Research by SRV Sektion Rassen- und Volkstumsforschung
| title: |
Research by SRV Sektion Rassen- und Volkstumsforschung |
| year: | 2018 |
| dimensions: | 758/433/100 cm, 672/83/5 cm |
| technique: | installation, steel, ambrotype, glass |
| description: | (In memory of my family and those who experienced forced evictions during the "Operation Vistula" in 1947) The main goal of the installation, based on the unique materials created during World War II and currently at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology of the Jagiellonian University and the Archives of the Jagiellonian University, is an attempt to critically examine their ambiguous "scientific" value and, at the same time, to commemorate the cultural heritage of the respondents at that time regions. The archival photographic materials used come from the racial-folk and sightseeing section of the Institut für Deutsche Ostarbeit (IDO). The intention of Hans Frank (General Governor of GG) was to transform the Institute into a German university in Krakow. The photographs were to show the natural values of the General Government, the cultural backwardness of the lands of conquered Poland, as well as prove the age-old German presence in the "East" translated as "German civilization mission". The implemented project is also a reflection on the use of the methods of anthropology and ethnography, and the history of art by national socialism, it shows the entanglement of science in totalitarianism, as well as the ambiguous status of neutral and innocent at first glance touring and ethnographic photographs. Pictures of Lemko, Polish, Ukrainian and highlander people usually do not differ from traditional photographic documentation of ethnographic or sightseeing value. However, it is obvious that all activities related to the study of the population in the areas occupied during World War II, i.e. photographs of the face, individual parts of the body, medical interviews, psychological, sociological and anthropological surveys, were obligatory and compulsory. The installation consists of a large, steel structure, symbolically referring to the form of the iconostasis from the Podkarpacie region. The facility has a symmetrical system of frames in which there are digital copies of archives of various sizes, printed on a steel plate. Selected photos come from the IDO's racial and folklore and sightseeing sections. The form of the iconostasis in this case is a reference to the culture, customs and faith of the Rus' highlanders, Lemkos and Ukrainians. In place of the images of saints, apostles and prophets, images of the rural population were placed. The gesture of relocating, changing the hierarchy is to commemorate and draw attention to social groups that, as a result of the war and ethnic cleansing of 1947, known as the "Vistula Action", were displaced from the areas of Roztocze, Przemyśl Foothills, Bieszczady and Beskid Niski. Thus, the cultural heritage of these regions was destroyed. Cooperation: Dariusz Sitek |
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