Video performance (1hr 13mins), 18 charcoal on canvas frottages
Katz works with a collection of gravestones that she found discarded at a Berlin cemetery garbage. The stones are from an area of the cemetery dedicated to “victims” from the World War II period: the men and women were German soldiers, police officers, air force officers, prisoners of war, and civilians.
These stones personalize The German of the World War II period, a figure that, in the artist’s social conditioning as a US-American and particularly as a Jew, has been highly dehumanized. Katz confronts and works with these stones that name the nameless.
Subsequent to the artist finding and collecting the discarded gravestones, it was brought to the cemetery administration’s attention that Katz had the stones in her possession. She was obligated to return the stones, as they were scheduled for liquidation by the cemetery administration. The installation exhibited at Diehl CUBE in 2013 presents the artist’s parting action with the stones before they were sent to be destroyed by cemetery authorities.
Photography: Kojo