video feature
Warsaw
A Virtual Memorial Warsaw 2012 – 2013
10th Warsaw Jewish Film Festival 2012
11th Warsaw Jewish Film Festival 2013
Warsaw
The Museum of the History of Polish Jews Warsaw 25-31 Oct 2013
Warsaw Jewish Film Festival – Shoah Film Collection 25-30 October October 2012
A Virtual Memorial Warsaw 2013 is a media art project by Wilfried Agricola de Cologne, media artist aund curator from Cologne/Germany starting in 2012. It is the physical and virtual manifestation of his project “Draft Title: Shoah featuring Shoah Film Collection”, including the preparations for the physical event during Agricola de Cologne’s visit in Warsaw in October 2012, the realisation of the physical events – 25-30 Oct 2012 and 25-30 Oct 2013 including creating the virtual presence, and the post-event era forming the project online to become the virtual memorial including Warsaw as a place for Jewish life, the Warsaw Ghetto and the manifestation of “A Virtual Memorial”. The project is dedicated to the victims of Warsaw Ghetto and Nazism.
Invited by 11th Warsaw Jewish Film Festival 2013 and 10th Warsaw Jewish Film Festival 2012, there were two occasions to present Shoah Film Collection primarily to Jewish people at different venues and in different ways of representing, 
so that both manifestation could not be more differently from each other and were, therefore, completely differently perceived by the audience.
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Agricola de Cologne (Cologne/Germany)
is a multidisciplinary media artist and curator living and working in Cologne/Germany.
He had more than 100 solo exhibitions in cooperation with 80 museums in Europe, South America and USA, he is participating since 2000 in more than 500 media exhibitions and festivals around the globe. His media art works received numerous prizes and awards.
A Virtual Memorial Warsaw 2013
is a media art project created, developed and coordinated by Wilfried Agricola de Cologne
copyright © 2012-2013 by Wilfried Agricola de Cologne
SFC – Shoah Film Collection
is a media art project by Wilfried Agricola de Cologne
copyright © 2009 by Wilfried Agricola de Cologne
all videos included © by the artists or owners
Warsaw – Palace of Culture
A Virtual Memorial Warsaw 2012
dedicated to the victims of Warsaw Ghetto 1940-1943
SFC – Shoah Film Collection
@ Warsaw Jewish Film Festival (WJFF)
25-30 October 2012
After the successful pilot project in Riga in June 2012 and a most challenging manifestation in Phnom Penh (Cambodia) in July 2012, a third presentation of Shoah Film Collection took place in Warsaw in October 2012. Shoah Film Collection was very honoured being invited to manifest itself via a selection from the pool of 70 art film and videos. It was an experiment to confront the audience who visisted the festival with the expectations to consume feature and documentary films like usual, with experimental artistic films confusing the festival vistors profoundly.
WJFF was featuring a selection from SFC – Shoah Film Collection, a worldwide unique international initiative founded in 2010 by Wilfried Agricola de Cologne – aimed to encourage young artists and filmmaker generations to deal with the topic of collective trauma ( like Holocaust) by using new technologies and contemporary approaches in art,includes currently 50 films and videos – experimental film, videoart and documentations.
2 jury members – Magdalena Waligorska & Agricola de Cologne
After the successful start of the event series in Lativia in June – \\ A Virtual Memorial Riga 2012 – Commemorative Interventions //
standing under the Patronage of the European Parliament – a collaboration with Riga Ghetto and Latvian Holocaust Museum – and Culture and Art Project NOASS Riga – 1-30 June 2012
http://riga2012.a-virtual-memorial.org – http://ateamartistsforchange.wordpress.com/category/latvian-category/
and afterwards in Cambodia – \\ A Virtual Memorial Phnom Penh 2012 //
dedicated to the victims of the genocide 1975-1979 @ META House Phnom Penh – 12-15 July 2012
http://phnompenh2012.a-virtual-memorial.org
Warsaw Jewish Film Festival is featuring — \\A Virtual Memorial Warsaw 2012// – as the third event in form of the series
during the festival, and as a special intervention – Wilfried Agricola de Cologne is appointed member of the festival jury.
Polin – Museum of the History of Polish Jews
Shoah Film Collection @ 11th Warsaw Jewish Film Festival
It was an great honour for Shoah Film Collection being invited after 2012 also in 2013 by Warsaw Jewish Film Festival to take place at POLIN – the Museum of the History of Polish Jews. According to thze new venue and the museum space, a different form of presenting and representing Shoag Film Collection was choosen, in order to try another concept to present the art videos of Shoah Film Collection confronted with a different form of “moving pictures”. The film festival and the museum were great experimenting partners, making out of the manifestation a kind of pilot project, as well.
Like the manifestations of Shoah Film Collection in Riga 2012 and Vilnius 2013 (shortly before the manifestation in Warsaw), also “A Virtual Memorial Warsaw 2013” – dedicated to victims of Warsaw Ghetto – has to be considered as an experimenting for an ideal representation form of the different kind of art films. Due to the different venue than 2012 – the new Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw – the art videos of Shoah Film Collection were – differently than 2012 – not screened, but installed on a couple of monitors @ the area in front of the screening space at POLIN – the prepared programs were looping on monitors. This presentation form made the difference between the two different forms of “moving images” obvious, but the installation included naturally (unfamiliar) interactive components which hit mainly the interest of young aged visitors, while the older aged visitors were not really accustomed to the “unusual”. One reason may be like 2012, that the manifestation of Shoah Film Collection, its aims and meaning was not communicated to the audience via an introducing lecture, workshop or other ways. While the art videos were fully, but in a way too much integrated in the film festival in 2012, the manifestation in 2013 was actually the contrary, since there was no real conceptual connection between the feature film screenings of Warsaw Jewish Film Festival and the installation at the museum space. Like in 2012, it was even more a pity in 2013, that the aims of Shoah Film Collections were not communicated during the event, an unfortunate form of honouring the memory of the victims of Holocaust, and a wrong signal to the Jewish and non-Jewish visitors. It is certainly most interesting and attractive when two different art forms following similiar goals and missions join in a common project, but it should be in a way, that the audience is not left standing in the rain. On the other hand, being presented at the new and most magnificent POLIN – the new museum of the History of Polish Jews – speaking for itself – was really an wonderful experience, because there was no better place for honouring the victims of Warsaw Ghetto.
The presentation of the videos, listed below, was their integration in the usual festival program. Each of the film festival programs was opened by at least three short experimental art videos from Shoah Film Collection. This was an experiment, also in this sense that neither Shoah Film Collection, nor the individueal videos were introduced to the audience, so that many of the film visitors expecting a usual film program were quite irritated by the moving images and the concept behind. As such, that would not be bad at all, since irritating and provoking the senses is generally an artistic goal. However, the audience was not warned and did not understand the combination of feature films and documentaries with the concepts of the unusual art videos. So, the conceptual lack of this kind of combining two different image formats which have generallys not much in common, was not an ideal introduction of Shoah Film Collection to an audience who had completely different expectations, which the visitors also could not verbalize, because there was no time for discussion, neither before, nor after the screening. The experiment, howwever, was successful in this sense, that it became obvious, that combining cinema and art this way, should better be not repeated.
SFC – Shoah Film Collection
selection of films screened during WJFF 2012
Agricola de Cologne (Germany) – Memory Game, 2010, 8:00
Theme Bannenberg & Nok Snel (NL) – One Minute Silence, 2012, 1:00
Bebe Beard (USA) – Capacity, 2009, 6:05
Isobel Blank (Italy) – If a spot of human lasts, 2009, 3:57
Paolo Bonfiglio (Italy) – Mortale, 2009, 6:48
Sean Burn (UK) – Turn the Book Around, 2009, 1:42
David R. Burns (USA) – Zikaron, 2010, 1:45
Alicia Felberbaum (UK) – Undressing Room, 2009, 4:30
Grace Graupe Pillard (USA) – Nowhere to Go, 2009, 7:00
Shelley Jordon (USA) – Anita’s Journey, 2011, 8:28
Anetta Kapon (USA) – My German Vocabulary, 2007, 2:09
Jay Needham (USA) – This is a Recording, 2009, 4:29
Doris Neidl (Austria) – If this is a Man, 2009, 5:09
Nathania Rubin (USA) – My Girl Burn, 2009, 2:54 –
Nathania Rubin (USA) – Anne on Hades, 2009, 4:10 –
Antti Savela (SWE) – Matka, 2009, 3:33 –
Anders Weberg (SWE) – Mamo, 2008, 2:30
