ID:

65864

Pour citer ce document (Computed):

Villeneuve, Johanne. 2018. « Conférence de Johanne Villeneuve ». Dans le cadre de Fiction, historiographie et témoignage. Table ronde organisée par Figura, le Centre de recherche sur le texte et l'imaginaire. Montréal, Université du Québec à Montréal, 20 avril 2018. Document audio. En ligne sur le site de l’Observatoire de l’imaginaire contemporain. <https://oic.uqam.ca/fr/communications/fiction-historiographie-et-temoignage-conference-de-johanne-villeneuve>. <span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Adc&rft.title=Conf%C3%A9rence+de+Johanne+Villeneuve&rft.date=2018&rft.aulast=Villeneuve&rft.aufirst=Johanne&rft.pub=Figura%2C+le+Centre+de+recherche+sur+le+texte+et+l%26%23039%3Bimaginaire&rft.place=Montr%C3%A9al%2C+Universit%C3%A9+du+Qu%C3%A9bec+%C3%A0+Montr%C3%A9al">

Fiction, historiographie et témoignage: Conférence d'Alexandre Prstojevic

Sarah Grenier — Wed, 23 May 2018 15:19:42 +0000

Présentation de la conférence

Alexandre Prstojevic parle de ses travaux sur les œuvres de Claude Simon et de Danilo Kis, et du rapport entre témoignage, littérature et historiographie.

Archive audio de la conférence

Taxonomie_group

Aires de recherche:

Enjeux littéraires contemporains

Période historique:

Figures et Imaginaires:

Objets et pratiques culturelles:

roman

Problématiques:

identité

Contexte géographique:

Europe

Champs disciplinaires:

littérature

histoire

Vendredi 20 Avril 2018

Évènement:

Fiction, historiographie et témoignage

Type d'évènement:

Table ronde

Teaser:

Alexandre Prstojevic parle de ses travaux sur les œuvres de Claude Simon et de Danilo Kis, et du rapport entre témoignage, littérature et historiographie.

Pour citer ce document:

Prstojevic, Alexandre. 2018. « Conférence d'Alexandre Prstojevic ». Dans le cadre de Fiction, historiographie et témoignage. Table ronde organisée par Figura, le Centre de recherche sur le texte et l'imaginaire. Montréal, Université du Québec à Montréal, 20 avril 2018. Document audio. En ligne sur le site de l’Observatoire de l’imaginaire contemporain. <https://oic.uqam.ca/fr/communications/fiction-historiographie-et-temoignage-conference-dalexandre-prstojevic>. Consulté le 1 mai 2023.

Node ID:

65862

Pour citer ce document (Computed):

Prstojevic, Alexandre. 2018. « Conférence d'Alexandre Prstojevic ». Dans le cadre de Fiction, historiographie et témoignage. Table ronde organisée par Figura, le Centre de recherche sur le texte et l'imaginaire. Montréal, Université du Québec à Montréal, 20 avril 2018. Document audio. En ligne sur le site de l’Observatoire de l’imaginaire contemporain. <https://oic.uqam.ca/fr/communications/fiction-historiographie-et-temoignage-conference-dalexandre-prstojevic>. <span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Adc&rft.title=Conf%C3%A9rence+d%26%23039%3BAlexandre+Prstojevic&rft.date=2018&rft.aulast=Prstojevic&rft.aufirst=Alexandre&rft.pub=Figura%2C+le+Centre+de+recherche+sur+le+texte+et+l%26%23039%3Bimaginaire&rft.place=Montr%C3%A9al%2C+Universit%C3%A9+du+Qu%C3%A9bec+%C3%A0+Montr%C3%A9al">

Fiction, chronique, historique, passage («Les Dépossédés» de Steve Sem-Sandberg)

Sarah Grenier — Mon, 07 Nov 2016 16:38:05 +0000

Présentation de la communication

«Je parlerai du roman Les dépossédés de Steve Sem-Sandberg, publié à l’origine en suédois en 2009 et en français en 2011.

Il dresse le portrait des habitants du ghetto de Lódz en Pologne sous l’occupation allemande durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Le personnage principal, Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, président du conseil juif, homme d’affaires et tyran extravagant illustre l’ordre à la fois implacable et pervers instauré par les autorités nazies. Rumkowski transforme le ghetto en un vaste complexe industriel, espérant assurer la survie des juifs en contribuant à l’effort de guerre allemand. Or, malgré la productivité effrénée, presque tous seront exterminés vers la fin de la guerre.

Ma contribution interroge cette écriture littéraire qui enchevêtre inexorablement la chronique historique du ghetto, chronique qui a été découverte il y a peu de temps dans les décombres du ghetto, et procédures de fiction.

Je reconnais ici une sorte de réalisme sous emprise du réel.»

Archive audio de la communication

Taxonomie_group

Courants artistiques:

réalisme

Période historique:

1920-1940

Figures et Imaginaires:

Objets et pratiques culturelles:

documentaire

roman

Contexte géographique:

Pologne

Champs disciplinaires:

littérature

Jeudi 10 Décembre 2015

Évènement:

Repenser le réalisme. IIe Symposium international de sociocritique

Auteurs et artistes référencés:

Sem-Sandberg, Steve

Bibliographie:

Sem-Sandberg, Steve. 2009 [2009]. Le dépossédés. Montréal : Robert Lafont. <https://oic.uqam.ca/fr/communications/fiction-chronique-historique-passage-les-depossedes-de-steve-sem-sandberg>. Consultée le 1 mai 2023.

Type d'évènement:

Colloque

Teaser:

Je parlerai du roman Les dépossédés de Steve Sem-Sandberg, publié à l’origine en suédois en 2009 et en français en 2011.

Pour citer ce document:

Rinn, Michaël. 2015. « Fiction, chronique, historique, passage ("Les Dépossédés" de Steve Sem-Sandberg) ». Dans le cadre de Repenser le réalisme. IIe Symposium de sociocritique. Colloque organisé par CRIST, le Centre de recherche interuniversitaire en sociocritique des textes. Montréal, Université de Montréal, 10 décembre 2015. Document audio. En ligne sur le site de l’Observatoire de l’imaginaire contemporain. <https://oic.uqam.ca/fr/communications/fiction-chronique-historique-passage-les-depossedes-de-steve-sem-sandberg>. Consulté le 1 mai 2023.

Node ID:

61284

Pour citer ce document (Computed):

Rinn, Michaël. 2015. « Fiction, chronique, historique, passage ("Les Dépossédés" de Steve Sem-Sandberg) ». Dans le cadre de Repenser le réalisme. IIe Symposium de sociocritique. Colloque organisé par CRIST, le Centre de recherche interuniversitaire en sociocritique des textes. Montréal, Université de Montréal, 10 décembre 2015. Document audio. En ligne sur le site de l’Observatoire de l’imaginaire contemporain. <https://oic.uqam.ca/fr/communications/fiction-chronique-historique-passage-les-depossedes-de-steve-sem-sandberg>. <span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Adc&rft.title=Fiction%2C+chronique%2C+historique%2C+passage+%28%26quot%3BLes+D%C3%A9poss%C3%A9d%C3%A9s%26quot%3B+de+Steve+Sem-Sandberg%29&rft.date=2015&rft.aulast=Rinn&rft.aufirst=Micha%C3%ABl&rft.pub=CRIST%2C+le+Centre+de+recherche+interuniversitaire+en+sociocritique+des+textes&rft.place=Montr%C3%A9al%2C+Universit%C3%A9+de+Montr%C3%A9al">

Honte et témoignage dans l'autobiographie de Pierre Steel, déporté homosexuel

Jasmin Cormier — Wed, 22 Jul 2015 20:06:30 +0000

Si Pierre Steel, le seul homosexuel français qui ait rendu compte de sa déportation, est un témoin marquant et mémorable de l'histoire de la condition homosexuelle au XIXe siècle, son autobiographie a reçu peu d'attention critique. Je propose de mener de front deux discussions. D'une part, celle des divers facteurs qui l'ont fait passer son histoire personnelle sous silence, avant de le motiver à la révéler au grand jour à l'âge de soixante-dix ans. D'autre part, malgré le caractère unique de son parcours, essayer de mieux saisir dans son autobiographie les dimensions historiques et politiques de la mise à l'écart d'un grand fragment de l'histoire gaie qu'il représente. En effet, Pierre Steel raconte non seulement sa guerre, mais aussi sa lutte pour la reconnaissance de son statut de déporté homosexuel.

Taxonomie_group

Aires de recherche:

Enjeux littéraires contemporains

Période historique:

Figures et Imaginaires:

Enjeux artistiques contemporains

témoin

Objets et pratiques culturelles:

autobiographie

roman

Problématiques:

texte

Contexte géographique:

France

Mercredi 20 Mai 2015

Évènement:

Politique de l'autobiographie: engagements et subjectivités

Auteurs et artistes référencés:

Steel, Pierre

Type d'évènement:

Colloque

Teaser:

Pour citer ce document:

Michelucci, Pascal. 2015. « Honte et témoignage dans l'autobiographie de Pierre Steel, déporté homosexuel ». Dans le cadre de Politique de l'autobiographie: engagements et subjectivités. Colloque organisé par GREFLA/Figura. Toronto, Université de Toronto, 21 mai 2015. Audio. En ligne sur le site de l’Observatoire de l’imaginaire contemporain. <https://oic.uqam.ca/fr/communications/honte-et-temoignage-dans-lautobiographie-de-pierre-steel-deporte-homosexuel>. Consulté le 1 mai 2023.

Node ID:

57978

Pour citer ce document (Computed):

Michelucci, Pascal. 2015. « Honte et témoignage dans l'autobiographie de Pierre Steel, déporté homosexuel ». Dans le cadre de Politique de l'autobiographie: engagements et subjectivités. Colloque organisé par GREFLA/Figura. Toronto, Université de Toronto, 21 mai 2015. Audio. En ligne sur le site de l’Observatoire de l’imaginaire contemporain. <https://oic.uqam.ca/fr/communications/honte-et-temoignage-dans-lautobiographie-de-pierre-steel-deporte-homosexuel>. <span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Adc&rft.title=Honte+et+t%C3%A9moignage+dans+l%26%23039%3Bautobiographie+de+Pierre+Steel%2C+d%C3%A9port%C3%A9+homosexuel&rft.date=2015&rft.aulast=Michelucci&rft.aufirst=Pascal&rft.pub=GREFLA%2FFigura&rft.place=Toronto%2C+Universit%C3%A9+de+Toronto">

As with Optical Illusions, an Extended Gaze at the Drawing Extricates It from Its Frozen State: On Aïm Deülle Lüski's Exhibition "The Principle of the Least Action"

Mirna Boyadjian — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 18:54:48 +0000

Cahier ReMix:

Imaginaires du présent. Photographie, politique et poétique de l'actualité

Azoulay, Ariella

If I could choose a recipient of a lifetime achievement award in photography, my choice would be Aïm Deüelle Lüski. My reason would be simple, direct, and matter-of-fact: he has dared to deconstruct the mono-focal camera that has been institutionalized ever since the onset of photography, and he has constructed a repertoire of alternative devices that transgress existing configurations of power and control relations, such as the one between the active photographer and the passive photographed person.

New cameras and photographic accessories are invented daily. Most aim to improve the resulting photographed images, overcome circumstantial difficulties, and facilitate the production of a perfect image of reality. The alternative devices that Deüelle Lüski has created since the late 1970s and the images produced with them are not subjugated to this logic; they contravene it. These instruments produce illegible images that cannot be immediately read or deciphered.

By deconstructing the black rectangular box that buffers what is in front of it from what is behind it, Deüelle Lüski’s cameras enable photography to take on new forms and bodies.

By deconstructing the black rectangular box that buffers what is in front of it from what is behind it, Deüelle Lüski’s cameras enable photography to take on new forms and bodies. His apparatuses shape an indirect space of vision in which multiple – and not necessarily momentary – traces of movement in space and time are preserved. These traces enable vision to be expanded to what has been seen and what might be seen.

Each of Deüelle Lüski’s cameras links the discussion of photography through its products – photographs – to the device itself, the "dispositive" in the Foucauldian sense. These cameras explore the conditions for the emergence of an image, its limits, the excesses and lacunas that it entails, what it could yield to, and the various modes of its recording.

One of the main questions that Deüelle Lüski asks through these cameras is what happens to the rest of the image. He describes it thus: “Imagine that every time you eat a sandwich, another identical sandwich appears in its stead. This would be telling of your hunger capacity. Similarly, our gaze has been conditioned to see only one image of every act of photography, but what is given in the camera box, in principle, tells us much more than what is inscribed in a single image. A struggle, unbeknownst to us, takes place in there. This is perhaps because the culture in which the camera was created could not contain more than a single possibility of representation, and therefore the invented tool was a reductive one. Marey has shown that the same frame could contain more, and I take his gesture further and show superimpositioning not merely as a method but as a language of gaze, thought, and deed.” 1

One of Deüelle Lüski’s recent cameras is a flat, round object about thirty centimetres in diameter, resembling a layer of a cake, perforated around the perimeter in six places (each lens covers sixty degrees of the area around the apparatus) (see figures 1, 2). Wherever it is positioned, the camera will be placed “just right,” and none of its apertures has any priority over another, as they are all orchestrated to regulate the simultaneous penetration of light. “Light is usually perceived as given in limited quantity,” Deüelle Lüski says, “and therefore should be reduced or used sparely. We have avoided thinking that light is a much broader phenomenon than the one and only image begotten from it.” Six negatives are placed inside the cake camera, equidistant from each other. Since they are rectangular, the negatives do not meet in the centre, so that the centre – like the spaces between the negatives – is photographically “wasted” space. The movement of light within the apparatus becomes a planned excess. The cake camera introduces the viewer to the question of place and time of photographic information, as well as to the relationship between the place where the image is generated and the “wasted” space – which, although it includes information similar to that inscribed in the negatives, does not produce an image. The intervals between the six negatives form triangles shaped like cake slices. The cake camera extends the efforts of Jules Marey and Eadweard Muybridge by not taking for granted the causal relationship between the photographic event and the single image that it produces, on the one hand, and the investigation of the act of photography, on the other.

Deüelle Lüski’s cameras facilitate the creation of images of a new kind. Our gaze is not yet trained to relate to such images, and research and study tools have not yet been honed to make them legible and to train viewers to read meaning into them. The ongoing trajectory of Deüelle Lüski’s cameras shows the extent to which the field of vision created by traditional photography has been demarcated and limited. As its boundaries are breached, many of the relevant questions – the answers to which have seemed self-evident – are posed anew, and the examination of photography actually seems to begin anew.

Those familiar with the images that Deüelle Lüski has created with his various cameras – North/South/East/West, Horizontal Camera, Clay Camera, and Pita (Flatbread) Camera 2 – know that what is seen in them cannot immediately – or ever – become an object of reference such as “this is a house” or “this is life.” The image revealed by the photography event generated by any one of these devices surprises Deüelle Lüski no less than viewers. Whether the photographs are taken at Jerusalem’s “seam zone”, at a “back-to-back” truck-loading area in Bituniya, or in his own living room, what is seen in them seems, at first glance, illegible, blurred, invisible. Only once one starts to track down what is seen, discuss it, and reconstruct the site of the photograph and its object do the flashing blotches begin to congeal into something that may sometimes beb pointed to as “this is X” or “this is Y.”

If, indeed, Deüelle Lüski were to receive an award for his work in photography, it would be for what he has done to photography rather than for photographed images that he has created. In other words, the grounds for the award would be not his being a photographer or his photographic achievements, but the way in which he forces photography to be revealed time and again as an event of sharing and not as a tool in the hands of a photographer. Even when images are photographed – if this term can be applied to the cell-phone camera – “by” Deüelle Lüski they are not his, or at least the fact of their being “his” is entirely immaterial to the importance of the event that they generate. This event is authorless in the deeper sense of the word – it spreads out, happens, is always considered among several persons brought together by the camera for the time of the photographing or the viewing. The suspension of the photographer does not entirely eliminate the pole at which he is present, but it does reduce his role and certainly undermines his sovereignty, and, instead, lends greater weight to the camera, not as a device that produces informative images but as an instrument that generates negotiation over information and the infinite positions of the participants.

Deüelle Lüski’s exhibition “The Principle of the Least Action” (shown in Tel Aviv, 2006) is inspired by three of his modes of action in recent years. The first is the camera project that in the exhibition is embodied by the cell-phone camera; the second refers “back to the act of concealing” embodied by the diaries (see his essay [in Hebrew] in Studio, no. 38); and the third refers “back to the act of revealing or revelation” embodied by disaster photographs (a photograph of Buchenwald and one of Bergen Belsen). In these three modes, representation is rejected for the sake of something else: in the cameras, for the continuous moment during which the image is generated and regenerated; in the diaries, for concealing; and in the disaster photographs, for revealing, the revelation of one disaster inside the image of another – in other words, for the kind of gaze embodied by the angel of history. 3 In all three, at stake are the discrepancies and correspondences between the status of the object of the photograph and the possibility of its becoming the distinct and stable object of a denotative statement such as “this is X” or “this is Y.”

Two kinds of photographs are shown at the exhibition: those taken upon the liberation of Buchenwald and Bergen Belsen concentration camps (see figure 3), in which that which is seen is clearly visible and decipherable; and those taken by a cell-phone camera – diaphanous, nearly transparent, blurred, sparse in contour and typical features (see figure 4). One might delve into them as into some Turner watercolours or early photographs by Niepce, soar on the wings of nothingness and at the same time think about the place where they were taken, aware of the frightfully meagre information that is transmitted through them, although this whole new technology is geared for the immediate delivery of such information. Of two such photographs, a viewer familiar with their specifics might state, after a while, “Here is the window at the home of Aïm and Rama,” supplying with words the information that was missing a moment earlier. The signified, having oscillated between appearing and disappearing, is now captive, shaped as the object of the photograph. About the others, one might repeat, after Deüelle Lüski, that here are photographs of “the way to the Occupied Territories” or “a view of the Territories,” and thus enable them to appear and be etched in one’s consciousness as the signified of a denotative statement that is independent of what is seen in the photograph and can still – by naming the seen – anchor it in its place.

The presence of Deüelle Lüski not merely as a photographer but as the one who participated in the photographic event, pointing silently or in writing, is crucial in order for the seen to receive a body, an apparent form, and a name. Otherwise, the photograph will remain abstract, since this denotative statement does not stem from the photographs themselves but is evidence of the moment when the photograph was taken, the moment in which a camera opened up to the view “on the way to the Occupied Territories” or to the windowsill of his living room, and gathered it into its bosom.

The viewer must believe that whoever made these photographs, no less than the viewer, is usually tempted to believe what he sees in photographs of the legible kind.

The viewer must believe that whoever made these photographs, no less than the viewer, is usually tempted to believe what he sees in photographs of the legible kind. Unlike the cell-phone photographs, the two black-and-white photographs taken in 1945 in the camps are legible, full of information. Both contain inner codes relating to that which is offered to the viewer, and thus they become the object of the viewer’s gaze. One can hardly claim that this information in itself does not need language to make them speak. Still, their object is more recognizable – it enables the viewer to see the horror that was revealed when the black box of the camps was opened and the piles of naked bodies appeared. The photographs show not only the horror of Nazism but, at the same time, the horror that takes place the moment that a body turns into refuse that must now be eliminated either by burning or by mechanized removal. The photograph taken in Buchenwald, however, serves here to document not only magnified horror, but also the double banning of the individual from the human community that has made him lonely and desolate, deprived of dear ones who would demand that his body be covered and prevent his becoming an object of the astounded gaze of American soldiers, journalists, and German residents who, upon the opening of the camps, were brought on an organized tour to see the horror for themselves.

The two photographs that Deüelle Lüski chose are both familiar and unfamiliar. Even those who have never seen them before recognize them as belonging to the iconography of the Holocaust, and recognize in them the moment of ending – the liberation of the camps. The signified of the photographs – a pile of bodies being removed by tractor or a pile of charred bodies – is familiar even if the chosen frames are somewhat less well known.

More typical photographs of the moment of liberation might come to mind – those displayed on the walls of Holocaust museums or contained in literature dealing with the moment in which the veil was lifted and the camps were exposed to outside view. But the issue for Deüelle Lüski is not the typicality of the image, its historical detail, or the question of authorship. These are all put aside for the sake of viewing photographs that bear the stamp of “being there” at a given time and place, photographs that are linked to his own biography, and to delineate from them, inside them, a private intimate space of memory that has not been made possible, has not been transmitted. “I don’t know where my grandparents are buried” is a sentence that Deüelle Lüski has repeated in recent years. Their disappearance between Ponar and Buchenwald turns these two photographs presenting two harsh possibilities of body disposal into a concrete image of their eventual fate: “I cannot imagine him [my grandfather], but it is easier for me to imagine him here inside the pile.” At any rate, Deüelle Lüski feels that the photographs are addressed to him and is committed to making them his own. Rejection of the photograph as a final certainty enables him both to conceal – to delineate anew a private space inside the wide-open public one – and to enable his private image to be revealed out of an image that is not his and does not belong to him.

Deüelle Lüski had carried out this movement between concealing and revealing two years before in a wider spectrum of refugee-dom that was not limited in space and time, a spectrum moving between the expulsion of his grandparents from their home in Eastern Europe and the expulsion of Palestinians in 1948: “The expelled arising from the picture have neither name nor identity; this lack enables me to reconstruct the feelings of expulsion that I inherited from my parents. These feelings have been forgotten ‘thanks’ to the state that persuaded them to silence these feelings. Rehabilitating the possibility of returning to the immanent evil of expulsion and exposing it from within me. . . . I wish to forfeit my actual superiority as occupier here and now, and experience again the inferiority that was my parents’ and grandparents’ on their way to Ponar, in the short time left to them before they were annihilated.”

The four drawings that Deüelle Lüski selected as objects for his photographs from the rich and rare collection of drawings created during the Second World War in the Terezin Ghetto are already – in themselves – swiftly drawn snapshots, substitutes for photographed documentation that did not take place. Their creators are not at all anonymous, as the text accompanying the exhibition erroneously claimed. Some of the drawings were commissioned – one of the services that elite painters of Bohemia and Moravia were forced to provide to the ghetto graphics unit; these artists produced illustrations, paintings, and announcements for the ghetto administration. Others were made by the same artists on their own initiative, as they tried to blend in among the passers-by in the ghetto streets and escape the scrutiny of Germans, capturing the contours of everyday scenes with their pencils (see, for example, the drawing by Carl Fleischmann, figure 5) in their small sketchbooks to be completed later, clandestinely. The drawings were hidden within the ghetto or smuggled out, and most of them are now kept at the Terezin House Museum or at Kibbutz Lohamei Hagetaot. Most of the painters were caught – including Otto Ungar, who drew the man with the armband, and Bedrich Fritta, who drew the man performing for his audience – tortured, sent to Auschwitz, or put on trial for “creating horror propaganda and disseminating it abroad.” Under the harsh conditions in the ghetto, where, among other things, any painting or drawing except those portraying a model ghetto was strictly forbidden, painters had about as much access to art materials as photographers did to film. Whatever they managed to produce, by will or by force, became permanent evidence not only of the scene that they portrayed but also of the conditions under which it was drawn. In each drawing, the gap is evident between the pretence of normalcy in a town in which Jews were concentrated to refute by their physical presence the horrific descriptions of Nazi doings that had already started proliferating beyond its borders, and the horror of their everyday life, which the Nazis wished to deny by means of the commissioned drawings. Thus, for example, in Malvina Shelkova's drawing (see figure 6), a hearse is pushed by a group of exhausted men, their bodies bent under its burden – but still, they are in better condition than those already loaded on the carriage, the living dead, being transported to their final destination. Similarly, the drawing by Bedrich Fritta (see figure 7) portrays not a play ordered by the Nazis to show their guests from the Red Cross how well the model ghetto functioned, but probably a semi-clandestine organizing of ghetto inmates who have gathered in some basement – packed together, like a single body taut and ready to escape at any moment – to listen to a monologue or song performed by one of the ghetto’s actors.

When one understands this duality innate in the drawings, which, in spite of their two-phase processing, have preserved the nature of photographic snapshots, one realizes that the usual distinction made regarding them – between what was drawn under orders and what was drawn of the artist’s free will – loses its meaning, as does the potential hierarchy that might see the “free-will” drawings as more authentic than those forced by orders. The snapshot-type drawing is a relative, as it were, of photography and has a similar character: the artist’s interest in swiftly capturing the object before it disappears or changes, and the use of a light, almost continuous hand movement on the paper, as though drawing in one fell swoop. These features erode the ability of the hand holding the pencil to control the meanings of all of details being transmitted to paper, as well as the ability of the person drawing to obtain a picture of a world that is exclusively under his control. In spite of the fact that Nazis and Jews held diametrically opposed positions on everything regarding the documenting the life of the Jews, their interests coincided, not only in the act of drawing but also at the heart of an ambitious project that they cooperated in creating under the chilling title of “a museum of the extinct Jewish race.” Various artefacts related to Jewish life were transported from all over Europe to the Terezin Ghetto in order to build the museum’s collection. Jews and Nazis were bound together in daily activities aimed at creating a museum that would be a fossil substitute for an extinct people. Reading some of the protocols of their joint meetings, one can hardly deduce its projected opening date (it was never completed), but one can assume that its opening would have completed the “final solution.”

Against this background, erasing the distinction between what was drawn under orders and by free will, reducing the drawing to its content and ignoring the circumstances of its production, is totally instrumental. It was this distinction that underlay the persecution, torture, and execution of these painters by the Nazis, who saw the “un-permitted” drawings as a threat to the world picture that they wanted to create. Drawings of the harsh conditions in the ghetto – scenes of hunger, disease, or poverty – embodied this threat. However, many more drawings, such as the one by Unger (see figure 8), with which I shall conclude, transgressed the established framework, and most of their makers paid with their lives. This drawing of a man leaning on a wall is markedly bizarre. The man’s eyes are closed, his head slightly inclined upward as if shutting his eyes is not enough to avoid seeing what is in front of him, as if to forget that wherever he goes he is marked by his identity and traits: a yellow patch on his chest marks him as a Jew, and a dotted armband marks him as a blind man. Even without shutting his eyes and lifting his head he sees nothing, and still he makes sure that several small gestures will enable him to keep his would-be gaze away from any direct object. He lifts his chin as high as possible in order to withdraw into himself, leaving his ears, perhaps, to note the sounds that surround him. Judging by his lips, softly closed, perhaps he is listening to some inner music – perhaps some tune rings in his ears. Neither the possibility that he is in a public space, attending a concert or play, nor the possibility that he is in a private space, in his home, can be supported by information in the drawing. The wall in the background is explicitly bare, devoid of any identifying decoration or sign. This may have been deliberate, or perhaps the artist who hurriedly drew the portrait did not have ample time to draw a background, and when he returned to it that evening he found the blind man’s image sufficient. The background could be anywhere. The artist stresses the shadow on the wall in a way that pulls the figure even further from its location, leading the viewer to wonder whether someone is intentionally lighting him, investigating his image. Would this be the painter himself? Or a researcher? Or a photographer preparing an identification portrait? There is no information to help us reconstruct the situation. All that we can do is go back to the drawing. We can notice that in spite of what appears at first glance, the figure is not really leaning against a wall. He is standing in a corner, very close to the wall to his right and away from the wall behind him, perhaps not even touching anything. This man stands erect and taut, as if at attention or under orders. As with optical illusions, an extended gaze at the drawing extricates it from its frozen state. The image that we are looking at takes deep breaths, one after another, softly, holding the air in his chest as he concentrates on the regular sequence of filling first the belly, then the lungs. In a moment his face will completely inflate and he will detach himself from the paper and take off, his thin hair flying back, the head slightly inclined toward the shoulders and pulling after itself the body that gradually turns into an aerodynamic shape, as he removes himself from the place where his body has tired of being.

1. All quotations by Deüelle Lüski are from unpublished conversations with Ariella Azoulay.
2. On Deüelle Lüski's cameras, see my article "Cameras For a Dark Time", Aperture (November 2010), and an interview that I conducted with him in my film The Angel of History, an excerpt of which can be seen here on Cargo, a Web publishing platform.
3. The exhibition that Deüelle Lüski curated of his mother's paintings (Hakibbutz Gallery, 1998) began this third mode of action.

Aires de recherche:

Période historique:

2000-2010

Contexte géographique:

Israël

Champs disciplinaires:

photographie

Figures et Imaginaires:

Auteur(s) et artiste(s) référencés:

Düelle Lüski, Aïm

Pour citer ce document:

Azoulay, Ariella. 2012. « As with Optical Illusions, an Extended Gaze at the Drawing Extricates It from Its Frozen State: On Aïm Deülle Lüski's Exhibition «The Principle of the Least Action» ». Dans Imaginaires du présent: Photographie, politique et poétique de l'actualité. Cahier ReMix, n° 1 (mai 2012). Montréal : Figura, Centre de recherche sur le texte et l'imaginaire. En ligne sur le site de l’Observatoire de l’imaginaire contemporain. <https://oic.uqam.ca/fr/remix/as-with-optical-illusions-an-extended-gaze-at-the-drawing-extricates-it-from-its-frozen-state>. Consulté le 1 mai 2023.

Node ID:

50112

Pour citer ce document (Computed):

Azoulay, Ariella. 2012. « As with Optical Illusions, an Extended Gaze at the Drawing Extricates It from Its Frozen State: On Aïm Deülle Lüski's Exhibition «The Principle of the Least Action» ». Dans Imaginaires du présent: Photographie, politique et poétique de l'actualité. Cahier ReMix, n° 1 (mai 2012). Montréal : Figura, Centre de recherche sur le texte et l'imaginaire. En ligne sur le site de l’Observatoire de l’imaginaire contemporain. <https://oic.uqam.ca/fr/remix/as-with-optical-illusions-an-extended-gaze-at-the-drawing-extricates-it-from-its-frozen-state>. <span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Adc&rft.title=As+with+Optical+Illusions%2C+an+Extended+Gaze+at+the+Drawing+Extricates+It+from+Its+Frozen+State%3A+On+A%C3%AFm+De%C3%BClle+L%C3%BCski%26%23039%3Bs+Exhibition+%C2%ABThe+Principle+of+the+Least+Action%C2%BB&rft.date=2012&rft.aulast=Azoulay&rft.aufirst=Ariella&rft.pub=Figura%2C+Centre+de+recherche+sur+le+texte+et+l%26%23039%3Bimaginaire&rft.place=Montr%C3%A9al">

Le dos du prisonnier et la face de Dieu: l'invention de la parole dans «L'espèce humaine» de Robert Antelme et «Shoah» de Claude Lanzmann

Éditeur — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 20:39:16 +0000

Si l'histoire relate le mouvement qui porte une multiplicité de sujets singuliers, ce n'est qu'au prix de l'effacement de leur singularité, au profit d' une vue plus générale. Plus spécifiquement, entendons ceci: l'histoire s'écrit en réponse à un effacement qu'elle précipite et contribue à combler. Les différentes formes d'oppression politique l'ont montré: il faut effacer l'histoire afin d'instaurer, par son retour, la mémoire (qui n' est en fait qu'une mémoire panni d'autres, un récit qui vient prendre la place de ceux qui ont été effacés, mais qui vise à se confondre avec la Vérité). Avec l'accomplissement de l'effacement, ce sont d'abord les corps qui se perdent et qui fusionnent en corps-social, corps-historique. À l' intérieur des camps d'extermination et de travail, sous le règne du IIIe Reich, l'inscription du sujet en tant que corps a subi un déplacement important. Nié dans son corps même, vu les attributs et caractéristiques qui lui devinrent soudainement intrinsèques, le détenu se vit rejeté à la position de l'étranger absolu, autre-que-I'homme, laquelle se formula par l'actualisation de l'effacement du corps avant même la négation historique de son existence.

Suite en format pdf.

Numéro de la publication:

Année de parution:

2001

Bibliographie:

L'espèce humaine

Antelme, Robert. 1957. L'espèce humaine. Paris : Gallimard, 321 p.

Shoah (texte intégral du film)

Lanzmann, Claude. 1985. Shoah (texte intégral du film). Paris : Fayard, 220 p.

Aires de recherche:

Auteur·trice et artiste:

Antelme, Robert

Lanzmann, Claude

Période historique:

cf2-8-caron-le_dos_du_prisonnier.pdf

Figures et Imaginaires:

Problématiques:

Contexte géographique:

France

Type de publication:

Cahiers Figura

Documents:

Langue du contenu:

Français

Teaser:

Pour citer ce document:

Caron, Pascal. 2001. « Le dos du prisonnier et la face de Dieu: l'invention de la parole dans L'espèce humaine de Robert Antelme et Shoah de Claude Lanzmann ». Dans Figures de la fin: approches de l'irreprésentable . Article d’un cahier Figura. En ligne sur le site de l’Observatoire de l’imaginaire contemporain. <https://oic.uqam.ca/fr/articles/le-dos-du-prisonnier-et-la-face-de-dieu-linvention-de-la-parole-dans-lespece-humaine-de>. Consulté le 1 mai 2023. D’abord paru dans (Cliche, Anne Élaine et Bertrand Gervais (dir.). 2001. Montréal : Figura, Centre de recherche sur le texte et l'imaginaire. coll. Figura, vol. 2, p. 167-192).

Node ID:

495

Pour citer ce document (Computed):

Caron, Pascal. 2001. « Le dos du prisonnier et la face de Dieu: l'invention de la parole dans L'espèce humaine de Robert Antelme et Shoah de Claude Lanzmann ». Dans Figures de la fin: approches de l'irreprésentable . Article d’un cahier Figura. En ligne sur le site de l’Observatoire de l’imaginaire contemporain. <https://oic.uqam.ca/fr/articles/le-dos-du-prisonnier-et-la-face-de-dieu-linvention-de-la-parole-dans-lespece-humaine-de>. D’abord paru dans (Cliche, Anne Élaine et Bertrand Gervais (dir.). 2001. Montréal : Figura, Centre de recherche sur le texte et l'imaginaire. coll. Figura, vol. 2, p. 167-192).<span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Adc&rft.title=Le+dos+du+prisonnier+et+la+face+de+Dieu%3A+l%26%23039%3Binvention+de+la+parole+dans+L%26%23039%3Besp%C3%A8ce+humaine+de+Robert+Antelme+et+Shoah+de+Claude+Lanzmann&rft.date=2001&rft.volume=2&rft.spage=167&rft.epage=192&rft.aulast=Caron&rft.aufirst=Pascal&rft.pub=Figura%2C+Centre+de+recherche+sur+le+texte+et+l%26%23039%3Bimaginaire&rft.place=Montr%C3%A9al">

Le poids de l'histoire et la tentation du Bien en Allemagne

Éditeur — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 17:33:15 +0000

Être un citoyen allemand après la guerre, c'est vivre avec le poids du passé. La grande Allemagne au nationalisme exacerbé, aux tendances belligérantes et hégémoniques, celle-là même qui est responsable des deux conflits les plus violents du XXe siècle et de la Shoah, hante toujours l'imaginaire de ce peuple. Cette dimension de culpabilité est essentielle pour comprendre la République fédérale. Les douze années passées sous le régime nazi ont fait de la nation entière une représentation du mal absolu. Depuis 1945, une énergie étonnante est déployée par les Allemands afin de transcender ce statut de plus grands criminels de l'humanité. Avec la paix et l'écologie comme formules incantatoires, plusieurs moments de l'histoire récente témoignent d'une volonté de tendre vers le bien. Pensons aux manifestations contre le réarmement dans les années 60, au terrorisme des années 70 et enfin à l'émotion qui a entouré la réunification et le transfert de la capitale à Berlin. Chaque événement révèle le refus des Allemands de voir l'histoire se répéter, mais surtout, la nécessité d'être désormais associés au bien. Nous verrons quelle place cet imaginaire occupe encore aujourd'hui.

Suite en format pdf.

Numéro de la publication:

Année de parution:

2003

Aires de recherche:

Penser le contemporain

Période historique:

1960-1980

1980-2000

Figures et Imaginaires:

cf8-11-drapeau-le_poids_de_lhistoire.pdf

Objets et pratiques culturelles:

essai

Problématiques:

morale

Contexte géographique:

Allemagne

Champs disciplinaires:

histoire

Type de publication:

Cahiers Figura

Documents:

Langue du contenu:

Français

Teaser:

Etre un citoyen allemand après la guerre, c'est vivre avec le poids du passé. La grande Allemagne au nationalisme exacerbé, aux tendances belligérantes et hégémoniques, celle-là même qui est responsable des deux conflits les plus violents du XXe siècle et de la Shoah, hante toujours l'imaginaire de ce peuple.

Pour citer ce document:

Drapeau, Martine. 2003. « Le poids de l'histoire et la tentation du Bien en Allemagne ». Dans Imaginaire et transcendance. Article d’un cahier Figura. En ligne sur le site de l’Observatoire de l’imaginaire contemporain. <https://oic.uqam.ca/fr/articles/le-poids-de-lhistoire-et-la-tentation-du-bien-en-allemagne>. Consulté le 1 mai 2023. D’abord paru dans (Cliche, Anne Élaine, Stéphane Inkel et Alexis Lussier (dir.). 2003. Montréal : Figura, Centre de recherche sur le texte et l'imaginaire. coll. Figura, vol. 8, p. 129-138).

Node ID:

441

Pour citer ce document (Computed):

Drapeau, Martine. 2003. « Le poids de l'histoire et la tentation du Bien en Allemagne ». Dans Imaginaire et transcendance. Article d’un cahier Figura. En ligne sur le site de l’Observatoire de l’imaginaire contemporain. <https://oic.uqam.ca/fr/articles/le-poids-de-lhistoire-et-la-tentation-du-bien-en-allemagne>. D’abord paru dans (Cliche, Anne Élaine, Stéphane Inkel et Alexis Lussier (dir.). 2003. Montréal : Figura, Centre de recherche sur le texte et l'imaginaire. coll. Figura, vol. 8, p. 129-138).<span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Adc&rft.title=Le+poids+de+l%26%23039%3Bhistoire+et+la+tentation+du+Bien+en+Allemagne&rft.date=2003&rft.volume=8&rft.spage=129&rft.epage=138&rft.aulast=Drapeau&rft.aufirst=Martine&rft.pub=Figura%2C+Centre+de+recherche+sur+le+texte+et+l%26%23039%3Bimaginaire&rft.place=Montr%C3%A9al">

Présentation: Des fins et des temps

Éditeur — Mon, 31 May 2010 17:08:07 +0000

Vivons-nous la fin des temps?

La question nous revient sans cesse, depuis que le monothéisme et ses avatars ont enraciné la pensée du temps et de l’histoire dans l’angoisse de la rédemption et l’espoir d’un accomplissement. Elle charrie aussi, cette question, les restes d’une conscience morale insistante et larvée, bercée dès l’enfance par la promesse d’un Jugement dernier. Comme si l’interrogation n’était que le voile posé sur l’entreprise acharnée, toujours en proie à l’accélération, qui consiste à actualiser cette fin, à en finir enfin avec l’Histoire et les questions. L’imaginaire occidental semble en effet imprégné de la pensée de la fin. Notre époque, c’est le moins qu’on puisse dire, n’échappe pas à la règle. On croirait même que depuis la Deuxième Guerre mondiale avec, d’un côté, la Shoah, qui a marqué l’invention d’une industrie de la mort effective et, de l’autre, Hiroshima et Nagasaki, qui symbolisent le passage à l’ère atomique sur fond de course exponentielle aux armements, on a assisté à une prolifération de l’imaginaire de la fin. Le roman, le cinéma et les autres arts en témoignent. Ils le font parfois sur le mode fantastique, par des productions littéralement apocalyptiques qui mettent en scène des mondes détruits par des forces indomptables, en rêvant des périodes de transition et de renouvellement. Mais la puissance des oeuvres n’est pas toujours équivalente aux thèmes qu’elles exploitent; l’écriture et l’image sont aussi l’occasion de mettre à vif l’envers du voile qui est sens, interprétation, analyse, déconstruction tout aussi acharnée de cette puissance d’achèvement. La fin du monde est toujours une question de temps.

Suite en format pdf.

Numéro de la publication:

Année de parution:

2005

Aires de recherche:

Enjeux artistiques contemporains

Penser le contemporain

Période historique:

Figures et Imaginaires: