Artist Lecture -- Shimon Attie

Still from The Attraction of Onlookers 

Joachim-Ecke Auguststrasse: Slide projection of former Jewish resident, 1931, Berlin, 1992

Judging by the image that was chosen for Shimon Attie's lecture poster, I was not excited at all to come today, but I've got to say I was very pleasantly surprised. While I thoroughly enjoyed the entire lecture despite the embarrassing technical difficulties, I'm mainly going to focus on Attie's The Attraction of Onlookers -- Aberfan: An Anatomy of a Welsch Village. In 1966 there was a tragic disaster in the Welsch  village of Aberfan.  A man-made avalanche slid down a mountain and completely covered the village's only elementary school.  This disaster brought all kinds of attention to the small village and hasn't truly allowed them to move on and really recover from the disaster.  It has also spawned a kind of disaster tourism that brings swells of bottle-neckers to see the site of the disaster.  Like Attie said, "We freeze in response to trauma, but the trauma is never complete."  He was approached many times to make a piece commemorating the incident and turned it down many times before he actually accepted.  He made two promises to the village, that he would not use any of the archival imagery of the accident and he would show them in a way that they'd never been shown before.
Thus he created The Attraction of Onlookers.  In this five channel installation, he had images of archetypes that could be found in any given Welsch village: the dancer, the hardcore singer, the mayor, the men's choir, the conductor, the family.  Each person/group of people were depicted on slowly moving black platform which was seamless against a black background.  They were holding various poses that were indicative of their particular "label".  In the background, there was a slow, tinkling music that was very quite and contemplative.  The music coupled with the movements reminded me of a music box, and it was really quite touching.  He chose to show the people with expressionless faces in order to extract any sentimentality that could be attached to each person.  The use of these iconic types was to rectify the loss of privacy and anonymity.  I wish I would've been able to experience this piece in person. I believe it would be truly moving to be encompassed by all of the imagery and sound of this work.