Christoph
Lingg: Photography / Video / Interviews
Angelika Hagen: Texts
This
multimedia project focuses on prison and labor camps for political
prisoners that were all established or used after WW II: - S 21, Cambodia - Robben Island, Southafrika - Perm 36, Russia - Bautzen II and Hohenschoenhausen, former GDR - Amna Suraka, Iraq - Penal de Emboscada, Paraguay - Con Dao, Vietnam In these camps political prisoners
were forced to carry out penal labor and were tortured, humiliated, and
killed. Even though tens of thousands of people died in them, there has to
date been little effort to reexamine and come to terms with what happened.
Silence and looking the other way seem to be a continuing historical and
social phenomenon. This is an aspect of inhumanity that is still quite
evident today.
Just as the bodies of victims simply vanished from many of the camps and
no explanation of their fate was ever given, up to the present day
memories of the camps have been ignored, played down, or even denied.
But injustice and inhumanity cannot be simply hushed up. Remembering is
the other side of the coin of forgetting. The demand to
be seen and heard never really disappears.
The present multimedia project is dedicated to documenting memories: in
photographs and texts the camps serve as witnesses of the inhumanity that
took place in them. Included are a video (with excerpts from interviews
with survivors and others who were involved, as well as pictures of the
camps), a publication and a traveling exhibition, which is especially
appropriate for schools, training centers and other public facilities.
Even though most of these camps seem far away – they are relevant to
all of us. They were spread all over the world. And remembering them is a
contribution to a more humane future.
~
This project is partly funded by the Future Fund of the Republic of Austria!
