Forum; Judy Chicago

from the longhorn radio network the university of texas at austin this is for him these are two people who decided to find out they've even taken place and what can we learn from the artist and writer judy chicago co creator of the holocaust the nazis he for euthanasia program made explicit the implicit hatred in western society of all all those who are considered unfit to live and i thought that that was a really amazing fact that's were things i came to understand is that the whole lot the program made explicit many implicit assumptions that we own question and they just took it farther instead of simply getting those people out of our sight by

institutionalizing them they got a lot of our sight by killing them the warrior worrier near turin yeager in major boring this is olive graham today the guest on forms artist judy chicago ms chicago along with her husband photographer donald woodman has created a holocaust project a workday journeys as its subtitle says from darkness into light using a multimedia approach they crafted image is through the use of stained glass tapestry photography and painting that reach into some of the seldom explored recesses of the holocaust an upward to the light of understanding and hope their project began with the torah selected camps in europe judy chicago describes their itinerary there wasn't a woman named after carl and fight who wrote one of the best books on the camp's called miller's death camps that i

read early on and she actually advised us in terms of where oh where to go for example we were plentiful in nuremberg but she said we really should go to nuremberg because that's where that you know it started and that's where it ended with the nuremberg laws and with the nuremberg trials a nc told us about and not smile or which we really would not have gone to because he's not one of the camps that people have heard of and it's one in france haiti as a way around the aha there are camps everywhere that i mean as were things that was so startling was the scale and the numbers of not only concentration camps are three kinds of camps concentration camps extermination cancer people were simply murdered at treblinka was running out and and slave labor encampments that was the part i knew the least about was a slave wave and they were all over i mean they were all over everywhere so that for example i'll be one camp like my house austria in and have a whole network of what a caucus now become a mother

can't talk about a distortion of a word in and then be all these it are slave labor camps and also slave owner installations where is you know from schindler's list where it in industrialist paid for slave labor so i mean because that was the thing about me and dresses in the whole history of slavery was when i worked with bb and discover that sell you know kyle advisors and certain kinds of which are the cans i knew about auschwitz and traveling to we knew where to go arun you know dark house where everybody goes to usually and there was a camp we went to rollins work which is a weapon the only way this can i really want to see that because it was different and saxon has now let it you know was a camp where homosexuals were pretty two imprisoned and saw it every campaign ads as i think the same in some and something given your thing is that the whole time we travel the rain it just rained all the time when you were visiting each of these places

did you have organist who's with horses did you have to know are we actually we do something actually quite unusual verses that we were our own because a lot of times there are two ways you know like i was caught the highlights of the holocaust and a study you go in the store they whisk year whisky their whiskey there that already israel and we drove first of all we drove it we just six thousand miles actually it was almost like we followed a palace for sense and that we did not drive these you couldn't drive at that point into the incentive then soviet union so we affluent think from warsaw to lang grinding we took the train back from below or so but at any in any in russia but there we flew in and we were we knew we went around there was very i was very interesting cause we're sort of like god was before

glasnost and we were taken from place to place by the refuseniks community which is we hadn't put in touch with that we would go to camps and we had we were held by us i a and they have just get what they really helped us with was getting into archives so that we were able to look at a lot of prison or art drawings and that was one of things that really influenced me at the press coverage somebody asked about art i had drawn are i think some somebody asked me that some place again that i saw literally hundreds of drives by people who were either in the camps or who drew afterwards and the most stunning series of dries having caught that was by a non jewish man who named joseph sheridan we saw in archives in warsaw ten years after the war he drew in saratov first he did a hundred and fifty seven drawings of having witnessed the destruction of the entire jewish community of his

town and those drawings were so unbelievable that is when i realize that are actually had a role to play because up until then i was not sure that us away with all the photo documentation and so it was our tramp that we saw the sarver we were held by their views are clear up with a huge mirror help buy us a tremendously we were held by a couple named michael rebecca kaufman he was the new york times by europe eastern european bureau chief she was a fan of my work we stated their house in warsaw was the first time the food in poland was like oh my god and we got there and there was a refrigerator american refrigerant your banana psalm or forget they had their food flown in for phil and we had really a lot of help or weeks we were on our own almost all the time is you were traveling about you took notes here right guy and i had to travel journals that air is writing and drawings and i'll took photographs

how did to lift out of all of that the themes are images that you wonder did you know that is going in and simply realistic no i did not and i actually did not i had for the first two years and encino ideas have no ideas at all or if i had it i put it on paper and like malicious like holloway out horrible idea aha you not as a unified in making yard that you know anybody would look in a novelist puzzle overall supply nothing and mom somewhere somewhere on my journey i start to draw but i were there were very simple line drawings at first and i i reproduce some of them in the book very simple line and they were you know like this one drives is out and actually in a show at the lines matrix gallery few of those what one is that she can for yourself a nazi sea issues and it's an image of a woman trying to put her foot into a nazi but i mean they were very simple ideas and i had

some ideas for images on the road on the trip i had the app a sort of idea and saxon house and four pink triangle torturous deals with the history of torture and the particular persecution of homosexuals during the holocaust and i think the reason i had no idea there was because since nasa has was an early plays were homosexuals were of prison a number of them that they have flower beds there they were particularly known for their flower beds which were all tended by the prisoners and you know there was always this unbelievable irony in it in in the camps you know like our bite mark fry work makes you furry half hour makes you dare to you know you're going to the showers you're going to death i mean the deception that was another issue was that was a dissent as a base of the us person i was just completely overwhelmed by the deliberate deception that when i'm like there's a campaign outside of prague called teressa step where room was actually jews were brought there and then they were transported they're from a proper address at auschwitz it well it wasn't a death camp

and actually there was a lot of cultural life there is like that but there was a visit by the international red cross in a hand a whole sham that was when i knew no they fixed it all up and make it was like a present haitian of a perfect camp to counter that the rumors about the the death of the juice that was going on and there was an artist named for freedom who did a drawing of like this front of a building that was like a stage set there was a lot of art by the artists and they risk their lives series do the sector in the day they worked in the art in the er are in the ss our workshops making images for the right to making jewelry and artifacts and objects for the fruity out for the ss officer mennonite they go into the workshops and yet at the risk of death they would do these drawings one artist was caught as a hands cut off money and hideous hideous so that are really affected may told they bore witness in a very direct way it really

powerful way more powerful within that in the literature the exhibition is in five sections describe that outlined in hell you ordered those pieces what is the path want to let me especially the structure is a journey as into the darkness a holocaust it starts with a series of documentation hills a good background and that relate to the book which is also structures or a similar kind of journey is a companion to the project and there's a video that was made by one name came in who goes back like audrey does who is my we were to the dinner party days part of my network without which i would never have survived or flourish as an artist and the news that was done by my college soulmate and the video tells something about those are my personal journey anne cady made a video with a very specific

idea in mind which was just to convey the idea that that individuals can make a difference and then the exhibition itself which primarily combines pain photography is structured is a journey that starts with a tapestry call the fall which was woven by my longtime coal on the klan murder audrey talent for my cartoon in a place as the holocaust in the fabric of western civilization and then the first room that is have plunged into the darkness of the holocaust the first room and it's called bearing witness the holocaust as jewish experience and deals with specific aspects of the holocaust as it was experience that by jews to a final solution than down and then from that the our show o begins to open in terms of examining connections between holocaust other historical events and treasuries the next section is called power and powerlessness this then the third section expands out beyond that to look at parallels between the present

impasse call echoes an eerie occurrences the holocaust as lesson is the second was power protest the holocaust as prism in the sense that we can see through the holocaust other victim experience and then there's a series of works that deals presents for questions as a complex work and four questions is based on the four questions that are asked every year at the passover seder and those are asked air conover ritual there's the same questions with known answers these four questions are much more puzzling and much less clear in terms of their answers then we return to the jewish experience into the survivor experience and an end in it into images cause survival in transformation and our first we look to the survivor experience to see if there's something in that experience that can help us transcend victimization and the planet and then the last word is in stained glass as is the first work of the logo of the holocaust project

and it's an image our of what i have come to be convinced if we really mean it when we say no more holocaust never again is the only possibility for that kind of transformation which is a redefinition of power and a true global sharing and that is presented in a sting last three sing less windows which is the jewish friday night shabaab as a metaphor for that global peace harmony and sherry and so that's one unique human experience becomes a pathway to i universal transformation and understanding that in one unique experiences possible to see the hope for universal human home something that is unique about the project

is the way one one panel one frame can combine photography and paint would you describe how you do that other companies to me you're welcome i've always worked content to form my first effort involves content searching like one is i have a one of saving one is one is that i'm after here and then as i find my subject matter then i try and five figure out what's the best promoter former media for that parents like lynn the fall i chose tapestry because i really wanted to imply that the holocaust were out of the fabric of western civilization hints tapestry in rainbow shabaab i really wanted a hopeful optimistic and transformational image and you know light his life so i just a glass but for the bulk of the exhibition it seem really important to root the images and the reality of the historical event that is painting a

man to tell for a photography and intel through painting the story that photography can't tell which is the human stories we have a lot of the little gust is we have relics and documentation and you know i may have liked in the us as in they have a boxcar work you would transfer ago as it is if a boxcar could speak i mean you know see hewlett is what happened inside the boxcar that we have no record of any more except through you know written records and so each one of the images required a different technical process in terms of combining pain photography specifically in some cases we insert i answer the images into the painted images into the phone a landscape photo feel in some cases we fuse pain photography entirely like in four questions in it in some cases their silk screening and painting and i mean there's multiple media to create a visual field for all of these

many realities both symbolic and visual to interact and they easily took an enormous amount of time whether he says it took so long was because in order to fuse the painting photography i had to paint at the level of detail the photography can create and that was really slow i mean really really slow it would take months as pence took months and months and months to execute you also incorporate fabric again only to work yes every oh yeah i'd like to talk about that and routers work and downloads every deals with wealth double jeopardy is it a twenty two foot long insulation a combined six painting photo pails with five tales that are in which flint hills that are so screen with a fielder jewish stars and then on top of that are stitched images when symbols and those are metaphors for the intersection of racism and sexism that shaped the particularities women's experience the holocaust because one of things it was very common to every exit of the holocaust i saw anywhere in the world

was that women's experience was minimize or dropped out and so we decide a similar project is generally gender balance that we would do one prop one piece and a examining an inquest it it really looking to see if there was anything specific about women's experience of the holocaust and when we were in route is worth the women's camp i saw all these little psalm dials and objects are now that was very startling because you may not think about people selling or were hearing when you think about the whole person and she has autism was very sick might rival attorney know why these drawings said i saw you saw people playing cards you saw people because they lived in the camps they live sometimes for a long time not everybody died right away you know some survive some lived for a long time and then they try to the best of their abilities to make a life in the camps and so there are all these little stone and embroidered top toys and dolls and so that the women had made for their children and they

would just overwhelmingly touching and painful and so i decided to incorporate in your work in this image in order to honor those women skirts in their efforts to maintain some measure of dignity in the face of what they were experiencing and so the women's singles i stitch by women who had worked with him in the bridge project they're off for a professional resource minister working with me and they're done in various forms of traditional judaism you know work which tends to be simple and fairly modest in size its causes french lot split stage stem station cross stitch a handout again the stitching is exquisite and as a way of commemorating these women's courage and the rainbow colors is there significance to that well the colors and the stitching relate to the colors of the painter actually rather muted listener great colors for my interns and my pal mike allen offers more and it unleashed a

debate that they take the same colors actually there in the painting and i just ordered them in the spectral orders of the cliche and that that has more to do with a way of usually repeating and creating consistency they also reverse you know to the world three go one way and to go the other way in terms of the shades and there were two groups that the nazis undesirable an acceptable to the human race any groups actually when you touch on that as well in one of the wider panel describe them well there was a book that i read by declining gallagher who's a disabled person possible called by trust betrayed and i found it it unravel a tory book he looked at the t for euthanasia program which was that which was really that where the nazis in the nazi doctors were trained in there killing methods

achieve our euthanasia programs took place at the beginning of the of the holocaust early holocaust and it was not it was that jews who attorney was actually another kind of undesirable it was crippled people old people infirm people insane retarded people mentally insane people all of whom were institutional x and the nazis not only targeted them for odd death day produced a series of propaganda films to convince the german people that this was a kindness and people were actually convinced by this which it brings up issues around the media and the role of failed and art the use of article in your cell phones in terms of how we can be manipulated and it's one of the things that comes up in four questions he asked where is the line where is the line of acceptability and societies refusal

to embrace a diversity of human experience you know is somebody who is our infirm retarded old week vulnerable sick because that person unfit to live what determines a quality life while it's one of the questions in the four questions and that that's where i really found the holocaust began to become both very kind complex and very compelling is that that is it is is when i began to make these connections or other people pointed out the connections in terms of you know looking at it from one another when it because i looked at for many points of view it's been looked at in terms of gay people's experience jewish experience there's even been worked out on the relationship between so slave labor asked at the holocaust an american slavery which i drew honest and work done in relationship to not seek a nuclear i ideology which i drew on there's been a tremendous amount of work done on the holocaust that has not yet entered the larger discourse i mean where we are in it

now in terms of the popular imagination as you know ok well now with the holocaust is a wish to his list we ought to get on and show we all begin to understand the holocaust happened it was a horrible thing and pat it however there's another level and that was it was at the when i reached that other level that it actually began to be much much more challenging and much much more difficult but not overwhelming overwhelming absolutely overwhelming overwhelming i think there was a point where doll and i we used to cause of ms dumas to glue have us degenerate get depressed i mean you know why should anybody have to think about this one or i'm i was many years thinking about this i don't i mean it we just felt once we get into it we just felt compelled by the material there something about it this unbelievably compelling it's like i think for everybody who believes you know that the world could be wanted to be a different place a place of greater justice of

up up up of less suffering i mean the holocaust somehow it's like how we came to do that as human beings in that i just i just had this intuition that in that in understanding that i would understand more about how we would be able to make the world a religious parties at the end where there's a rainbow and the light and the poem thats year oculus broken souls who have no peace ilias all from darkness into light that's an indication of a lot of pressure is that the panthers that the opening and we get to them and go through the years well i've i think that we can as well think as a shortcut to have actually an act you know i think i think we have to be willing to look at ourselves in the face head and to look at the world we've made and i think we have to go through that that's that's that's where people

malkovich libya wanted a oneness get that stuff and i know i'm lying but i i think i think we can change but i think we cannot change without going through the process of healing and healing can only happen when we are willing to hear each other really hear each other but the panel's before you asked the questions are the banality of evil and with all that the nile do they even hear the questions the fall not until not without coming out of the state of denial now i've signed up at sewing art of slowing on anti dynamite to deny well i don't know i'm an artist i mean uses the moment and others going really our world around around i mean and like the r is the air will last eight they wanted the night and i had to my work they would deny that art can be more than you know objects to be manipulated on the marketplace they want to deny the reality of people's response they were

denied that art can have a play a greater role in in indiana world that people that there's a bigger audience that there are people who really care about issues in the world are in iowa and when they deny it is by so putting me down they think if they just keep saying iran are tested my privates and failures and you know i should just go stick my head down the toilet and disappear that somehow all these issues will go away and we won't have to deal with them well i don't know i have been unsuccessful and i'm wearing them so i mean there are individuals in the our role i think it has to be through individuals i think individually i think that's one of the things i was interested by case decision and the video to say this is i'm doing a video about how individuals can make a difference because it starts with individual stars of an individual i mean look at it all all of history history tells us that individuals tookes us stand any individual took a stand and change the face of the nation an i can say is is that you know when there are

enough of us as individuals doing that then we will need dynamite land but he the us again and oreos orleans land the guest on foreigners been judy chicago the holocaust project which she created with her husband donald woodman has one exhibition site in the southwest the laguna glory art museum downtown an illustrated book that accompanies the project is published by viking penguin the views expressed on this program do not necessarily reflect the views of the university of texas at austin or the station technical produce to perform quote hargrove production assistants chris paulson where pillage and laura supper now i'm your producer and host all of graham i'm writing for and cassettes

long run radio network communication to the ut austin austin texas seventy seven one to france for him to say it's a longhorn radio network communication during the ut austin austin texas seventy seven one stephanie says telecommunications services university of texas at austin this is the longhorn radio network the pay this week on for artist judy chicago this was a private done by two people who decided to find out for themselves to try and understand for themselves what it was like when evil mean how did the holocaust taken place in what

could be learned from a holocaust project this week