In June 2009, Jane Korman with her kids and her holocaust survivor dad travelled to Poland, the Czech Republic and Germany to retrace her parents’ past including Oświęcim (Auschwitz). Jane says:
The installation Dancing Auschwitz, stemmed from my desire to create artwork that conveys a fresh interpretation of historical memory. This way, the lessons of the past will not be forgotten.
Dancing Auschwitz comprises a large photographic image together with three video pieces: a contemporary performance dance, an old video footage of a dance, and a documentary. The contemporary dance and documentary video were filmed during our recent family trip, while the old video footage is from a family home movie from my childhood.
The contemporary dance video portrays the family, comprising three generations, improvising an awkward dance to the pop song ‘I will survive.’(Gloria Gaynor, 1978) This was performed at numerous historically traumatic sites from my parents’ past. The dance expresses an attempt at celebrating life, but also evokes absence, loss and mourning.
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I can’t believe people are all offended over this. This reminded me of my beloved grandpa and so many members of my family that refused to talk about the war and now they are dead and their stories are dead and that’s it. What the fuck? How amazing is it that Korman’s dad was able to go back and DANCE. To me, this is a way to re-articulate an experience you had with joy and reclaim a place of struggle to belong to you and own it, not be owned by it.
Hi hi! Yesterday after seeing this emotional performance at STEIM (the studio for electro-instrumental music), I rode a fixie around this crazy makeshift track at Mediamatic, set up for Sur Place, and exhibition of old and new and fancy fixies and self-portraits of people after brutal bike accidents. It was so exhilarating that after I walked out I was totally in love with everything, feeding my exponentially growing cycling (+Amsterdam!) obsession. Then after smoking, drinking and almost crashing a bbq in Vondelpark I rode home dancing on my own bike to Bullion and the Love Joys.
Last week my friend Wassim and I were talking about how badass it would be to ride your bike to the airport and go fly somewhere. So, today I biked 20km to Schiphol airport through the giant Amsterdamse Bas (the forest). I didn’t board the plane though, I carry too many shoes to fit in a backpack. Instead, I stopped by the road where many people were sitting on blankets and on cars with binoculars and fancy telephoto lenses. Parents with their children were also running around, maybe showing them another family member flying away. I remember when I was young in the 90′s flying was very expensive and rare for the average person, so every time one of us would fly out the others would hang out of the car by the airport and watch as the LOT plane took off for Warsaw. We stopped doing that years ago, probably because the rarity of flying ended and now I see the inside of airports all the time.
I biked around some more. I started feeling really good, really right, right then. I mean, there’s been so much outpouring that Amsterdam and I don’t get along for the last three weeks and here I was, feeling “in my element.” I started taking photos of the parking lot. It was only after I was shooting for a while that I realized the comfort and ‘rightness’ I felt was because I allowed myself to become intimate with Amsterdam. I wrote about my desire for intimacy with architecture and physical spaces for a GPS video I did last year, suivez-moi. Perhaps this sounds totally cliche, and I guess it could be, but it makes so much sense to me, to take Amsterdam with my body, literally. I guess to be in love you have to be intimate in some way yea?
Yesterday I read all of Joan Didion’s The Last Thing He Wanted.
Hello. Last night I went out to see Headhunter play at OT301 by myself because I have no friends here and I’m not really sure I am able to/want to make any? I guess I’d like to make a friend or two to do things with and talk to. We could go to the dumpster site that acts like a beach and looks nothing like the website, or maybe discuss why Mount Kimbie is worth the expensive train ride to Brussels. I’ve met a few people that I get on with OK but I don’t want to compromise my time if I’m just hanging out with them because there are no other people more suitable, you know? We’d sit at the edge of the pond in Vondelpark, watching the fountain, drinking 1.99 1L bottles of Albert Heijn wine and have many awkward silences in which we’d both be unsure whether this is ever going to work. Then maybe we’d rely on a common ground: discussing our feelings towards Amsterdam and the tourists, but not in a memorable way at all, in a way that would leave us empty and sad and we’d both know we’ll never keep in touch, even though they’d say “Look me up if you’re ever in my city,” or maybe it wouldn’t even get to that. However PS. I’d love to spend more time with Brittney. //
These are the photos I took to remember what I looked like before heading out in case something happened to me. I got what I wanted: to practice my footwork and be among a large mass of non-stop dancers. What I didn’t want: non-stop comments from guys about my dancing, about me being out alone, about me being an ‘American.’ //
OT301 is an organized squat near Vondelpark that sells cheap wine (2 euro) and is a venue to many music and art shows. It also houses a restaurant, De Peper, selling vegan and organic 2-course meals for 6 to 10 euro. Like most squat restos in Amsterdam, you have to call earlier in the afternoon to book a reservation for that night. This makes me want to start a cheap kitchen initiative in Toronto because I don’t know of one, do you?
I am unable to pry Amsterdam open. There is a thick wall, a thick concrete wall that stands between us. I am not good with unmalleable material. I am a soft sponge - penetrable. Sometimes trying is pointless when you are unable to try in a meaningful way. Or do you just keep going? Amsterdam is raw and humid and harsh. I can thrive and relate to raw and sharp, but not when the rawness is dull and cold. Some of the people in my program are in love with Amsterdam and all it has to offer. I am glad. I do not feel this. I want to smell and touch Amsterdam but it’s not letting me. Why won’t it let me? I can get along with every city I go to, why now, why here? There is an energy, a really pushy energy that tourists exude on it, making its residents impatient, making the city impatient but unable to say no.
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MUSIC ::: Did you know Barry Lynn, also known as Boxcutter, also known to me as one of the most phenomenal musical artists of all time has a Soundcloud and he puts new unreleased music on there for us to listen to? When I listen to Boxcutter all of the cells that make up my existence re-articulate their existence and open up to the infinite possibilites. This all sounds cliche because it is how I always describe him, because his musical output’s great vastness permeates me that much.
I was in J’s music room in 216. It was early 2006. It was really bright outside. I was sitting in his lap on his gray oversized office chair that always swung back a bit too much and I was sure we’d both die this way. He played “Mossy” and I fell to the floor on his rug, closing in on my face with both hands the way I do when I hear music that overtakes me. I started crying and demanding the song be put on lifetime repeat. It was one of those moments that everything changed, that I heard something so new and so exciting that it made me want to keep being alive so I wouldn’t miss moments like these. I have those moments. They are rare, but they occur and when they do all of pessimistic insecure me seems implausible.
Mossy is one of the songs on Oneiric, Boxcutter’s first album on Planet Mu. When I hear oneiric in my head, I remember Mary Anne Hobbes talking about it when he did an exclusive session for the Breezeblock, and I managed to get myself in on the shout out as “Miss Riot” because that’s my handle on DOA from many many years ago. It mattered to be part of that moment so much then.
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Now I am here, in the moment. I’ve been spending hours every day in front of Resolume with my Korg midi controller imagining with my own hands how all my favorite music looks like.
Where am I?
You are currently viewing the archives for July, 2010 at Magdalena O!.
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