Words of Memory / Paroles de Mémoire
I collect stories of women, ever since I can remember. It is through their written and oral testimonies that the rhythm of sound, words and images become intertwined, related to my auditive and imaginary understanding of history, researching memory and resonance, related to traumatising events undergone due to war and violence.
The experience of this moment of ‘rencontre’, somewhere in between these layered realities, is a phenomenon called “catacoustic” (1) by Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, meaning that the impulse to autobiography is related to the practice of mourning – creating a kind of “inner-echo”.
It is here that ‘in the auditive’ language becomes a constructive mode, an element as well to ‘deconstruct’, both, the visible and the audible. Fragments of an interview (*) with a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust shall be performed for a duration of about 30 minutes. One story, personal words spoken – read aloud, in an ambiance of intimacy.
Oral history incorporated anew thus becomes a fictional experience by yet another woman, of a younger generation, using her voice – her physical body; transcending a true story lived.
* Source and copyrights: USC Shoah Foundation, researched, transcripted and archived by die Freie Universität Berlin, copyrightholder of The Archive of Visual History.
(1) 1. N. M. Alter, Mourning, Sound, and Vision, Camera Obscura 44, Volume 15, Number 2, Duke University Press, 2000, p. 88.
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