by Arne Vogelgesang & Nir Shauloff
| Poor Germany. Despite promoting itself as an exemplary country in dealing with its past, despite educational programs about Nazism and the Shoa, despite all of the discursive and cultural production linked to these programs, the nation has not managed to overcome the trauma it caused. Its collective psyche swings between auto-aggressive self-blaming and passive-aggressive identity mania. Which means could heal this tormented soul? The German artist Arne Vogelgesang has taken upon himself the role of a beacon in the dark sea of national identity. His healing proposal for Germany is as simple as it is radical: Abolish the German language and replace it with Yiddish as the new official lingua of Daytshland. He has changed his name to Avner Foyglgezang and has started acquiring the Yiddish language and translating some of the most important documents of German culture from the second half of the 20th century into Yiddish. His journey is one of humble devotion and ritualistic self-healing, and he invites you to become a part of it. |
Facing the temporality of the Zionist project, Israeli artist Nir Shauloff started looking for a plan for the next phase. Cultural and economic austerity, combined with the annual summer war, do not provide a solid and stable future in the present Israeli reality. While struggling under these political, economical and cultural conditions, the European option has become a clear one, a just-in-case plan for a rainy day. Collaborating with Germans is a reasonable and affordable opportunity to experience the option of the up-coming future. Out of the shared past and with the understanding of the current identity crisis of The German, The Israeli offers himself as a guide for establishing a new-old culture, based on a missing one that got lost before everything happened. The Nayalte culture, built on long-gone bricks of language, knowledge and identity can create a new future for the German, and can also provide a refuge for the Israeli, if and when it’s needed. |
Arne Vogelgesang, born 1977 in Berlin/GDR, is based in Berlin. He studied theatre directing in Vienna and has been devising multimedia performances with his label internil since 2005.
Nir Shauloff, born 1983 in Jerusalem, Israel, is a performer and a theater maker, based in Jaffa.