Transnational (Artistic) Memory of the Jewish Sites that No Longer Exist in the Balkans

Supported by in depth analysis of the most momentous recent artistic production from and on the Balkan region - dealing with the cultural memory of the Jewish sites that no longer exist since and after the Holocaust - the argument this paper aims to put forth is that the performative, participatory artistic memory of the Holocaust can lay the foundation of a new direction in commemorative practices in the Balkans and beyond. The purpose of this analysis is to illuminate the potentialities of artistic memory in widening - beyond the national borders - the representations and understandings of political violence and its aftermath in the wake of the Holocaust. The dire evidence that former Jewish sites across the region have been built-over, bulldozered or left in decay indicates a will to forget the past and/or a disquieting anti-Semitism. To what extent artistic production can function as a living archive of a “presence of absence"? Unlike the conventional artistic representations of the Holocaust displayed in traditional media such as painting, sculpture, “memoire-esque documentaries” or film, the contemporary artistic practices attempt to occasion in viewers both political emotions and new forms of historical knowledge. The viewer (spectator) of these new forms of artistic commemoration can also perform her/his memory work through which an experiential form of knowledge is nurtured. By taking part actively in this artistic memory works the viewer is no longer a spectator detached emotionally and disinterested aesthetically. Thus, these performative post memories – materialized in (mostly) ephemeral artistic practices – go beyond the iconic, museumified representations of this excruciating event and prevent the impact of de-sensitization and saturation with the Holocaust’s representations that endangers our ability to really “work through the past” (Adorno 2005) by performing our moral and political obligations as the witnesses of witnesses. There was a certain lacuna in the artistic commemorations of the Holocaust in the Balkans. The previous lacuna in the artistic memory of the Holocaust in the region has to be addressed mostly because this region used to be home of a thriving Jewish life and culture before the WWII. To this end, the first section will address the previous lacuna in the contemporary artistic memory of the Holocaust in the region. The second section deals with the theorization of performative/participatory artistic memory taking as a point of departure Valentin Rauer’s considerations on the cultural-pragmatics of social performance and its event-ness. The recent cases of participative and performative artistic memory of the Holocaust in the Balkans will be analyzed in detail in the third section. Finally, the paper concludes that these novel artistic practices have a political dimension by attempting to advance a transnational culture of active remembrance of the Holocaust where memory work moves beyond canonical representations, as well as beyond “methodological nationalism”.