About two years ago I was given recordings of an archaeological investigation at the site of the Belzec Death Camp in Poland (1999). These investigations were carried out prior to the construction of the memorial there and my task was to edit the videos into something that could be seen as a narrative of those events.
The videos however were less than brilliant and any documentary-type video was going to prove impossible. However, I wanted to work with the video in some way or another and in 2010, as part of Holocaust Memorial Day, I exhibited a number of images based in part on the original video.
This year, I want to make a piece based on the video and the stills I exhibited in 2010. The initial idea is to capture all the pieces of ‘snow’ from the recordings and to arrange them in a sequence. The ‘snow’ represents the end of something, and it’s the idea of something ending which interests me as regards this piece.
Eventually I will develop the video using the colour/documentary footage on the tapes, intercutting them with the ‘snow’ elements. I will put up extracts of each stage as and when they’re complete.
Below is a short extract of the snow sequence.