"My position is that you cannot work towards peace
being peaceful. If the peace is to be one where everybody’s
quiet and doesn’t open up ...share what’s
unspeakable...defend others’ rights to speak
and encourage discourse, that peace is worth nothing."
"There is something happening among participants that they
form certain links, hear each other, join each other, share."
“Any attempt to identify with the person is a danger.
To say, ‘I understand what you went through,’ is
the most unacceptable response. The opposite may be more
appropriate. ‘I will never understand what you went
through.’”
I received the Hiroshima Art
Prize. According to what is written in a text describing
the prize, it’s given to those who contribute to world
peace as artists. I don’t think it’s really possible
to say that someone like myself contributed to world peace.
I don’t think I deserve this prize, but once it was
given to me I decided to accept it on the condition that
I will try to deserve this prize. I will be spending the
rest of my life trying to deserve it. This gave me additional
motivation to keep developing more public projects. It was
also a possibility to do a large public project in Hiroshima.
I proposed a projection, which was to take place the night
of the anniversary of the bombing, which was a very important
event worldwide, in Japan, and of course, most importantly,
in Hiroshima.
The issue is perhaps more philosophical, how can we work
towards peace? Maybe it’s not right to discuss here,
but I have to say something for the record about peace. My
position is that you cannot work towards peace being peaceful.
If the peace is to be one where everybody’s quiet and
doesn’t open up...share what’s unspeakable...offer
unsolicited criticism...defend others’ rights to
speak and encourage discourse—that peace is worth nothing.
It reminds me of the kind of peace that was secured in my
old country under the Communist regime. That is the death
of democracy. That might have consequences as bad as war—bloody
war and conflict. So, to prevent the world from bloody conflict,
we must sustain a certain kind of adversarial life in which
we are struggling with our problems in public.
I started working on my Hiroshima projection with the assumption
that we were going to ‘reactualize’ the A-Bomb
Dome monument
(one of the few structures that survived the
bombing—just underneath the hyper-center of the explosion)
and reanimate it with the voices and gestures of present-day
Hiroshima inhabitants from various generations, starting
with those who survived the bombing, who witnessed it; their
children, who may still remember; their grandchildren and
great-grandchildren. So all those generations somehow connect
through this projection, not necessarily in agreement in
terms of the way the bombing is important and the way the
meaning of that bombing connects with their present experiences.
The fallout of the bombing is physical and cultural, psychological.
I started to talk to survivors of the bombing. Not only the
Japanese but also those who were treated as non-Japanese,
so-called Koreans. Here we’re talking about slave laborers
who were bombed together with their masters in Hiroshima,
for whom, at the time of this project, there was no room
in Peace Park. Their monument was outside, now it’s
moved inside. But their voices were never heard as equal.
They were sort of third- or second-rate victims. Now they
could speak through this projection freely and actually bring
various personal experiences and critical thoughts about
the way they were treated by the authorities in Japan.
We have very young people, for example, the person who was
in love with a young man and they were planning to get married
and the parents of this man opposed the marriage on the basis
that she was born in Hiroshima. According to their misguided
imagination, she was carrying some genetic disorder that
will be a danger for the family in the future. The same person
was questioning her own reaction to certain events
in Japan that were carrying traces of chauvinism and racism.
Another person was talking about conversations overheard
in her father’s office about good times, that is, during
the last war where companies had great military commissions—Mitsubishi
for example—producing armament in Hiroshima and enjoying
economic prosperity. Those fragments were transmitted through
this monument, by gestures and voices of participants of
various generations.
One person was the granddaughter of this imperial army officer
speaking about the way the atmosphere at home—as she called
it, “boot camp”—affected her personality and
traumatized her, and also how much school colleagues were
responding to her, adding to this as if it was another war.
So she was caught between two continuations of World War
II—a domestic environment and school—which seemed to be
an unfortunate experience of many young people in Japan.
Connecting various generations of people is the case with
many of my projects. There is something happening among participants
that they form certain links, hear each other, join each
other, share. There’s what’s happening between
them and their families. In the case of the person who told
the truth for the first time about this situation at home,
she had to speak to her family among those 5,000 people standing
across the river. It’s easier to be honest speaking
to thousands of people through a monument than to tell the
truth at home to the closest person. The question is, what
will happen after such a statement? The report that I received
from her is that the situation is better, she said, “Before
we were silent, now we argue about it, and that’s peace.”
ART:21:
What are your three citizenships?
WODICZKO:
Polish, Canadian, and American.
Perhaps it should be off-the-record (LAUGHS) for my own safety,
in the present environment of conservative patriotic spirit.
I have also French permanent residence.
ART:21:
Can you say more about your
own personal connection to World War II?
WODICZKO:
The fact that I was born during
World War II, and my childhood was on the ruins of war, both
physical and political and perhaps moral, and definitely
psychological…is probably a sign that I am qualified
to understand at least a little bit of what survivors have
gone through…my mother being a Jew who survived the
war, whose entire family was killed during the Warsaw Ghetto
uprising, and who gave birth to me in the midst of all this.
When I first met the people of Korean origin who lived in
Hiroshima and survived the bombing, the way they were speaking
sounded like my mother. The most similar aspect was the sense
of humor. The type of humor of a survivor—using humor to
cope with the worst. It’s enough to be Polish, to have
that sense of humor, but being a Polish Jew gives you double
qualification to offer this kind of response, like I heard
from the Koreans. That was very helpful because they recognized
in my face that familiarity and it helped to develop trust.
Without trust there is no possibility for my work to develop.
Trust is the starting point. The people who are participants—who
become co-artists—must feel that somebody in charge is on
their side in some deeper sense. This is the background for
the Hiroshima projection.
ART:21:
What is the role of the river
and water in the piece?
WODICZKO:
Well, the water is not innocent.
The river is as much a witness as the A-Bomb Dome building
reflected in the water. It was in fact the river that became
a graveyard for both people and buildings. The river was
where people jumped to their death because they thought that
it would help them to cool their burns, but in fact it only
contributed to a quicker death. Those are the events or scenes
recalled by some of the memorial projection participants
and artists who were speaking through the building, as if
they were the building, looking at the river and seeing all
of this again—the bodies floating, the people jumping in.
At the same time, the river continues its flow as if nothing
has happened. There is fresh water coming. The river is like
a tragic witness—but also a hope—because it’s moving.
The fact that both the building and the projection reflected
themselves into the river (that is both a witness and a hope
of change, a new life) somehow completed the picture. During
the recording of the testimonies, one person was drinking
water. As she was about to drink, I realized that perhaps
I should suggest something aesthetically...that
she pour the water back into the river. That was maybe the
only aesthetic
intervention in this project, which was met with agreement
and support on the part of everybody in the studio. So that’s
why we left it at the end of the projection.
There’s one important aspect in the Hiroshima projection
that might be true with all of my projections—the visibility
of the texture of the surface on which the image is projected.
The images are not projected on the white screen, but on
the façades that are carved. They have their own iconic
arrangements or texture, made of bricks or mortar. And this
is important. There is an image, there is a building.
There is a body of the person, projected, and there is a
body of the building or the monument, animated. But it is
also the skin of the building, the surface, which is seen
as something in between. And that’s a very important
protective layer that separates the overly confessional aspect
of the speech of those who animate the building and our overly
empathetic approach towards the speakers. So that creates
a distance which is important for thinking—for recognizing
that between them and us there is a wall. Any attempt to
identify with the person is a danger. To say, “I understand
what you went through,” is the most unacceptable response.
The opposite may be more appropriate. “I will never
understand what you went through.”
