On Friendship/(Collateral Damage) IV

LUMEN TRAVO GALLERY Lijnbaansgracht 314, Amsterdam
22 January - 12 March 2022 Exhibition and Performance

Exhibition
In the solo show How to Explain Hare Hunting to a Dead German Artist Joseph Sassoon Semah took us on a journey of critical analysis of Joseph Beuys and the Germany's post-war history. Joseph Sassoon Semah presented (a.o.) the new installations Between Graveyard and Museum's sphere [The modification of Architectural Forms is the only way left to come closer to the Gates of Eden] 2021 and the monumental installation entitled On Friendship / (Collateral Damage) IV - How to Explain Hare Hunting to A Dead German Artist (2021). This complex work of art is fundamentally different from its counterpart in the Goethe-Institut. The scale-model of the Auschwitz Gate, a 400-centimeter wide, two-part model in natural wood, does not rest on trestles but stands close to the wall, just floating above a contrasting, rough floor full of elementary splashes and stains. The viewers' position in relation to the large-scale work of art is so fundamentally different. Visitors now look at an oblique angle, steeply downwards. As if they seem to fly over Auschwitz like birds. It is not for nothing that Joseph Sassoon Semah has placed ten ram's horns (ShOFaROT) under the gatehouse. These ancient trumpets, used ritually in synagogues, symbolically refer to the irreversible collapse of the walls of Jericho. Humanity had to wait 56 bitter months for the functional decline of the horrific concentration camp Auschwitz - which was in use from May 5, 1940 to January 27, 1945

Between the main entrance of the scale model of the Auschwitz Gate, quite a few meters away is a sturdy bronze hare, which is reconnected to fluorescent light, and a copper tube - also with a bend - runs across the floor. A closer look reveals that these are two tubes that have been pushed together. A new pictorial element that can be interpreted multiple times. The pipes metaphorically represent the shelter of the hare in its underground burrow or for the supply and removal of persons and/or products (deadly gas). The ominous picture of the railroads of death is never far away. In a manner of hope, the tunnel tube can also symbolically refer to an escape route (a number of people have successfully escaped from Auschwitz).
Four large steel calipers, which are placed above and next to the copper pipes between the scale model of the Auschwitz Gate and the hare lying again in cool blue light. With the three-thousand-year-old, graceful measuring instrument, circles and arc-circles have been functionally drawn for many years. Especially to correctly measure distances between points, to adjust them accurately and thus to determine lengths exactly. Together with the directional compass, which was developed in China thousands of years ago, the caliper has proven to be essential over time, for example in navigation at sea, making accurate (nautical) charts in detail or in architecture. (source: Rick Vercauteren) 

Performance:

On March the 12th 2022, the artist and his friends have perform the new piece "I Am the Resistance".
"CORRIDORS" text PDF...
I AM THE RESISTANCE
....every year I am born anew
in the ninth month
my mother groans less loudly
while each year my groans
sound more anguished
an old fool will never believe that
I give my story my own voice
my own speechless voice
in the midst of the crowd
to the last drop of ink

ADIEU
flowers and babies
that's my address
a picture on the wall

"...We only know that there is no escape from Language - yet which all of us can trace to its source.
But also, without a doubt - the existence of the Guest emphasizes particularly when he is in close proximity to the impulse of Joseph Beuys to represent himself as a post-war Victim, as an Artist, and finally as a certain Redeemer and Healer."

Performance:
Joseph Sassoon Semah with friends:
Baruch Abraham
Masja Austen
Peter Baren
Jom Semah

How to Explain Hare Hunting to a Dead German Artist
[The usefulness of continuous measurement of the distance between Nostalgia and Melancholia] 2021
2 copper tubes, hare in bronze, light tube, a wooden model of the main gate into the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz,
7 ShOFaROT (ram's horn), 4 steel passers, 450 x 700 x 80 cm Courtesy of Gallery Lumen Travo, Amsterdam

Between Graveyard and Museum's sphere [The modification of Architectural Forms is the only way left to come closer to the Gates of Eden] 2021
bronze (a model based on the Tomb of Ezekiel in Al Kifi, Iraq & Oud), ShOFaR (ram's horn), 145 x 50 x 80 cm
Courtesy of Gallery Lumen Travo, Amsterdam