You are here: 2000 / Workshops, Panels and Seminars / Workshops on Remembrance and Representation / Workshop 3 on Remembrance, "Art and other Media in Holocaust Education and Remembrance" / Presentation by Mr. Max Liljefors
	Participants Countries and organizations Conference documentation Conference programme				Report from Workshop 3 on Remembrance: "Art and Other Media in Holocaust Education and Remembrance" Presentation by Mr. Max Liljefors Presentation by Dr. Yosefa Loshitzky Presentation by Ms. Charity Scribner Presentation by Mr. Max Liljefors Liljefors, Max Shapes of knowledge: art and the inconceivable The Holocaust is often said to be an event on, or beyond, the limits of representation. Not even the atrocity photographs from the concentration camps, in spite of their unsurpassable horror, show the scale of the Holocaust, since they "only" depict a few hundred corpses. Death toll statistics, on the contrary, can easily "show" the totality of genocide, but provide no meaningful measure for its traumatic dimension. How can we comprehend the scope of genocide, with victims numbering in the millions? How do we, intellectually and emotionally, encompass the scale of its trauma? What tools do we have for understanding, and teaching, when figures cease to be meaningful in terms of personal experience? A video artwork by Seth Kramer, included in the inscriptions exhibition within the Forum, focuses on these questions. Within a mundane situation, Kramer sets out to search for a personal measure of the Holocaust's magnitude. Seemingly naive, almost childlike, he simply decides to count from one to six millions – the estimated number of Jews that perished in the Holocaust. To have something to show for it, he chooses to count grains of rice, one by one, gathering them in bottles and glass jars. During its twelve minutes, the film recapitulates this monotonous procedure, while hours pass… When he starts out, Kramer’s friends tell him that he will be counting for weeks in a row. Rightly so: the hours become days, weeks, and Kramer keeps on counting. Each grain of rice is a human being. Sheet after sheet of paper is filled with numbers to keep count of the grains. Meanwhile, everyday life goes on around him. Dialogues about Holocaust-related matters mix with popular music and television commercials. References to film narrative and mass culture embed this measuring of traumatic history in present-day consumer and media culture. Avoiding all atrocity imagery, Kramer’s work gradually evokes an appalling sense of the Holocaust’s magnitude. In the end, however, it can only do so by not summarising the Holocaust in a final image, symbol or metaphor. Instead, it must shift its focus from the Holocaust to representation itself – making manifest its insufficiency, its own impossibility. My workshop presentation aims to discuss the limits of Holocaust representation in images, and how those limits can be negotiated in visual art, beyond the traditional iconography of mourning and remembrance. >> Back to top				Introduction Opening Session: Messages and speeches Plenary Sessions: Messages and speeches Workshops, Panels and Seminars Summary Report on Panels and Workshops Panel 1: Holocaust Education - Where Are We Going? Panel 2: Remembering the Holocaust - The challenges of Memory Panel 3: Holocaust Research - From the Archives to the Classroom Workshops on Education Workshops on Remembrance and Representation Workshops on Research Closing Session and Declaration Other Activities
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