We carry scars

For Holocaust Memorial Day 2016

In 2007 Lois and I started a project that worried us both. We were to work with holocaust survivors at The Morris Feinmann Home, a home for older Jewish people in Manchester. We had met with many war veterans, but this was different. Some of these people had been witness to continual atrocity, for years.

The things that stay in your mind. A woman described leaving Berlin, getting onboard the kindertransport train. Her mother waving goodbye with a sandwich that she'd forgotten to give her daughter. The mother died in Germany, they did not see one another again. Another day. A conversation with a woman who'd survived Auschwitz. She wanted to tell us about the experience, but each time she began to speak, the memories would self-erase - she described them melting away. Perhaps the amnesia protected her. Another. A quiet man sitting with two talkative companions. He had managed to get out of one of the camps, but had a memento - a gouge in his skull, left by a blow with an iron bar from an SS man. He gently put my fingers onto the wound - "See?"

Because the weight of the subject was so vast, we needed to give people the option to enter it only if they wished. We decided to talk about little things, rather than the horrific or vast. We chatted about small domestic moments. Family recipes, holidays, travel. From the travel stories a series of tiny collaborative poems were made. They described train journeys, some to the camps in cattle wagons, others journeys of escape.

BRING LIGHT TOWARDS YOU text animation
onscreen, Piccadilly Railway Station 2009

The poems were made into 30 second films and on 27 January 2009 they were shown on a huge screen at Piccadilly Station. Approximately 60, 000 people saw the films that day. Among them were a little group of survivors, who came with us to sit in the cafe near the screen and watch their words being shared. It was a strange tea party; none of us knew whether to say hurrah, or to weep. But everyone wanted to stay.

For the last 5 years we have worked with homeless people, in the UK and elsewhere, who are often the victims of hate crimes. We have met people who've been humiliated, beaten, raped, stabbed, shot, set on fire. I've seen a good many more scars since that quiet conversation in the Morris Feinmann Home.

Now is not 1939. We are elsewhere in history. A completely different time, completely different circumstances. But still we carry scars.

BRING LIGHT TOWARDS YOU text animation
onscreen, Piccadilly Railway Station 2009

These text animations were part of the Kindness project run by arthur+martha at the Morris Feinmann Home 2007-9. They were exhibited on HMD 2009 at Piccadilly Railway Station, Manchester; then on HMD 2011 on the BBC Big Screen in Manchester. We would like to offer our most heartfelt thanks to all participants (names withheld here). We would also like to thank Maria Turner, Becky Guest, Jeremy Buxton, the BBC and Titan signs for various and sometimes courageous support.

Holocaust: memorial and forgetting

We first showed the animated textwork BRING LIGHT TOWARDS YOU at Piccadilly Railway Station in Manchester on Holocaust Memorial Day 2009. The piece is made of short poetic texts, memory fragments – they describe train journeys, recollected by holocaust survivors. This year, the BBC offered to run the whole sequence of ten 30-second films on their Big Screen in The Triangle, the posh heart of Manchester shopping. It felt like a strange and interesting juxtaposition, we agreed, on a busy English street (around 50000 people walk past everyday) next to a sign saying The Triangle.

The piece will be on view for ten days in all, dotted amongst news and weather reportage, trailers for the London Olympics and a smatter of other little experimental films. Some of BRING LIGHT TOWARDS YOU couldn't be shown at the railway station in 2009 - a reference to people throwing themselves on electric fences, for instance - so this is a first for the complete set. If you've time, go see. It's the oddest, saddest thing to be surrounded by the iconography of comfort-thru-shopping and at the same to be told 'RUN' 'ESCAPE' 'THE SS' – the signs whispering a past that's far beyond our normal edges.

For a long while I stopped reading about the holocaust: it gave off such hopelessness. Not only were the events themselves staggering acts of brutality, any attempt by me to reconcile them with understanding, let alone optimism, completely failed. The history makes a piece like BRING LIGHT TOWARDS YOU a shadow of a shadow. How can you understand this? Perhaps for most of us Holocaust Memorial is only ever a gesture of sympathy, rather than empathy.

When Lois and I went to photograph the piece on Holocaust Memorial Day this year, the air was ice – a viciously cold morning. People hunched by, deep in their coats. The jagged little war-stories onscreen seemed utterly out of place, like dreams. I thought about one of the holocaust survivors we worked with, a woman with profound memory lapses. She had been in Auschwitz, alongside her sister. The girls couldn't acknowledge one another; to do so would have meant one of them being killed. The guards wouldn't allow support networks like family to exist in the camps. So she became used to burying the truth. Decades later, this woman would have intense moments of lucidity while she worked with us and details of her experience would flare. But even as she revisited her memories, they erased themselves, a kind of self-anaesthetic.

I remember her saying: “I was there. I was in a camp...” and the rest of it was excised from her own mind before the next sentence was out of her mouth.

(Sections from BRING LIGHT TOWARDS YOU are shown approximately every half hour on the BBC Big Screen at The Triangle in Exchange Square, Manchester UK. There is seating directly opposite the screen, the piece is also visible from the cafes in Selfridges and Next. The 10 day run started on 27th January 2011. See also flickr site images from 2009 and 2011 at http://www.flickr.com

Wave us goodbye: Manchester commemorates the Holocaust (press release)

Poetry films on the BBC Big Screen in Manchester will commemorate the Holocaust, bringing together the memories of older Jewish people. 

The project, titled BRING LIGHT TOWARDS YOU, is one of many arts projects run by the arthur+martha arts organisation. In the build-up to Holocaust Memorial Day on 27th January, poetic texts created by the older people, many of whom are Holocaust survivors, will be displayed ‘in lights’ on the Screen at The Triangle in the city centre. 

  

The Holocaust has often been linked to trains: millions of people, particularly Jews, were taken to concentration camps by train before being killed in the notorious Nazi ‘Final Solution’ during the Second World War. These 30-second films give fragments from accounts of their journeys: to destruction and journeys of escape.  

Artist Lois Blackburn and poet Philip Davenport worked with older Jewish people living at The Morris Feinmann Home, Manchester, exploring issues related to the Holocaust. “To hear these stories has been a powerful, haunting experience,” said Davenport. “The poems are little pockets of emotion that bring alive one of the most notorious events in  recent history. It's hard to imagine the reality of the Holocaust because it was so huge, so brutal. What these tiny moments of remembering do is connect to ordinary people's experience.” 

Lois Blackburn added: “As in all our projects, we talked to people about the small details of their experience, because it is people’s everyday lives that collectively make history. It’s the sandwiches your mum made, or the look on your sister’s face as you said goodbye. The fact that we’ve been able to help people transform these memories into messages that will be seen my thousands is an extraordinary privilege.”

Maria Turner, Activities Co-ordinator at the Morris Feinmann Home, described arthur+martha’s work as: “Sensitive and caring.” 

Some of the pieces were shown on the electronic billboard in Piccadilly Railway Station on Holocaust Memorial Day 2009, but this is the first time that the whole sequence has been seen. arthur+martha have continued to develop the project in partnership with Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, working with young people with special needs, Roma children and many others.

Funding for the project came from Sparks: The Clore Jewish Development Fund. arthur+martha are regularly supported by Arts Council England.

THE FULL SEQUENCE OF TEXT ANIMATIONS CAN BE VIEWED AT http://www.arthur-and-martha.co.uk/pages/kindness%20samples.htm

- Ends - 

Contact:

www.arthur-and-martha.co.uk 

    

Notes to editors: 

  

Holocaust Memorial Day 

• In November 2005, the United Nations established Holocaust Memorial Day as a day of remembrance across the World 

• Further information can be found by visiting www.hmd.org.uk 

• The theme for HMD 2011 is Untold Stories, which recognises that there are millions of stories that we will never know because they have been lost forever due to the Holocaust and subsequent genocides.

Bring Light Towards You

We're putting the final touches to our annual report at the moment, we've been re- gathering quotes from participants and audiences...

Bring Light Towards You, January 2009, Piccadilly Railway Station

Participants

“I think it's marvellous. It’s an EVENT.” (Louis)

“It’s good, it’s impressive. It hits, if you want to be hit… My parents went to Auschwitz… You leave your parents, your home, your country. I have letters from my family but I can’t bear to read them. This is something only a holocaust survivor will understand. It never leaves you.” (Susie)

“We’re showing what happened – please look, please realise this happened… it didn’t horrify you enough.” (Gilda)

“One should never forget such a terrible thing. To memorise the six million – isn’t it similar to remembering the birth of Christ? One of those things that should never be forgotten… I can’t think of a word that’s bad enough.” (Myra)

“It brings back all the memories - the young refugees arriving…” (Nita)

“To go through so much hardship, absolutely on the borderline – and then make jokes! It’s about themselves, make fun of the self… it shows the ‘someone’ inside. And humour to cover things…” (Peggy)

Audience, Piccadilly Railway Station 27 January 2009

“(The stories) are short and truncated, so you imagine something else around them…”

(Niamh Moore, Researcher)

“A lot more awareness is needed about the issue. It’s interesting to see the stories, kickstarts the imagination. Thinking about how you’re on a journey and how very different their journeys were. It certainly doesn’t offend, if anything its enlightening.”

(Matt)

“The Jewish community here is very reticent about advertising itself… So this is important, I think. Even the word JEWISH is important on that screen.” (Bill Williams, historian)

Eyebright

arthur+martha is delighted to announce the launch of our experimental poetry project Eyebright, a nationwide schools collaboration commissioned by Holocaust Memorial Day Trust to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day on 27th January 2010.

Eyebright uses visual poetry to challenge the discrimination and prejudice which can lead, stage by stage, to genocide. A teachers’ pack can be found at http://education.hmd.org.uk/resources/eyebright
Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, arthur+martha and New Vic Borderlines worked with teachers and students in Bacup and Rawtenstall, Evesham, Stoke on Trent, Glasgow, Deal, Kirkintilloch and Delamere Forest to pilot Eyebright. Professor Robert Sheppard has supplied an essay for a supplementary part of the project scheduled to be launched for the anniversary of the liberation of Bergen Belsen on April 15^th.
An online legacy for Eyebright will be curated by arthur+martha. http://www.flickr.com/photos/arthur-and-martha/

Photo Photo courtesy of New Vic Borderlines http://www.newvictheatre.org.uk/v3_5w/events/holocaust.html

Denial- the 8th stage of genocide

As part of the 'Eyebright' pilot project during our artist residency at Delamere Forest School, we looked at the 8 Stages of Genocide, for direction and inspiration.... Stage eight is Denial:

8. DENIAL is the eighth stage that always follows a genocide. It is among the surest indicators of further genocidal massacres. The perpetrators of genocide dig up the mass graves, burn the bodies, try to cover up the evidence and intimidate the witnesses. They deny that they committed any crimes, and often blame what happened on the victims. They block investigations of the crimes, and continue to govern until driven from power by force, when they flee into exile. There they remain with impunity, like Pol Pot or Idi Amin, unless they are captured and a tribunal is established to try them. The response to denial is punishment by an international tribunal or national courts. There the evidence can be heard, and the perpetrators punished. Tribunals like the Yugoslav or Rwanda Tribunals, or an international tribunal to try the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, or an International Criminal Court may not deter the worst genocidal killers. But with the political will to arrest and prosecute them, some may be brought to justice.

Quotes from The 8 Stages of Genocide by Gregory Stanton, President of Genocide Watch

Preparation

As part of the 'Eyebright' pilot project during our artist residency at Delamere Forest School, we looked at the 8 Stages of Genocide, for direction and inspiration.... Stage six is Preparation:

6.   PREPARATION:  Victims are identified and separated out because of their ethnic or religious identity.  Death lists are drawn up.  Members of victim groups are forced to wear identifying symbols.  Their property is expropriated.  They are often segregated into ghettoes, deported into concentration camps, or confined to a famine-struck region and starved.  At this stage, a Genocide Emergency must be declared.  If the political will of the great powers, regional alliances, or the U.N. Security Council can be mobilized, armed international intervention should be prepared, or heavy assistance provided to the victim group to prepare for its self-defense.  Otherwise, at least humanitarian assistance should be organized by the U.N. and private relief groups for the inevitable tide of refugees to come.

Quotes from The 8 Stages of Genocide by Gregory Stanton, President of Genocide Watch.

Polarization

As part of the 'Eyebright' pilot project during our artist residency at Delamere Forest School, we looked at the 8 Stages of Genocide, for direction and inspiration.... Stage five is Polarization:

5. POLARIZATION: Extremists drive the groups apart. Hate groups broadcast polarizing propaganda. Laws may forbid intermarriage or social interaction. Extremist terrorism targets moderates, intimidating and silencing the center. Moderates from the perpetrators’ own group are most able to stop genocide, so are the first to be arrested and killed. Prevention may mean security protection for moderate leaders or assistance to human rights groups. Assets of extremists may be seized, and visas for international travel denied to them. Coups d’état by extremists should be opposed by international sanctions.

Organization

As part of the 'Eyebright' pilot project during our artist residency at Delamere Forest School, we looked at the 8 Stages of Genocide, for direction and inspiration.... Stage four is Organization:

4. ORGANIZATION: Genocide is always organized, usually by the state, often using militias to provide deniability of state responsibility (the Janjaweed in Darfur.) Sometimes organization is informal (Hindu mobs led by local RSS militants) or decentralized (terrorist groups.) Special army units or militias are often trained and armed. Plans are made for genocidal killings. To combat this stage, membership in these militias should be outlawed. Their leaders should be denied visas for foreign travel. The U.N. should impose arms embargoes on governments and citizens of countries involved in genocidal massacres, and create commissions to investigate violations, as was done in post-genocide Rwanda.

Quotes from The 8 Stages of Genocide by Gregory Stanton, President of Genocide Watch.

Dehumanisation

As part of the 'Eyebright' pilot project during our artist residency at Delamere Forest School, we looked at the 8 Stages of Genocide, for direction and inspiration.... Stage three is Dehumanisation:

3. DEHUMANIZATION: One group denies the humanity of the other group. Members of it are equated with animals, vermin, insects or diseases. Dehumanization overcomes the normal human revulsion against murder. At this stage, hate propaganda in print and on hate radios is used to vilify the victim group. In combating this dehumanization, incitement to genocide should not be confused with protected speech. Genocidal societies lack constitutional protection for countervailing speech, and should be treated differently than democracies. Local and international leaders should condemn the use of hate speech and make it culturally unacceptable. Leaders who incite genocide should be banned from international travel and have their foreign finances frozen. Hate radio stations should be shut down, and hate propaganda banned. Hate crimes and atrocities should be promptly punished.

Symbolization

As part of the 'Eyebright' pilot project during our artist residency at Delamere Forest School we looked at the 8 Stages of Genocide, for direction and inspiration.... Stage two is Symbolization:

SYMBOLIZATION: We give names or other symbols to the classifications. We name people “Jews” or “Gypsies”, or distinguish them by colors or dress; and apply the symbols to members of groups. Classification and symbolization are universally human and do not necessarily result in genocide unless they lead to the next stage, dehumanization. When combined with hatred, symbols may be forced upon unwilling members of pariah groups: the yellow star for Jews under Nazi rule, the blue scarf for people from the Eastern Zone in Khmer Rouge Cambodia. To combat symbolization, hate symbols can be legally forbidden (swastikas) as can hate speech. Group marking like gang clothing or tribal scarring can be outlawed, as well. The problem is that legal limitations will fail if unsupported by popular cultural enforcement. Though Hutu and Tutsi were forbidden words in Burundi until the 1980’s, code-words replaced them. If widely supported, however, denial of symbolization can be powerful, as it was in Bulgaria, where the government refused to supply enough yellow badges and at least eighty percent of Jews did not wear them, depriving the yellow star of its significance as a Nazi symbol for Jews.

Path to Genocide: Classification

As part of the 'Eyebright' pilot project we looked at the 8 Stages of Genocide, for direction and inspiration.... Stage one is Classification:


1. CLASSIFICATION: ''All cultures have categories to distinguish people into “us and them” by ethnicity, race, religion, or nationality: German and Jew, Hutu and Tutsi. Bipolar societies that lack mixed categories, such as Rwanda and Burundi, are the most likely to have genocide. The main preventive measure at this early stage is to develop universalistic institutions that transcend ethnic or racial divisions, that actively promote tolerance and understanding, and that promote classifications that transcend the divisions. The Catholic church could have played this role in Rwanda, had it not been riven by the same ethnic cleavages as Rwandan society. Promotion of a common language in countries like Tanzania has also promoted transcendent national identity. This search for common ground is vital to early prevention of genocide.'' Quote from The 8 Stages of Genocide by Gregory Stanton, President of Genocide Watch

Delamere Forest Residency day 3

Eyebright pilot.

Day three at Delamere Forest started with some confusion – a policeman had come into the school to give a talk on bullying and so the first session was cut to two people. The resulting pieces were interesting but something of a diversion, and a little distracted.

Y wanted to pursue his longer poetic ideas – and brought with him a mix of great dynamism, a restless intelligence and compulsive need for attention. He is sharp, insightful and full of the desire to create - either art, or chaos - fortunately for us, he voted for art. It felt like he was not only making art with us, but also making a role, constructing himself as a possible artist. K meanwhile launched into making nine word, three line forms which were caged in a grid. This was a neat little idea, which we are appraising and have put to one side for later consideration. K then started on writing the headings of the eight holocaust stages. Throughout our time he poured his effort into making badges with us; I was later told that his attentiveness was unusual and a big compliment.

The next session was interrupted by an argument between two pupils, one teasing the other – a poisonous little spat which wrecked the creativity of one person and soured the atmosphere.

The main breakthrough of the day came with the next set of poets who worked on love poems. They struggled against embarrassment, sarcasm, the urge to cover their vulnerability and a basic fight with the inadequacy of words themselves. The results were extremely moving and worked fabulously when cut into triangles and worn as badges – they were coy messages, given an edge by the context they’d been put into.

The afternoon sessions were low key and relaxed but did not really produce any great shifts in the project. Unfortunately, the last session ended in tears because I inadvertently cutup someone’s artwork – clumsy and done because of rushing the end of the day – it was a sad little postscript.

The school is a crucible for intense feelings to cook to temper level. It is several times over sealed away from the outside – it is in a secluded place, many occupants live there for most of the year, the pupils are categorised as having ‘special needs’, the school is accentedly Jewish and therefore apart from the educational mainstream. Finally, the students are suffering the delights, diversions and horror of being hormone-ridden teenagers. All of these things gather together and multiply each other effect. We arrived into the midst of this as artists with the deliberate intent to stir things up – and we became a catalyst.

Interpersonally, the pupils are often very kind to each other, and are strongly guided toward supporting one another. But the very nature of their issues force a clash against each other’s needs. Someone who has a racing mind and a short attention will conflict with someone else whose thought processes and comprehension are much slower. But some of the less hyper young people can deal with change better than their faster companions who cannot cope with new faces and possibilities.

We were tired by the intensity of the atmosphere at the school – and had brought some of our own worries along too. A pair of pretty battered arthur+martha artists had our tea with the school, bid our farewells and slipped off to the B+B for well-earned walks in the country and a kip.

Delamere Forest School, artists in residence

Eyebright pilot. Day 1

This is written in the evening of the first day of our residency at Delamere Forest School, which is a school for (mostly) Jewish students with special needs. A first day of trial-and-error experiments.

Our idea was to use the ‘eight stages of genocide’ identified by the Genocide Watch organisation as a framework for our work. We would play with visual poetry ideas engaging with each stage of the eight and make work that examined or contradicted each stage. The poems would be in the shape of triangles, recollecting the triangle badges worn by concentration camp prisoners during the nazi regime. But in contrast to the purpose of the original ‘Winkel’ badges, we would make pieces about the unity between people, the things that bring us together rather than divide us and also celebrate the quirks of individuals. That was the theory.

However we decided not to directly talk about the holocaust on the first day of sessions – didn’t want to launch into that dark place too quickly and without knowing our companions - so on this day we mentioned our main subject only by implication.

Nevertheless, the students piled in with great gusto, making pieces full of vigour and humour. We were working with dip pens and it was a pleasure to see the wide variety of expression in the marks, the discovery of new modes of communicating. Just as the pieces of art assumed character, so the characters of the students began to shine through and we began to make friends. In fact, meeting people was the biggest part of the day.

The triangle badges became more accomplished through the day as our focus sharpened and we began to fine-tune ideas. The art in making group pieces like this is in finding the rules of play. The makers’ work should be complemented by the process given to them. The balancing act we are trying to pull off is complex. Eyebright needs to be simple enough for many people of widely differing abilities to join into. At the same time it needs to reflect upon an extremely traumatic and knotted area of modern history.

By allowing both complex and much more physical and raw work – and by allowing in people whose vulnerabilities become another layer of saying – we hope to make a delicate, elliptical piece. The result of the first day: thirty or so triangle badges which are full of wit, personality, cheekiness, resistance, petulance, fun, consideration – in some tiny way antidotes to the original triangles and their terror.


To see more photos from the day, please visit our on line portfolio at http://www.flickr.com/photos/arthur-and-martha/sets/72157618318696037/

This project has been made possible by the generous funding by Sparks: The Clore Jewish Development Fund.

Delamere Forest School- artists in residence

Next week as part of our holocaust related project Kindness, Phil and I will be ‘artists in residence’ at Delamere Forest School, in Cheshire ( http://www.delamereschool.org.uk/ ). It’s a Jewish special needs centre, catering for pupils aged 6 to 17, we will be there Monday to Thursday running workshops combining text and art. We’re hoping some of the work produced during the week will be exhibited as part of Holocaust Memorial Day activities next year. We will investigate with the pupils through art and poetry: identity, fear, bullying, acceptance, difference, kindness and aspiration… We’ll be posting more blogs, poems and photos during the week here and at http://arthur-and-martha-poems.blogspot.com/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/arthur-and-martha

Bring light towards you: Holocaust Memorial Day (Piccadilly Station, Manchester 27.1.09)

How do you talk to an SS soldier who is trying to stave your head in with a shovel? You don't, you run. And how to communicate that experience of tumbling out of the cattle truck 70 years later? The terror is absolute, the lack of restraint is absolute. There are no comparisons. If you were there, you understand, if you weren't you don't. And yet we try.

Seeing the textworks from the Kindness project up on the giant electronic screen in Piccadilly Railway Station was both a proud moment and a chilly one. Lois had used graphics that were based on Nazi iconography - so the pieces made for an eerie reading experience, of some disastrous other now in which the Reich had won the war and Piccadilly Station promoted nazi slogans. A second look told different - what at first glance was the notorious red and black swastika flag had been altered so that the white circle contained the word Jewish rather than the crooked cross. The slogans were in fact little fragments of the recollected train journeys made by holocaust survivors. The barbed wire tangling through the designs was a close-up of handwriting from a survivor - an ambiguous part-word - believe perhaps, or deceive?

Some of the project participants came to see the works on this winterish Tuesday morning in Manchester. For one woman in particular it was an important act of commemoration, because she had fled Germany on a train and her parents had not managed to get out - they took another train journey, to Auschwitz. I have talked to her about these experiences several times. There is no big lesson to learn, nothing to allieviate the bitterness. She will simply relive the shock everyday of her remaining life. But she is adamant about one thing - the remembrance must be continued by the world. Even if it was only for her part in this project, and the fact that it served a little of her need, I feel that this was a worthy endeavour.

All acts of marking the Holocaust seem slight - the brute realness is too big. The thing seems completely beyond whatever horizon an artwork can reach. The moment of being snuffed in a field in Eastern Europe, the murder wagons, the death marches, the swilling insanity of life amongst amongst mass-extermination of humans, how do you say this? Language itself is broken by these acts, so Celan, so Adorno.

And then there is the discomfort of commemorating the victimsation of Jewish people while war rips into Palestine. And what about the many other non-Jewish people who died in the Holocaust? And and and. Discomfort is such an English-sounding word, such an English-feeling idea, bringing with it associations of minor ailments and social gaffes. But it is the word I keep reaching for.

What do I think about when I look back on Kindness? I recall conversations with the survivor Thea in her lounge, the clock ticking through all the horrors. I think of Dr Goldberg jolting me awake at the end of a long, tedious organisational meeting to set up the project - "The symbol of the holocaust is the cattle truck. Remember." I think of Ad showing me the shovel scar on his head, from the SS guard of honour at Buchenwald. I think about Meyer's tattooed wrist and his telling of the death march, voice hypnotising. But most of all, strangely, I think about human kind-naturedness and connection. I have the image of Agneta, who had survived Auschwitz, working alongside a young woman, a student called Ashley, passing it seemed from one to the other some kind of almost untouchable knowledge.

Holocaust Memorial Day 2009

Last week, on the 27th of January, we marked Holocaust Memorial Day, with animated text/art on the electronic billboards at Piccadilly Train Station Manchester.

After 2 sleepless nights and many many days of work and anxiety we at last showed our highest profile artworks to date. This project has been fraught with difficulties, responsibilities but above all its been an honour to work on. There was a constant battle between creating a living memorial to the memories and words of the wonderful people we have met, with the pulls and pushes of the demanding politics of placing a Holocaust Memorial in such a high profile space.

With the news from Israel and Gaza, everyday brings great hurt, anger, confusion and resentment. Sadly this seems to impact for some people on their responses to the very notion of a Holocaust Memorial Day.

For me the day was about separating the current events, and honouring the lives and memories of the people we have worked with and become friends with. A group of the authors, the older Jewish people who had provided the words and inspiration for the text/art came to the station to view the artwork. This was the highlight of the day for me. Never sitting still, I took photos, Phil gathered responses. I am very proud of what we have achieved, the text/art stood out amongst the hustle and bustle of the busy station.

55,000 passengers per day use the station! We where written about by the BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/manchester/content/articles/2009/01/26/270109_holocaust_poems_feature.shtml in the Metro and Evening News. The Jewish Telegraph and The Jewish Cronicle, and http://www.writeoutloud.net We have had many individuals give us wonderful feedback, and the Holocaust Memorial Trust said ‘this is fantastic.’ and that ‘we’re so impressed with the work you have done for HMD09’.

There is so much to reflect on I will be thinking about the day and the lead up for a long while yet. For photos of the event please visit http://www.flickr.com/photos/arthur-and-martha/

This project would not have been possible without our Funding for Kindness which was provided by the Clore Duffield Foundation, through Sparks: The Clore Jewish Development Fund.

The art of hearing aids

'There is a great art in using hearing aids,' Barbara commented at the beginning of this session. It's true: the things are a miracle of electronic engineering, but they squall and squeak through many of our gatherings like disgruntled babies.

One of the sadnesses of growing old is the isolation that can result - and bad hearing exaggerates this, drops the sufferer into an aquarium of muffled noise and looming faces whose words are lost in swirling tinnitus - another of the sadnesses of growing old is that the voices of older people are often ignored - seen but not heard, and not hearing.

This Friday we felt that we owed it to to the group to do a lighter session - the holocaust-related material is heartbreaking and heavy to carry week on week - so in order to find a lighter subject, we talked about light itself - a cutup of the conversation is to be found on this blog, titled the bedeken.

The subject came from the kabbalic A poem for the Sefirot as a wheel of light by Naftali Bacharach, the result of dipping the magnificent Poems for the Millenium vol 1 edited by Rothenberg and Joris (met Jerry Rothenberg awhile ago at dinner with Tony and Sue Trehy, but of that another time) - was delighted to find a concrete-ish poem form that dates from ways back and another older tradition than that of Dada and Noigandres - and so we talked about light and we made sure that everyone was heard.

Although Pat did have a snooze.

Bring light towards you

A remarkable art project bringing together older Jewish people, Imperial War Museum North and the Morris Feinmann Home in Manchester will commemorate the holocaust in poems displayed at Piccadilly Railway Station, Manchester.

On Holocaust Memorial Day (27th January 2009) poetic texts created by the older people, many of whom are holocaust survivors, will be displayed in lights on the electronic billboard at Piccadilly Station, Manchester. The holocaust has often been linked to trains: millions of people, particularly Jews, were taken to concentration camps by train before being killed in the notorious nazi Final Solution during the Second World War. This artwork will give fragments from accounts of their journeys: to destruction and journeys of escape.

‘Kindness’ is one of many arts projects run by the arthur+martha organisation; artist Lois Blackburn and poet Philip Davenport have been working with older Jewish people living at The Morris Feinmann Home, Manchester, exploring issues in regard to the holocaust. John Collins from Imperial War Museum-North is part of the team, bringing objects and personal stories from the museum collection to discuss and prompt memories.

“This work is made up of family histories, experiences of displacement, refugee backgrounds and direct holocaust memories,” says Davenport. “We are interested in the bric-a-brac of people’s lives, the tiny moments, rather than the grand history. We called the project Kindness because some of these people experienced a terrible lack of kindness. And because they were persecuted for being a certain ‘kind’ of cultural group.”

Lois Blackburn added: “It’s a privilege to meet the wonderful people at Morris Feinmann and we are delighted about our collaboration with Imperial War Museum North too. This is important work, but it touches very deep memories and we will tread delicately. One of the women we worked with used the phrase ‘Bring light towards you’ in a poem and that little phrase seems to sum up our philosophy for this project – whether it is the light of realisation, of finding hope, or simply of clear recollection.”

Maria Turner, Activities Co-ordinator at the Morris Feinmann Home, described the effect of arthur+martha’s work: “In a very sensitive and caring approach, the project has enabled our residents to talk about their experiences and express their feelings.”

From 24-31 January 2009, Imperial War Museum North will be hosting a series of free events to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, including gallery tours, lectures, musical performances and storytelling. The Museum also runs regular object handling sessions and tours for school groups learning about the Holocaust.

Funding for Kindness has been provided by the Clore Duffield Foundation, through Sparks: The Clore Jewish Development Fund.

‘Now I think in English’

(Holocaust survivor, Morris Feinmann Home Nov 2008)

The first holocaust survivor I met was a man called Meyer – he had been in Auschwitz – showed me the tattoo on his wrist – I was interviewing him for a newspaper several years ago and we talked for hours – he told stories that were so cruel I sank back into a kind of dream – the voice stayed with me for weeks after, little mirror fragments of someone else’s terror – in the last few weeks Lois and I have interviewed several survivors, including a man who was interned in Buchenwald – each time I slip into the same familiar uneasy half-here state of self-anaesthesia.

Over the nine years that Lois and I have worked together we have talked with several thousand older people about their life stories – in some ways I wonder if I’ve lived my life too much through them, because I love these accounts so much – have I become a hollow vessel for other people’s lives? - I wonder if you can really learn through other’s experiences or if, like reading a book, that is only part of the story – you have to find out the rest by being fully within your own history?

When I visited Berlin recently I was struck by how energetic the city is and yet how haunted – as I rushed between the u-bahn stations or walked around Prinzlauerberg on my way to meet artists and poets I felt as though I was being stepped through by ghosts – I’d spoken to so many older Jewish people who’d left nazi Berlin (and lost whole families there) that it was difficult to separate my now from their memories.

I feel extremely privileged to have spoken with the survivors I have met (oh how insufficient these words!) – but the accounts divide me – I have shied away from reading very much about the nazi holocaust – it seems so unremittingly hopeless - and yet like every human who has curiosity I also contain a terrible need to know just what happened – although I can find no overarching sense there.

Work on the text pieces for Piccadilly Station is close to done and none of this is any more resolved – perhaps one of the things that we are bearing witness to is our own struggle to understand.

'The German I talk is not the same as the language the German people are talking here'. (Paul Celan, letter)