On World Peace Day, can film deliver a message of hope? Artist Rob Carter describes the “architectural scars of warped ideology” captured in his new animation.
films4peace 2013: Rob Carter from films4peace on Vimeo.
Earlier this year I took part in the Loop Barcelona art fair, where Galerie Stefan Röpke screened my animation Sun City, writes Rob Carter.
It was there that the curator of films4peace, Mark Coetzee, was introduced to my work and consequently he asked me to participate in this unusual and challenging project – to make a new video work with the ambiguously simple subject of “peace”.
Though increasingly political, my work has never specifically addressed this somewhat utopian concept, but I felt I needed to work on a project that might address the idea of global ceasefire and non-violence that 21 September now marks each year. As a result, the commission gave me the freedom to focus on an artifact of WWII that had fascinated and moved me, and make a video about the architectural scars of warped ideology and warfare on the landscape itself.
My visit to the Ebensee Nazi concentration camp in Austria in 2010 left a lasting emotional imprint on my mind. Instantly moved by the place, I felt troubled for taking the few photographs I did and instead, I turned my camera on the breathtaking landscape of the area, especially Lake Traunsee.
Between 1943 and 1945 the Nazi SS brought prisoners of many nationalities to Ebensee from Mauthausen concentration camp near Linz. They were forced to build an underground tunnel system invisible from Allied aerial surveillance. The plans for it to be a Luftwaffe headquarters or a site for testing a new intercontinental rocket were scrapped and the tunnels were eventually used for petroleum refining and for the manufacture of tank and truck parts.
The dank silence of the tunnels barely contains a remembrance of the terrible world that once existed there.
Ultimately it is impossible to comprehend the abject horror and atrocities that occurred at Ebensee during this time, and my lasting memories of this place concern the haunting beauty of the area, the peace and stillness. In shocking contrast to the beauty, deep within the local rock face the remnants of these huge bunkers and tunnels remain. Inside, the dank silence of the tunnels barely contains a remembrance of the terrible world that once existed there.
Using time-lapse photography shot during my visit and animation shot this year, the video is an attempt to describe the layered history that lies within the town and landscape of Ebensee. Separated from the disturbing extant images we have of the camp’s liberation, this video uses photographs taken by the contemporary visitor to re-animate the place and describe how the land has recovered its tranquility but not its innocence.
The video was made over an intense four-week period in June this year and predominantly uses a stop-motion technique I’ve been working with over the past decade. By cutting, twisting and bending photographs and adding Foley sounds, they take on re-energised narratives that transport the viewer from one environment into the next, whilst never escaping the simplicity and frailty of the illusion. The technique seems appropriate for the theme – so fragile and malleable is this idea we call peace.
films4peace launches globally on 21 September. See www.films4peace.com. All the contributing films can now be viewed here.