Something was horribly wrong with the full-page ad for an upcoming exhibition about the Auschwitz death camp. It appeared yesterday on Holocaust Remembrance Day. I know the folks behind the ad meant well. But really . . . Auschwitz and the art of advertising are a nauseating mix. Here’s the unthinking kicker which caught my eye beneath the infamous photo that hugely illustrates the ad.
The complete ad with the photo only makes it worse.
In the dirty stockings of Adolf —
that’s how we lived.
Our ventriloquist dummies
made a bad bargain.
Arbeit macht nix.
When the liberaton of Auschwitz-Birkenau
is recalled with the mournful whistle
of an imaginary death train,
the vulgar NO!art of Boris Lurie,
a survivor of Buchenwald-Magdeburg,
looms like a signal
from remembered depths.
In the dirty stockings of Adolf
arbeit macht nix.
—JH
Please see William Osborne’s comment. It explains and clarifies what is at issue. He writes:
This would seem to play directly into the hands of Norman Finkelstein’s 2000 book The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering. Even if Finkelstein’s book has some weaknesses, he also makes some valid points. The big problem is that if one gives Finkelstein an inch, anti-Semites will take a mile.
So what is the best approach to things like that astounding ad?
Minds far better than mine have argued that the Holocaust is unique, that it can hardly be addressed because it was and still is beyond comprehension. It is thus argued that almost any attempt to address the Holocaust will by necessity be reductive and even a trivialization. The Holocaust, it is argued, is an extremity of evil for which we have no language or even cognitive ability. And yet we cannot be silent.
Another approach to this ad might be Baudrillard’s idea that in our media-centric culture much of reality becomes a simulacrum — representations that spiral so deeply in ever-repeated self-referential memes that they lose their basis in reality. Or alternatively, our sense of the world is seen through the lens of the media and thus becomes only a simulation of reality — a matrix we see because we swallowed the blue pill, as it were.
These two ideas are brought together if we accept that Holocaust is beyond comprehension, and that our only approaches to it can be through simulacrums, i.e. artifacts that represent the Holocaust but are not actually connected to it, And through simulations such as Holocaust museums so reductive that they lose the actual reality of horrors that in any case can have no representation.
These simulara and simulations thus define the cheesy artificiality of mass culture until they become so ubiquitous that they define reality itself. Promotion for the Auschwitz exhibit falls into the hands of an advertising agency and we see a McAuschwitz ad in the NYT. Under these circumstances, the dangers of the Holocaust being instrumentalized can indeed become a problem.
Form there we arrive back at the No!Art of Boris Lurie, the idea that representations or conceptualizations of the Holocaust can only be a grotesque parody. He seems to follow this to its logical conclusion and consciously represents the Holocaust only through grotesque parody, a vulgarity beyond the nature of language and representation itself. The difference is that unlike that ad, Lurie consciously uses this irony.
And then comes the irony that I am foolishly overthinking things for which there will never be any answers. Your simple commentary and clip of the ad says far better what needs to be said.
This would seem to play directly into the hands of Norman Finkelstein’s 2000 book “The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering.” Even if Finkelstein’s book has some weaknesses, he also makes some valid points. The big problem is that if one gives Finkelstein an inch, anti-Semites will take a mile.
So what is the best approach to things like that astounding ad?
Minds far better than mine have argued that the Holocaust is unique, that it can hardly be addressed because it was and still is beyond comprehension. It is thus argued that almost any attempt to address the Holocaust will by necessity be reductive and even a trivialization. The Holocaust, it is argued, is an extremity of evil for which we have no language or even cognitive ability. And yet we cannot be silent.
Another approach to this ad might be Baudrillard’s idea that in our media-centric culture much of reality becomes a simulacrum — representations that spiral so deeply in ever-repeated self-referential memes that they lose their basis in reality. Or alternatively, our sense of the world is seen through the lens of the media and thus becomes only a simulation of reality — a matrix we see because we swallowed the blue pill, as it were,
These two ideas are brought together if we accept that Holocaust is beyond comprehension, and that our only approaches to it can be through simulacrums, i.e. artifacts that represent the Holocaust but are not actually connected to it, And through simulations such as Holocaust museums so reductive that they lose the actual reality of horrors that in any case can have no representation.
These simulara and simulations thus define the cheesy artificiality of mass culture until they become so ubiquitous that they define reality itself. Promotion for the Auschwitz exhibit falls into the hands of an advertising agency and we see a McAuschwitz ad in the NYT. Under these circumstances, the dangers of the Holocaust being instrumentalized can indeed become a problem.
Form there we arrive back at the No!Art of Boris Lurie, the idea that representations or conceptualizations of the Holocaust can only be a grotesque parody. He seems to follow this to its logical conclusion and consciously represents the Holocaust only through grotesque parody, a vulgarity beyond the nature of language and representation itself. The difference is that unlike that ad, Lurie consciously uses this irony.
And then comes the irony that I am foolishly overthinking things for which there will never be any answers. Your simple commentary and clip of the ad says far better what needs to be said.
All of this, the idea that there can be no artistic representations of the unspeakable, is best summarized in your two lines:
“In the dirty stockings of Adolf
arbeit macht nix.”
I think few will understand.
Well, I’d argue that having the domain name auschwitz.nyc is the correct thing to do — it’s descriptive and it subtly conveys the idea that genocide can be here and now. The website itself is tasteful enough.
So the problem is with “tickets now on sale.” The name Auschwitz has been made holy through suffering. It should never be coupled with “tickets” because it implies genocide can be a spectator sport. It should never be coupled with “on sale” because life is not cheap. A better wording would have been less venal and more dignified. “Learn more at auschwitz.nyc” or “plan your visit at auschwitz.nyc” would have worked.
Last year, I visited the local Jewish Museum to see a particular exhibit.
The exhibition was a large collection of photographs of the work that Canadian armed forces did with liberating the survivors found in places like Auschwitz as WWII was ending.
There were no tickets to buy to see the exhibit, just a small bit of signage stating that donations are appreciated. Of course, I contributed a donation.
The exhibit had me in tears, most of the time. I had to make a second visit to the exhibit, after steeling myself for the shocks presented to my eyes by the photography.
Keith, I fully agree with your statement about purchased “tickets” implying that genocide is a spectator sport, rather than something to be mourned.
uhm … “Auschwitz” and “tasteful” make a combo that’s hard to swallow. the web site is educational, yes, but it still can’t avoid the sales pitch. i.e.: “Buy exhibition tickets.” have a look: https://mjhnyc.org/ equally problemmatic (for me anyway, and insoluble) is that at Yad Vashem, which I visited some years ago, I couldn’t help thinking there was so much Nazi regalia on exhibit, unavoidably, that contemporary neo-Nazis, white supremacists, KKKers, and all the rest of their kind, might feel right at home there seeing it all in such concentration. a truly disgusting possibility, but nothing about the Holocaust is impossible.
It’s hard to participate in a discussion about an ad about Auschwitz. While at the same time most of the arguments prove that the subject or unspeakable event is still extremely vital & uncomprehensable. Auschwitz can never be a tourist attraction. To me it is more of a non-location that can only be apprached with the language of silence that requires a personal involvement like in the poetry of Paul Celan.
A friend from Frankfurt happened to be over when I read this, and he sed, Gosh, all I wanna see is if that auschwitz.nyc url is for real …
And yes, it worked.
Glancing at those logos at the top of the page, he squinted and asked, What’s this here, Musealia? I never heard that name, can we check this?
So I did. My old friend read aloud what came on screen now, abt Musealia being ‘a global producer of large-scale exhibitions that are presented at museums and education centers. Our vision is to create exhibitions that are distinguished by their strong narrative character, historical/scientific rigor, emotional impact and educational value.’
Having done this, he fell silent for a minute.
Then, jabbing his index finger at the screen: Look at this. Besides that Auschwitz thing they have the Titanic! This is what they do, huh. Make show.
I sed, Yes they obviously organize these expo things, do logistics, cart and fly all this stuff around the world for people to see, it seems?
Yeh, this seems to be their business, my friend replied. Like a good old Wanderzirkus, huh.
I sed, Wait a minnit, this here is educational!
Come on, he sed. Isn’t educational what that weirdo doc in his fake Beuys hat claims to be, with all his dissected corpse-puppets on show? Yech. Say … you still do have this great old TG 45 around, no? (Incidentally, we both were, still are great fans of Throbbing Gristle. And way back loved to debate abt the merits of their 45, ‘Zyklon B Zombie’, with that eerie locked groove, and how it worked best w/ all lights out.)
Come on, my friend sez, pounding on my desk. Where is it, let’s play it NOW … to me it seems to make a lot more sense than all that grandscale museal-capitalist event mongering. Old battered KZ victim suitcases turned commodity, a spectacle to gawk at? YECH. It makes me sick to my stomach. DO people need THAT to grasp ANYTHING? And WHAT –– what do I read here? –– they despise being asked for the ticket money? What IS all this? You tell me?
Ssssshhhhh, easy now, I say. Ssshhhh. Think of young people, students, who –– who –– now look –– it’s about the way of advertising, about how ––
Bollocks!, he yells. Which reminds me … wasn’t it a Lenny Bruce shtick where … Hubert’s Museum, huh? Where he sez like, A marvel of science, a quarter to get in, and as a kid I was really hung up on science? … Fuck all this. Where’s that li’l TG platter now? I wanna hear it! LOUD! Wait. Can I go get us a drink first? I certainly feel a need to relax.
He got up noisily and walked over into the kitchen.
I shut down my browser.
Paul Virilio has labelled catastrophes like Auschwitz, Hiroshima/Nagasaki, Chernobyl, and the Challenger disaster as “Negative Monuments” to accidents.
I regard the advertisement for the exhibition as unsettling, and this seems to be due to the railroad track linear perspective photo.
I’ve turned the ad & photo that Jan posted upside down, and looked at it as a reverse perspective image.
Reversed on the Y (vertical) axis, the photo has an effect that is opposite to the effect of strong linear perspective which delivers a sense of detachment and distance.
Reverse perspective has effects that are opposite to that of linear perspective effects in a photo, drawing my attention inwards and towards the photographic image, provoking an emotional involvement, rather than an intellectual involvement.
Intellectually, I find the ad to be rather poorly designed.