The wall painting in Lodz "Tęsknię za Tobą Żydzie" in Polish means "I miss you Jew" or in Yiddish < Yid, ikh benk nokh dir > was the inspiration for the text in loop and image from Baluty which was in loop on the installation in the Gallery Room 8 Bergen .
Ola Kozil artist and professor Strzemiński Academy of Art Łódź: “This is a very important painting, unfortunately it can survive only on Piotrkowska, in other parts of Łódź it might have been destroyed…” (Piotrowska street in Lodz is pedestrianized, it contains luxury shops, hotels and restaurants.)
Performed at Center for Jewish Culture Wroclaw Polen - White Stork Synagogue June 2015 and at The Center for Studies of Holocaust and Religious Minorities Oslo September 2015. Minister Helgesen from the Norwegian government was present during the opening ceremony.
Image above. FILM WITH SOUND.Up in right corn of image, click to start the film with sound.
From the nature of chaos to humanized communication true negotiation.
When shadows from two people overlap, a projection is clear - readable.
Focus on Human-centred design, Transformations, Participatory activities. FILM. Click arrow up on rigth corner to start.
We are in a time of unprecedented re-alignments and re-articulations of every aspect of our lives. Thoughts and letters is an emergent structure opening spaces within broad human and discipline for creativity, spaces of participation, of communication, of reciprocity, for people and their works ,to listen to each other.
This increasingly confronted us by the need for new models of asking the extraordinarily complex questions of our time.
When human beings lose their ID, they are set aside for what is most natural, namely inequalities. Human rights cannot be enforced and taken into context. This is something we think of as a right that is not obviously.
It is critical in a crisis situation and then I understand Hannah Arendt as in the movie - White Activa - Spirit of Hannah Arendt - says; <A crisis will be a disaster only when we respond to it with preconceived opinions>. The ability to establish solidarity is weak when something different threatens.
These research project questions how intuitions; thoughts and spoken words become an object? How design can encourage empathy and how we can consciously design our perception of an experience. With this we want to discuss the meaning of the other and the relevance of Levinas’s definitions in the design process.
Society has discovered dis-grace as a powerful social weapon that can kill without bloodshed. Once passports and birth certificates and sometimes income taxes are no longer formal papers, but a means of social distraction; we lose faith in us. If society does not recognize us, we are and have always been prepared to pay any price to become a part of society.
( Hannah Arendt De retsløse og de ydmygede side 42 )
From Roman times to 1930, identity was linked to where you lived: there you belong. With, the establishment of the European nation state, many became identity-less. The harmonious coexistence of the European people was then split, because they confessed that their weakest members were forever excluded. The few refugees who insist on telling the truth, even when it is "inappropriate", in return for their unpopularity, offer an invaluable advantage: history is no longer a closed book, and politics is no longer the exclusive privilege of the Jews.(Hannah Arendt We Refugees Page 33)
'Imagining what it’s like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion, and it is the beginning of morality.' Ian McEwan, 2001
Illuminating the Non Representable . From Idea to Indication. Charles Michalsen . Film. Click and start.
Photgraphy Bjarte Bjørkum.Editing Ivo Bjørkum. System of Knowlegde
Visibility : An international illustration seminar in Bergen 5 – 7 November 2014
presented and exhibited Charles Michalsen <Walking through Yiddish>.
“The Visual Communication staff, in the Design department, has taken initiative to a three-day seminar on illustration and its status in professional practice and in academic research today.
Over this three-day seminar – with presentations and workshops on semiotics, visual signs and illustration as an activist tool, the borderline between art and illustration and new possibilities that ‘new’ media represent for illustration – KHiB wants to focus on a subject that within KHiB is to now a well-kept secret, but where research activity is becoming increasingly intense. We believe that we, and KHiB can and should be a contributor to professional and academic debate on the future of illustration and initiate an international debate.”
< Visibility – The International Illustration Venue > The link and image for my participation lecture and exhibition.
> Walk with Yiddish <
3.Title < Bo(a)rders >.
Mira (Jewish woman in Wroclaw): "Mom sewed a blouse to me and painted flowers on the collar". The Jewish community in Wroclaw has been citizens of Bohemia, Habsburg, Germany, the Soviet Union and now Poland. Mira, has been the citizen of two of these states.
After portraying Mira to an analogue photo film the developed in front of a new film, we sought out the places in Wroclaw which had significant populations of graffiti.
The technique used in these photographs, to achieve this "overlap effect" is that the analogue exposed film with the portraits is in front of the new film in the camera. The unexposed film in the camera, captures motifs from both the historical portrait and the current graffiti.
The selection of photographs is a starting point from special to a general discussion. In the midst we can glimpse something that may just be the remains of from Mira`s childhood. In the images we catch the photographer, Mira and the graffiti present in various ways. Time may have stood still.
3. < Walk through Yiddish>.
From God Hid His Face
Selected Poems of RAJZEL ZYCHLINSKY
Where do the words disappear
of the people
who talk to themselves
on the streets of New York?
Do they drop to the pavement
as mere dust?
Challenges. Intuition formed to ideas, thoughts body formed into spoken words, the shadows from the intuition formed into objects of text.
Word has meaning. An art-design project question: how can intuition, thoughts and spoken words become an object for negations?
Elastic space. How does text affect spatial design?
4. < Letter to an unborn Child >
In retrospect, the “Walking by Yiddish” installation at the courthouse was a transition piece; a further participatory sculptural exploration of this material was devised for the “Between Languages” seminar, Lodz work-shop “ Rethink culture of Memory” and “Walking by Yiddish”
Associated Professor Charles Michalsen designed and presented two text installations: <I miss you Jude> and <Letter to unborn Child>. The work grasps motion, subtext, context, source processing, with visual rhetoric, semiotics and documentation in a borderless form dependent upon negotiated, empathic co-operation.
In the context of this seminar, research leader Linda Lien from the department of design, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen, challenged her department to find ways to address visual dialogue and people who face challenges and prejudices. During the autumn, the institution has sought to link these projects closer together, under the umbrella title “Between Languages” – derived from a previous title of a Michalsen installation at the Cumulus conference ( Hong Kong 2017.) Can sculptural elements distill tolerance and understanding? How can we as designers influence the meeting between ‘us’ and ‘the other’?
This work sought to ‘visualise’ empathy as an inherent human value
The texts were compressed and almost naive Addressed to Minister for Immigration and Integration Sylvi Listhaug they aired pressing issues in four languages. Projected upon the same surface in loops, they were indecipherable. However with the intervention of your fellow gallery visitors that blocked sufficient projection volume, nodes of stillness could be created that enabled reading .
The text loops were in Norwegian, English and Yiddish with Latin characters and Yiddish with Hebrew font characters.
2. “Passed / Over” - “Boundaries “ - film installations.
Intuition formed to ideas,
body of thought formed into spoken word,
shadows of intuition formed into objects of text.
Activating socialized text as ‘handovers’ of spoken Yiddish; can intuition, thoughts and spoken words become an object?
Those who are descendants. They were the children of ashes; those who were sent away but could never return home. They know who they are, they have a name, but they do not have a language. They do not know how to write their name.An installation with the transfer form Mira to Charles, of the children’s song in Yiddish Yome Yome , Sphil Mir a Lidele.
Below .FILM WITH SOUND . Press arrow up in right image corner to start film.
Yome , Yome in Yiddish.
Yome , Yome , shpil mir a lidele.
Vos dos meydele vil ?
Dos meydele vil a por shikhelekh hobn.
Muz men geyn dem shuster zogn .
Neyn mameshi , neyn.
Du konst mikh nit fershteyn.
Du veyst nit , vos ikh meyn !
Tittle of installation: Handed over Yome Yome.
Headsets in the sculpture installation have mounted speakers with sound regulator that turns out so that the others can hear the same. It's active sharing of the audio to film "Pass Over". Image from exhibition in Center for Studies of Holocaust and Religious Minorities - Oslo
<Walk with Yiddish >. Still photo from the film loop projected on inside of window.
From the exhibition i Galleri 8 Bergen. Photo Charles Michalsen
Bibliography.
- Levinas, E. 1972. Humanism of the Other. Oslo: Det Norske Akademi for sprog og litterateur.
- Anne-Line Graedler, UiO Språknytt 3-4 / 2002
- Ian McEwan, The Guardian, September 11 2001
- Per Kristian Sebak “ …. Vi blir neppe nogensinne mange her “ Jewish in Bergen 1851 – 1945.
- Hannah Arendt . Vi Flygtninge. Forlaget slagmark 2016 . Oversættelse og efterord . Mikkel Flohr.
- Giorgio Agamben Resterne fra Auswschwitz . Danske Billedkunstskolernes forlag . ISBN 978-87-7945-071-4.
- Victoria Hanna. Hebrow vovels demonstration. https://no.pinterest.com/pin/168955423497331911/
- ”Learn Yiddish : 10 minutes”
Documented memory .
How can intuition, thoughts , memory of the disappearing be preserved? Can the spoken word become object?
By socialized texts. into collective participatory performance of spoken, hand-me-down words.
The project seeks to provoke a change of mind. From research of intuition, thoughts and text, to multiple texts - from a conceptual abstract dimension ("0D") to multiple text dimensions in the most utterly concrete form.
Title: Learn Yiddish in 10 minutes.
- Socialized thoughts and text. Performed together with Bente Kahan in White Stork Synagogue Wroclaw Polen and Center for Studies of Holocaust and Religious Minorities Oslo.
In connection with the exhibition opening in Wroclaw and Oslo that explored strategies for exploring the Yiddish culture and language as a platform for current artistic research and creativity, Charles Michalsen devised a performance with Norwegian theatre artist, Bente Kahan as Master in Yiddish
Using what may have been one of his Grandmother’s songs projected on evocative walls, it culminated in a collective participatory voicing. The simple rhyme carries the relationship between adults and the smallest of children, and I use this Yiddish song as a source for transition and a continuation after death.
Still image from film and installation in Gallery Rom 8 – February 2017. Tempo at text loop had a speed of 1, 2 meters per second (4.32 km / h).
- 1 ”Learn Yiddish : 10 minutes”
Documentation and Documented memory .
How can intuition, thoughts , memory of the disappearing be preserved? Can the spoken word become object?
By socialized texts. into collective participatory performance of spoken, hand-me-down words.
The project seeks to provoke a change of mind. From research of intuition, thoughts and text, to multiple texts - from a conceptual abstract dimension ("0D") to multiple text dimensions in the most utterly concrete form.
Title: Learn Yiddish in 10 minutes.
- Socialized thoughts and text. Performed together with Bente Kahan in White Stork Synagogue Wroclaw Polen and Center for Studies of Holocaust and Religious Minorities Oslo.
In connection with the exhibition opening in Wroclaw and Oslo that explored strategies for exploring the Yiddish culture and language as a platform for current artistic research and creativity, Charles Michalsen devised a performance with Norwegian theatre artist, Bente Kahan as Master in Yiddish
Using what may have been one of his Grandmother’s songs projected on evocative walls, it culminated in a collective participatory voicing. The simple rhyme carries the relationship between adults and the smallest of children, and I use this Yiddish song as a source for transition and a continuation after death.
Documentary, memory and empathy.
This project starts with my grandmother. Mystical and evocative, we visited her in a ramshackle part-shack, part-cowshed just above the upper reaches of our shoreline. Among her treasures was a harmonica on which she played us her own characteristic tunes. Once the possession had captured her, she would augment her playing with songs in an unknown tongue. Years later, after her death, I unraveled enough family history to deduce that this was likely the last breathfuls of Yiddish to be spoken along our stretch of coast.
My father absorbed none of this tongue and my curiosity was elsewhere. It was only as I passed her age that I embraced her absent richness. This has spawned four interrelated projects:
1 = Yiddish : 10 min.
2 = Pass / over / Bo(a)rders ( black and white photo )
3 = Walking through Yiddish ( Gulating Courthouse Norway)
4 = Letter to unborn child
5 = From Idea to Identification. To Illuminate the Nonrepresentative
< Letter to an unborn Child >
text in loop on Gallery window.
Du skal få din tilhørighet og må ikke Listhaug gjøre deg ID løs . Jeg vet ikke hvor du går , men jeg er stolt over deg.
Nisht geboyrn kind. Dayne papirn zoln zayn shtendik reyn. Farloz ale Listhaugs. Haldz dayn identitet. Ikh veys nisht vu du geyst, ober ikh shep nakhes fun dir.
Unborn child. Always keep your papers clean. Avoid all Sylvi Listhaugs. Embrace your identity. Not knowing where you shall go; I am ever proud of you.
.איךביןאלץשטאָלץפוןאי .ניטגעוואוסטווואירוועטגיין עמבראַסעאייעראידענטיטעט .Listhaug`s ויסמייַדןאַלע .שטענדיקהאַלטןדייןצייטונגעןריין. אַנבאָרןקינד
Using video, I projector animated texts in Yiddish, English and Norwegian on prominent corner windows of our new courthouse. They are at the eye level to passing pedestrians. Best visible at night, the texts move in loop both ways across the windows. When people walk along the windows they need to adjust the tempo for read the text content to appear, to get a sharp focus on texts.
The project starts from an overall and lived life: My inspiration comes from my grandmother who played Yiddish songs on harmonica for me in my childhood and has now evolved into a strategy for exploring the Yiddish language and culture, and to make this a platform for research and creativity.
Looking for connections, contextualising text and connecting with people. Site and time-based spatial design. An art design installation in the Gulating Court of Appeal building in Bergen that asks the question: how can intuition, thoughts and spoken words become an object? Will Gulating court allow me to communicate on their surface (window) in Yiddish?
Using video, I projected a film loop of animated texts in Yiddish (Yiddish and Roman alphabet), Norwegian, and English onto prominent corner windows of our new courthouse. They are at the eye level to passing pedestrians. he texts moved in a loop in both directions across the windows. When people walked alongside the windows they need to adjust their walking pace in order to be able to read the text and for the content to appear, to be able to focus on the texts.
The courthouse as a democratic space has been the subject of heated debate in Norway. A clarifying open and democratic debate took place about the issue of whether the Norwegian-born right-wing extremist Andres Behring Brevik should be permitted to propound his Nazi theories in court. Since then, we have experienced how the rhetoric used in the American presidential election campaign has had an effect on what is seen as acceptable speech and text in public, and how this has resulted in an altered spatial perception.
Gulating tekst loop.
du zn Jidisz un ibertrachtn Jidisz wer is yiddisch schprach un du lesn Jiddish in ir hoibt
du ser jiddisk og tenker jiddisk som er jødisk språk og du leser jiddisk for alle i ditt hode når
you see Yiddish and think Yiddish who is Jewish language and you read Yiddish in your head when
איןדייןקאָפּאוןאירלייענעןייִדישפֿאַראַלעאוןטראַכטןייִדיש אידישעשפּראַך ייִדישאירזען
In the art installations Charles Michalsen orientates the design for Affinity design situates design between the self and the other. It is different from design that demands that I be a viewer/user and contemplate the object by myself. An empathic design approach involves identifying the needs and problems of the user and transforming them into physical form. His contention is that a design or a concept is not for an audience or a user, but for participants. He is aware that when the concept is divided between dimensions, this influences the reality.
What happened in between?
Materialization of ideas
from document to documentet memory.
How we can trust what we know? Realities flimmer. Not everything fits the grid.
Title image. Slof shoin main Jankele. Frotage of letters from Jewish tombstones and Leaf gold on paper.
Above. FILM WITH SOUND. Press arrow up in right image
corner to start the movie.
<Walk with Yiddish >. Above film from the text film loop projected on window Bergen Court - Gulating lagmannsrett.
The East European Jewish language Yiddish is spoken no more in its historical territory. Now, its surrounding culture eradicated, it exists merely in documentary and the feeblest of memory. Relocated and left behind, a once vibrant language is without standing.
Yome , Yome .
Yome , Yome , shpil mir a lidele.
Vos dos meydele vil ?
Dos meydele vil a por shikhelekh hobn.
Muz men geyn dem shuster zogn .
Neyn mameshi , neyn.
Du konst mikh nit fershteyn.
Du veyst nit , vos ikh meyn !
Yome, Yome , play me a little tune.
What the young maiden wants ?
The maiden wants to have a pair of shoes.
One must tell the cobbler.
No Mommy , no.
You cannot understand me .
You know not what I mean
