MemScreen – An Art-Based Archive of Translation and Narration

MemScreen find new artistic methods to represent narrations and memories that are associated with the complex historical connections between Israel and Austria, Austria and the holocaust. MemScreen is creating and researching artistic methods to facilitate the translation of artworks from the Israeli context to the Austrian/European one and vice versa.

One of our aims is to contribute possible ways of dealing with the question of contextualization that marks a fundamental curatorial problem and is acute in the contemporary debate of new (artistic) curatorship. Connected with this approach, the other aim is to create a Holocaust-connected documentary that would use experimental strategies to represent the "problem of representation." The way the audience understands our art suggestions in Israel and Austria will also be researched and well though through.

MemScreen is a transnational project and will take place in our partner art institutions in Austria (Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna) and Israel (Digital Art Center Holon, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, etc.). MemScreen continues our earlier, long-standing and broad scholarly and artistic work on the connection between individual and collective memories (see above film projects and installations of ritesinstitute and artworks of Tal Adler) and the axis Israel-Austria (see above the Tal Adler & ritesinstitute projects). The core team consists of the artists and artist researchers Tal Adler, Attila Kosa, ritesinstitute (Friedemann Derschmidt & Karin Schneider) and the Israeli writer Ilana Schmueli, born in Cherniviz.

One pillar of the poroject is the organisation of intense workshops and public lectures at the partner institutions with the board members. This approach will render our process more precise and establish an interdisciplinary discursive and productive field for art-based research about memory, narration and translation in Austria and Israel.
MemScreen defines itself as an archival project. Archive in this sense is not only understood as a fixed data bank but also as a dynamic digital working platform. The digital archive in this context is a tool to initiate effective learning processes for the MemScreen participants (the artist researcher team, partners, board and artists-in-residence) and multiple publics. In the MemScreen archive the narrations, memories, researched artworks, workshop discussions, objects and images are subject to be rearranged and connected with new research questions. These questions develop within our practical experiences.