Silent Archive

‘Silent Archive’ proposes a new methodology to study historical archives and aims to focus on what has been left unsaid and with that re-approach the history of the Holocaust by focusing on this silence. I will use movements and sounds instead of words to learn about the past and stand against today’s persistence of anti-Semitism and racism. I will specifically refer to Georgio Agamben’s description of the impossibility to understand the experience of those who did not survive in ‘Remnants of Auschwitz’ and will propose methodologies to be as close as possible to their experience. I will study the testimonies in the archive of the Leo Baeck Institute of people who did not survive the Holocaust and identify descriptions of sounds and movements. In collaboration with dancers and musicians, I develop dance choreographies, music compositions and sculptures that are based on these descriptions. In preparation, I have been studying methodologies from dance and music therapists and translate them to implement them in relation to archived testimonies.

The Hessian Cultural Foundation is supporting this projects through a full production and travel grant as well as a publication.