Radio Warszaw by Sława Harasymowicz, PhD Fine Art, Central Saint Martins
- Written byPost-Grad Community
- Published date 25 August 2021
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Written by Sława Harasymowicz, PhD Fine Art, Central Saint Martins.
Radio Warszawa / Radio Warsaw was a performative action by Sława Harasymowicz (PhD Fine Art, Central Saint Martins).
This work is part of Sława Harasymowicz’s ongoing enquiry around an event from the very last days of the second world war in Europe. On 3 May 1945, the British RAF bombardment of German ships anchored in Neustadt Bay near Lübeck resulted in the deaths of thousands of primarily Polish and Russian prisoners evacuated from the Neuengamme concentration camp. Among those who perished in the air raid was Sława Harasymowicz’s relative, her grandfather’s brother, and a young aspiring poet and a member of the resistance until his arrest in March 1941.
Sława Harasymowicz undertook several years of research to learn the circumstances behind her relative’s death in the closing days of World War II, in Neustadt Bay, near Lübeck.
In one of the “episodes” of her multi-stage artistic project Harasymowicz used a form of reenactment to create a sound installation dramatizing real activity during Marian Górkiewicz’s, her great-uncle’s time at KZ Neuengamme: a group of prisoners engaged in prohibited cultural activity created “radio programmes” using the structure of a typical broadcast as a way of blocking the reality of their incarceration and the terror of the unknown. The contemporary reenactment, scripted by Sława, was recorded in Sigmund Freud’s former study at Freud Museum in London to explore new insights and tensions gained through staging this reanimation of the displaced memory in the home of psychoanalysis - the science of trauma.
During her visit at Neuengamme Memorial the artist’s radio programme was “broadcast” in the former concentration camp’s Brick Factory building. This was the first time the reenactment returned in a sense to its original location.
The sound was accompanied by a visual projection including animated drawings and new video recorded on site. This artistic action will harness ideas around repetition and projection and interrogate the ways the materiality of place functions as part of an on-going negotiation between imagination, remembrance, memory and forgetting. At the same time, the visit is a significant point of departure for new work and new ways of approaching the subject.
Harasymowicz's work was supported by Adam Mickiewicz Institute Warsaw.
Related links
- Follow Sława on Instagram
- View Sława's wesbite
- Watch Neuengamme Memorial's recording of the performance
- Find out more about the recording
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