Benjiisbricks
The View To Freedom
It is the worst thing that people have ever done to other people. We are, of course, talking about the mass crimes committed by the Nazis.
Can these really be depicted with LEGO? If so, should it be? I would phrase the questions differently. As a scientist, I first have to say: it is already being depicted. I can curse the social world, but I can't wish it away. And secondly, the question of the ability to represent is secondary. It only reflects the constant battles for interpretative sovereignty between different media. Of course, some media are better suited than others to dealing with such issues, but history shows how this discussion has been conducted time and again for films, comics, video games etc. and has yielded few new results.
I think it's time to be smarter. The question should therefore no longer be, can it be represented, but how can it be represented?
And it is precisely this point that I would like to address in my pictures (art?). I have intentionally chosen a perspective here that is very strongly related to the victims. But I don't want to say that I could ever understand this perspective. I can only ever approach it. Through all the literature, stories, films and scientific books I have studied on the subject.
The book At Memory's Edge: After-Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture by James E. Young from 2002 describes how even people who never experienced these events have a need to come to terms with what they have learned (from the media). The Holocaust, or the Nazi mass crimes in general, are therefore a kind of past that refuses to fade away, a past that is far from past.
After all, art is one of the ways that people have of expressing what cannot be communicated in any other way. I find myself very much in Young's book. After more than 10 years of dealing with the Second World War and the Nazi mass crimes on an almost daily basis, this is my way of processing my impressions and research.
The View To Freedom
It is the worst thing that people have ever done to other people. We are, of course, talking about the mass crimes committed by the Nazis.
Can these really be depicted with LEGO? If so, should it be? I would phrase the questions differently. As a scientist, I first have to say: it is already being depicted. I can curse the social world, but I can't wish it away. And secondly, the question of the ability to represent is secondary. It only reflects the constant battles for interpretative sovereignty between different media. Of course, some media are better suited than others to dealing with such issues, but history shows how this discussion has been conducted time and again for films, comics, video games etc. and has yielded few new results.
I think it's time to be smarter. The question should therefore no longer be, can it be represented, but how can it be represented?
And it is precisely this point that I would like to address in my pictures (art?). I have intentionally chosen a perspective here that is very strongly related to the victims. But I don't want to say that I could ever understand this perspective. I can only ever approach it. Through all the literature, stories, films and scientific books I have studied on the subject.
The book At Memory's Edge: After-Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture by James E. Young from 2002 describes how even people who never experienced these events have a need to come to terms with what they have learned (from the media). The Holocaust, or the Nazi mass crimes in general, are therefore a kind of past that refuses to fade away, a past that is far from past.
After all, art is one of the ways that people have of expressing what cannot be communicated in any other way. I find myself very much in Young's book. After more than 10 years of dealing with the Second World War and the Nazi mass crimes on an almost daily basis, this is my way of processing my impressions and research.