Klub Zwei

Black and White.
The Back of the Images

Black and White deals with the meaning of documentary images, photos in memorizing the Holocaust. Which roles do these images have? How were they shown in 1945? In which contexts are they placed today? And what is the responsibility of the viewers when looking at these images? Black and White tackles these questions through the video’s editing. An interview with Rosemarie Nief, head of the photo archive of the Holocaust research institution Wiener Library in London and passages from a text by Clément Chéroux from the book Mémoire des Camps published in Paris are juxtaposed in the video.

Black and White.
The Back of the Images

“Which things or events are remembered? How is the Shoah remembered? What role is played in this remembering by the way in which images are dealt with? This short video by the group of female artists Klub Zwei addresses the problematic nature of these questions on a formal and contextual level – and does so by means of a radical removal of the images discussed in a voice-over. It is the removal of the images being dealt with which sets in motion a reflection on what gives them their status as historical documents. Walter Benjamin was one of the voices to identify as a photograph’s most important aspect its “label (…) without which all photographic construction must necessarily remain approximate”. According to Benjamin, photographs provide something to read rather than see. Black and White conforms to this postulate.“ (Hito Steyerl; Translation: Steve Wilder)

“Klub Zwei’s decision not to display these photographs follows an artistic-documentary practice which has been pioneered by Claude Lanzmann’s film Shoah (1985). In the film, Lanzmann has shown more about the nazi extermination policy and triggered more reflection than all the ‘educational films’ aiming at visual shock by photographs of dead or abused people and the nazi killing apparatus. Now, Black and White deals with these very photographs, without showing a single one of them. However, Klub Zwei’s work is everything else but an iconoclastic consequence of documentary use or misuse of images. Rather, Black and White claims to reflect on modes of translation consistently. Modes which shall lead to a more careful use of documentary images.‘The’ images of the Shoah do not exist, Klub Zwei assume, and demonstrate that we have to consider who has taken which image under which conditions and for which purpose.” (Karin Gludovatz, Texte zur Kunst; Translation: Klub Zwei)

Black and White.
 The Back of the Images

A video (installation) by Klub Zwei: 

Simone Bader and Jo Schmeiser

A 2002 (single channel version)

A 2004 (multi channel version)

BetaSP, 4:3, Color, Stereo

Languages: English, German, Polish, French, Czech,
Bulgarian, Rumanian, Spanish, Basque, Icelandic

Running time: 5 min.

Credits

Protagonists:
Rosemarie Nief,
Wiener Library, London

Text:
Clément Chéroux,
Mémoire des camps, Paris

Translations:

Erika Doucette (EN)
Anna Kowalska, Klub Zwei (DE)
Anna Kowalska (PL)
Sascha Reichstein, Françoise Guiguet (FR)
Anna Soucek (CZ)
Iara Boubnova (BULG)
Raluca Voinea (RU)
Zuzendaritza Nagusia (ESP, BASQ)

Voices:
Anna Kowalska (DE,PL)
Sascha Reichstein (FR)
Anna Soucek (CZ)
Radostina Patulova (BULG)
Anda-Luiza Pricop (RU)
Carmen Carmona (ESP)
Zuzendaritza Nagusia (BASQ)

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