In absence of memory

Elena, Leonidas Kollatou, Toumpanos

2021

Greece

Our project explores the triangular relationship between perpetrator, victim and memory. With a starting point of the German Occupation of Greece in 1941-1944, we are researching visual archive material depicting the casualties of the German Occupation: starvation victims, executions of civilians and members of the Greek Resistance from German firing squads and images of Nazis in Greece.

How does the victim seek to escape from passive victimization, psychological and physical tyranny and play an active role in shaping the history? How is the uncertain danger of the occupier's terrorism offset by conscious choices of exposure to foreseeable dangers? Who writes the history? How does the collective memory narrate the events 80 years after the Occupation?

In the latest years, there is an active interest from the German Foreign Ministry to reform the collective memory in Greece of the German Occupation in 1941-1944. This is reflected in funding German-Greek Collaborative foundations and platforms aiming to Greek educational system and narrating an abstract and (a)political version of the history, blurring the lines between perpetrators and victims.

Using mixed media and photo transfer techniques in archival images we create abstract depictions of the documented events, illustrating the current status of collective memory and raising questions on the ‘ownership’ of historical events.

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  • Mixed media, photo etching, erasure process of archival image. Dead person after torture of Nazi occupiers

  • Mixed media, photo etching, erasure process of archival image. Hanged citizens from German occupiers.

  • Mixed media, photo etching, erasure process of archival image. children in the ruins of a house (Karpenisi town, Greece) after the bombing of German army in 1943.

  • Mixed media, photo etching, erasure process of archival image. German Paratroopers during their invasion in Crete island, Greece, April 1941

  • Mixed media, photo etching, erasure process of archival image. Carriage of dead people from hunger in Athens, 1941

  • Mixed media, photo etching, erasure process of archival image. Wooden cross with names of people executed in 1943 in occupied from Germans Greek countryside.

  • Mixed media, photo etching, erasure process of archival image. Skeletal man from starvation in Athens during the German occupation.

  • Mixed media, photo etching, erasure process of archival image. German firing squad executes partisans in Greek countryside.

  • Mixed media, photo etching, erasure process of archival image. Skeletal child from starvation, Athens, 1941.

  • Mixed media, photo etching, erasure process of archival image. Dead people from hunger in Athens, 1941

  • Mixed media, photo etching, erasure process of archival image. Skeleton children during the German occupation.

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