arts & life

exh i b i t
on t h e cover

LEFT, TOP AND BOTTOM:
Between Listening and Telling:
Last Witnesses, Auschwitz,
video, 2005. BOTTOM, LEFT:
The Open Page: Fragments
of the Theory and Practice of
Landscape Gardening, 2009,
shows a “living archive” — a
page from a 17th-century
English botanical guide.
BOTTOM, CENTER: Potential
Trust, animated neon, 2012.
BOTTOM, RIGHT: Inseparable
Angels: An Imaginary House for
Walter Benjamin; the clock with
co-joined faces is one part of a
pluralistic installation. Another
part is installed in Weimar,
Germany, and includes a video
of the journey from Weimar to
Buchenwald through the win-
dows of a taxi.

Moments

Of Humanity

Suzanne Chessler | Contributing Writer

Esther Shalev-Gerz
expresses cultural
memory in an
exhibit at Detroit’s
Wasserman Projects.

E

sther Shalev-Gerz uses
today’s high-tech media for
artistry that stirs cultural
memory.
After developing ideas for instal-
lations, she taps experts to help
structure the forms with evolving
video, photo, lighting and audio
equipment. She then often modifies
pieces for different installations.
In “Space Between Time,” an
exhibit on display through July 9 at
Wasserman Projects in Detroit, she
is showing eight separate groupings

holding 35 individual pieces.
Among them, the video instal-
lation Last Witnesses has been
modified for viewing. Originally
including testimony from French
Holocaust survivors, the local
presentation of Last Witnesses
shows only facial expressions as 60
individuals answer questions about
what they did before, during and
after the war. The complete instal-
lation was commissioned by the
city of Paris to mark the 60th anni-
versary of the Auschwitz liberation.

“There are three video pro-
jections in this installation,”
Shalev-Gerz explains in a phone
conversation from her Paris home.
“It’s like a triptych, and we see
the same film with seven-second
intervals. Viewers see each person
the moment before answering each
question.
“These were important ques-
tions because only survivors can
tell us certain things about their
lives. They can give this very
important testimony, but they have

Esther Shalev-Gerz

to look into their memories and
decide what words will convey that.
“I wanted to show them going
to those places of memory. When
we’re watching TV or movies,
moments of decision are taken out
because they are silent. I used those
moments to introduce something
human. I think the nonverbal part
opens our imagination to what is
very gripping.”
Shalev-Gerz, raised and schooled
in Israel after her family left
Lithuania, also communicates per-

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June 2 • 2016

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