 Hello, good morning. Welcome to everyone. We're about to start. Well, we've been in two very intense days of debates and visits and cultural activities and we are facing our last day of the symposium. In this second panel discussion, which is devoted to solidarity and the power of art, an issue not free from controversy, we are going to face this Marriott and this strange relationship. When we were preparing the panel, we had a meeting and raised the question of the definition of solidarity. In these two days, we have listened to different approaches, like for example, Mr. Rogulski, that defined solidarity as bond, for example, or Piotr Nynski, and he was explaining us the Polish trade union of the 80s. And according to the definition of the dictionaries, the words that resonate the most are unity and support for common interest, which says a lot and probably nothing at the same time. In this panel, we are going to find out and reflect about different prism and perspectives of treating solidarity by art means, regarding to its mediating role between remembrance, solidarity, resistance, and its social significance. Its presumed capacity of censorship and give voice to oppressed and marginalized, or its social responsibility. Let me introduce the first panelist and I apologize in advance for the pruning session of your names. Our first speaker will be, according to the program, we have Simon Krebet. Welcome. He's a coordinator of the project of the Derezenstadt Center of Genocidal Studies. He has dedicated and actively participated in a number of outreach and educational programs in the area of commemorating the history of genocidal violence. Simon, the floor is yours. Good morning. So first of all, I thank the organizers for the opportunity to speak here at this very important conference. In my presentation, I will briefly inform you about the ways of using art in the activities of our center. This presentation was made by me and my colleague Pavel Chalupa, who is the director of arts programs in our center. So first of all, let me briefly introduce our center. I'm representing the Archaeology of Evil Research Center, the NGO, which was established in 2012 as the independent and non-profit organization with the aim to promote research and teaching about the causes, origins, and consequences of genocidal violence throughout the history of mankind. Since 2017, the center is located in the main fortress of Derezenstadt, Derezen, the former Jewish ghetto and transit camp located close to Prague in the Czech Republic. And in the same year, we launched the project called the Derezenstadt Center for Genocide Studies, and we are based now in the Wiesershaus, which picture you can see. So our main activities are focused on education and awareness raising, including education for the university students. We took the first course in genocide studies in the Czech Republic. We have been also active in adoption of resolution by the parliament of the Czech Republic in 2017, which we call it the genocide resolution. And we established a permanent exhibition with virtual reality as well in 2018. And our main focus is the non-formal educational programs mainly for high school and elementary schools pupils. The use of art in our center is very wide and multiple. We use art basically for the educational purposes and public awareness raising activities, and mainly for genocide prevention. We understand art and we use art as a universal communicator which is based on authentic experience for the target groups and also it contains the emotional component which is very important for us because the victims in our programs in which we use art are not some numbers in the statistics of genocide, but they are the literary and dramatic characters. And as we know that art was widely used in the genocidal campaigns in ideology, we also understand our use of art as the rehabilitation of art. Here is the list of art forms which we use. Of course visual arts and exhibition projects, theater and drama, literature, music, classical, traditional as well as modern and multimedia installations including the virtual reality modeling. So now I will show you some examples of our use of art or of our artistic projects and programs. This is the photo exhibition of the Holocaust survivors made by the one photographer with Czech-Vietnamese photographer. This exhibition was installed in more than 30 cities in central Europe. This is the example of our permanent exhibition, photo exhibition. Here is the exhibition about the current state of Theresienstadt fortress which is in very bad shape. More than half of the military buildings are now collapsing. So we use the photo exhibition for public awareness about this problem. This is also an example of the temporary exhibition which is about the children at war made by UNICEF, the famous photographers collected the exhibition. One of the most important use of our use of art in our programs is theater. This is the theater performance based on the novel of Anna Schlustig, Holocaust survivor and writer. This performance was installed in the train, in the real train which traveled in Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland in years 2012 until 2016. In 2017 we moved the train, the car to Theresienstadt in the courtyard. So it is now used for other performance. Actually this is the picture from the last scene of the theater play which is based on the real story in the gas chamber, the revolt in the gas chamber in Auschwitz, Birkenau. As for the literature we work with writers, we do exhibitions about their books, we present their books. And also in 2012 we released the specific poem based on the, let's say, research of the artist and reading Hitler's Mein Kampf and this poem with the music was also released on CD in 2013. Music is an important tool or way how to represent especially the Roma genocide because music is important for this community. So these are some examples of music performance but also the classic music is performing in our programs especially about Theresienstadt, so-called Theresienstadt composers. And this is our last project which nowadays is implemented in the Czech Republic. It is called the Lemkin train and it's dedicated to Raphael Lemkin and his life and work. And inside the cars there is a multimedia exhibition about Lemkin. So it's a combination of visual arts and multimedia program which tells the story of Raphael Lemkin. And finally we work with virtual reality with our partner, the Smichov Technical School. We created the model of Theresienstadt, like digitized model which is also accessible in virtual reality. So we can also talk about some artistic component of this activity. This is the model of the prisoners of war camp in Theresienstadt during the First World War. So to sum up, our key are projects, our nationalistic train, the permanent and temporary exhibitions, Lemkin train and also new permanent exhibition which will be open next year in the Wiesershaus and it will be about the universal genocide behavior in humankind's history. So we are open to new partners, new ideas and thank you for your attention. Thank you, Simon. It's impressive how you face this important mission of the knowledge of the history of genocide through this multimedia perspective and through all different kind of disciplines. We are going to listen to our second speaker, Miroslav Nietzsche. He's a founder of Nietzsche Design International, an architect and patron of culture with 30 years of experience in designing public spaces. The floor is yours. Thank you. Good morning. Thank you for invitation for this important debate. I'm representing, as you said, a firm, architecture from Nietzsche Design International and it's happened that it has been 20 years we have been involved in developing certain projects as memorial, narration, complementation of exhibition and it's important for the goal of my firm that we are doing for 20 years something which is important for all of us. It has been 18 years we finalized the project Uprising Museum also. It has been 10, 8 years we finalizing POLIN exhibition with the design and complementation of the interior of design and we are in the process of very important projects for Ukraine, Holodomor Museum. But I will begin at museum which I am touched very much because the tragedy in the past, in 20th century and because the project was developing 12 years. It's about Michniów. It's a small village in Poland. It's a symbol of pacification of 300 villages in Poland and it's happened that we develop not only memorial but we develop museum which is a kind of expression of something what happened in 1944. It's the essence of escalation of occupation, pacification of these villages. And on the picture you see the burning village and my idea was to create something as a spine with screaming and getting destroyed and destruct. It's made in concrete with physical attach of the wood as a part of the texture and it's something, it's about victims and tortures and something about feeling about the time. And I think after this 20 years going through this narration you can feel by all the senses everything you can feel about that tragic history 1944. This is some of the picture done few months ago because I said the project was taking 10 years. Like I always said, important project is taking time. And you can see during different time how the project is reacting to the environment, how it's screaming, how it's telling the truth about the tragedy. And this is the end of the narration where you see this destruction of the villages. When you see the pictures printed on the steel with faces in front of you. And 300 crosses, it's actors which play very important role in this narration. Another project I got involved in my team, like I said it's a team of 25 people in my office. And in the past of four years we are developing the very important memorial museum about the genocide 1932. And this is my first sketch. The important is that we are cooperating with the firm Ukraine from project system and has the English design company. And I'm charged as a company for developing the architecture part, the interior part. This is my sketch showing how the structure of the building, it's telling the truth about the Hawadomor. This is sketch showing two layers of structure, soil, Ukrainian soil and the tortoise of regime which trying to destroy the integrity of the Ukrainian culture. And this is entrance which is showing exactly the breaking, the cracking the roof. And during the night you can see the truth coming from inside. This is something which is important for symbolic of that memorial. As important is soil, black soil in the narration of that museum. It show the corridor which show the soil expressing the dignity and the fighting for the freedom. And some of the exhibition as a pantheon showing the culture, very important heritage and everything which give this identity fighting for the freedom and giving everybody something which reflect past and the future. And we are in the point right now where we are thinking about changing the narration on the end of the narration because the situation right now. So we are thinking about developing another story and deal with that. Another project which is not developed but it's very important for me. It's a concentration camp which was in during the war, Rugoznica. It's something which remind the empty space, a hole 35 meter deep, 100 wide and it's reflecting to story about the surviving of the prisoners who got killed in that spot. And I divided this site into section historical and contemporary by creating the wall as a barrier between light and dark. And the stairs which are directing to journey through this opening finding about the true about this context. And the space which give you space for reflection. Thank you very much. Thank you Nijo. It's awesome, not only the monumental scale of your work but also the commitment with the site and the space where you work. Now we have our third speaker, Zyzo. He's a British architect, artist and filmmaker based in London known globally for his emotionally charged work in diverse media. The Twilight Zone. Oh my God. Thank you. Thank you for having me here today. And it's my honor to present to all of you today a very important art initiative by the European Parliament and the platform of European memory and conscience. This art initiative is close to many people's hearts and I would like to begin the presentation by sharing with you a very personal story. This photograph is showing me sketching in front of a 17th century derelict synagogue in a town called Snonim in modern-day Belarus. Snonim used to be a very vibrant Jewish town but in 1941 the Nazi troops entered Snonim and in just over a year they've exterminated the entire Jewish population of 22,000 including my friend's relatives. The Nazis they shot pregnant women in the belly and they murdered children manually because they didn't want to waste their bullets. And this drawing was made in memory of the victims of the atrocity as well as my friend's lay aunts and lay uncles who never grew old. And as we all know the story didn't stop there. Belarus lost a quarter of her population during the Second World War. Eventually Hitler's army was defeated but Stalin returned. It came with the creation of the Iron Curtain. Some Belarusian soldiers who fought alongside the Polish division decided to relocate to the UK in London and they started a new life there. They founded a boarding school teaching their children their native language which was banned in their motherland. They've even converted one of the rooms in a house into a temporary church. They continued to observe the national religion which was the Eastern Catholic Church. It had always been their collective desire to one day to build their own church. I was involved in the project and they sent me to Belarus to look at their cultural heritage sites and what I've learned was that the Soviet Union was the largest destroyer of cultural heritage. These were the drawings I made during my visit to Belarus and eventually they managed to build this wooden church in London, the capital of the UK as a memorial to the turbulent history of Belarus as well as a homage to their cultural identity. At night the little church would glow from inside commemorating their ancestors who were burned alive inside those wooden churches and synagogues during the Second World War. Now I'm sure these stories will resonate with many of you because they serve as reminders of the horrendous legacy of the evil Monotov-Ribbentrop pact. And in 2009 after many, many years of debates and public hearing sessions the European Parliament finally passed a resolution by an overwhelming majority to acknowledge Euro's totalitarian past, recognising the singularity of the Holocaust and calling for the creation of a pan-European memorial for all victims of totalitarianism and a platform of European memory and conscience organised an international competition in 2017. They worked with Brussels city authority to identify a potential site for this memorial and they've chosen Sean Ray Square named after a former president of the European Commission and as you can see from this area photo the site was strategically chosen due to its close proximity to all the major EU institutions. Because of my own experience I fell compelled to submit a proposal to the competition and these are the photos I've taken during my site visits and as you can see it's a normal public space in a bustling town in Europe but if you go there it's not like the synagogue I've just shown you or even Auschwitz it just doesn't carry the weight of history because totalitarianism happened in multiple geographies. The site just doesn't embody the emotions of the victims and it posted a major design challenge. Now these are some of my early sketches when I was trying to come up with an idea and I was really struggling because as you can see these are nothing more than empty architectural shapes. It says more about the author rather than the victims and the breakthrough came when I noticed some words I've written down on a piece of paper. It says beautiful meaningful moves heart. Now those are not my words. Those are the words of Nina Winkleman the former managing director of the platform of European memory and conscience during the competition launch in the European Parliament. She mentioned she wanted to see those qualities in a new memorial. So my mind was preoccupied with this desire to bring the voices of the victims to Brussels to central Brussels to make that emotional connection with members of the public. During a site visit I noticed this unknown man wearing a coat carrying a bag passing the square and I was captivated by him and somehow this image found its way to my unconscious mind and it explained the reason why later I came up with this idea of a messenger. For me the job of the designer was not to become a designer but to be the messenger of the victims. Collecting the last letters written by the victims to their loved ones and came to the square scattering the letters all over the public space. Now the concept is very simple and straightforward everybody can understand and the success of this memorial hinges on those real letters and the process of soliciting those letters was really humbling. We've received the permissions to use tens of thousands of letters as such by institutions, public archives and even private individuals who are related to the victims. We're not using the real letters as such but instead we're going to use the enlarged images of the letters so that people could read clearly the letters from a standing position. We would then propose to use modern technology to print the images of those letters on to the paving blocks and we repaved the square with these paving blocks. Putting the images of the letters on the floor on the ground is not a sign of disrespect and in fact if you look around in medieval Europe putting commemoration stones and even gravestones on church floors was a common practice. If anything it was a very European thing. But more importantly this memorial is a metaphor. The fact that our lives go on living in free Europe is due to the fact that we are the legacy of these victims. The irony is that Europe despite being the birthplace of democracy in the 21st century right now at this moment we still have dictatorship in Europe and Ukrainians are dying every day in their search for freedom. This memorial is not about confrontation. You wouldn't see a Soviet style monument sticking out from the ground. It's about reconciliation. Hopefully the viewers will identify a letter written in her own language one day and make that emotional connection with the memorial. I do believe I have one or two minutes left. I just really want to take this opportunity to share with you three short letters from the collection. You don't have to do that but I would encourage you to close your eyes and imagine these letters were written to you by your loved ones from the prison cells. Now the first letter we don't know who wrote it. It was from the collection of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC. It goes, my dear Manfred, I wholeheartedly congratulate you on your birthday. You have had to taste the suffering of the last few years. Your mother and your brother both in an unknown place will think of you with much anguish on this day. Since none of your parents nor siblings nor other relatives are able to surround you to help celebrate this day I hope the sole family representative will endeavor to provide you with some joy. The second letter was written by a son to his mother in the prison cell. It goes, dear Mama, a sad presentiment tells me that we met for the last time today. Dearest Mama, fate keeps on being cruel to you. This life of mine that together we have cherished so many times to the death finally manages to escape me. Please find comfort in the thought that I will be strong until the end. Certainly I do not feel afraid. The only great regret in my heart is knowing that sister and you will be alone in this world. And the last letter was written by the relative of a friend of mine who was in prison in the Gulak in the Far East. By the way, the previous letter the author was executed shortly after writing that letter. And this letter was written from Siberia again addressing to his mother. It goes, dear Mama, one thing that's bad here is that it's overcrowded. We live with 70 people in a narrow barrack. I sometimes feel so depressed and I don't know what to do. Mama said that I should save my health. That's the only way to survive here. God forbid you from falling ill, then you can count that you are dead. And I will conclude my presentation with this. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Not easy to continue after these letters. Very touching. But we have our last speaker, last but not least. We have Piazza Lance. She's a historian, theorist, an independent curator. Her work addresses a critical theory of violence and its structures through history and the visual arts. Author of the book Art and Resistance and Curator of Projects, Such Technologies of Violence, Work Machines, Waste Lands, We Refugees, etc. The floor is yours. Thank you. Good morning, bon dia. It's a pleasure for me to participate in such a congress and I want to say thank you for your invitation. I am going to speak in Spanish. If you want to put your headphones, please. The title of my presentation is YOLOBI, Resistance and Repair. I saw it. I was there. I am a testimony. From the illustration of the French, from the enlightenment of the French Revolution, the Marxist and liberal revolutions of the first half of the 20th century, the artist who was subordinate to power depending from the power of the church and the power of aristocracy, monarchy and bourgeois, becomes a political subject in Marx in the revolutionary events and becomes independent and free from this power in order to carry out the counter-representation of the representation he had made from power through beauty and through glorification of war, for example, and the sublimation, something that was hidden, the real phase of power. The artist becomes a political subject, emerges as a political subject through his gaze and turns his artistic work into a weapon, but the artist is not the killer. He is using his piece of art, his work of art in order to attack injustice and to reveal the abuses of power and immerse in the political events himself, victim of these events, and he is on the side of what we call the relation or society. One of the first artists to emerge as a political subject, as a testimony, I saw it, I was there, you cannot deny it, there is not any possible interpretation of this fact, is Francisco de Goya, known by all of you in the Disasters of War, where he reports the crimes and the destruction of war on the population and the capacity of resistance and also the vulnerability of society. How many corpses we still see today and we have seen during the 20th century in the population of corpses and this is an engraving of the Disasters of War of Francisco de Goya. I saw it, I was there in the 20th century in common graveyards in the camps and filled these immense piling up of dead bodies and continued to exist in the 21st century. German artist Otto Dix was in the First World War at the trenches and he experimented as a testimony how far the human being can go when it is destroyed. The trenches war and the gas chambers which are the gas masks, which are the dead masks are also engravers of the war 1920s by criticizing and reporting art as a weapon to report on the abuses and crimes of power and on the right we have an installation by John Herfield and Erwin Blumfeld both of them one German and the other one Dutch Jews in exile persecuted by the Gestapo and the Nazi regime and it shows the authentic face of power in the face of Hitler instead and these photographs of Hitler, these pictures were thrown as propaganda material by the Allied planes on German cities in order to warn the population on the danger of death during the Third Reich and the artist is actively participating because as I said before there are numerous in historical political war events in which he is also a victim but he does it based on solidarity. On the left we see Berlin is artist whose museum is in Berlin Krieg, never more the world and we also see on the 30th of June 1934 Heil Hitler hopes it's a wolf for the wolf but not even wolves kill themselves among each other as it happened during that night. Hitler terror artist reporting this butchery as a portraying Hitler as a butcher and wars as you all know create and lead to exile, displacement and refugees and thousands of people masses of people without the citizenship without rights and vulnerable and what was done with them and this is one of the first camps surrounded in the south of France where the Spanish exiled went fleeing from the revenge of the Franco army after the Spanish Republic was defeated. The refugees among whom we found members of the International Brigades are communist soldiers, socialist soldiers, republicans they were kind of welcome in this camp they themselves built surrounded by these wires the biggest threat of the 20th century because it allowed the technique of confining and concentrating and putting under control and their surveillance and when it was electrified killing huge amounts of people as it never has been done in the history of the past and in the Goose camp since 1940 we confined people who were called undesirable in French people who due to their condition or race, gypsies, homosexuals, communists Hannah Arendt was there, Jana Marie was there as there are people who were refugees in France since 1933 fleeing away from the Nazi terror and the Gestapo and artists such as John Turner who were closed in this camp and since 1940 with the defeat of Germany beginning of the defeat of Germany the Second World War were deported from France to Auschwitz in order to be killed in the gas chambers I saw it, I was there, Turner was also sent to Auschwitz but we have his testimony the artist as testimony and the writer, communist writer who was also in Auschwitz very well known by all of you who could not resist although he was not sent to the gas chamber he committed suicide because he could not withstand the memory of what happened there and he committed suicide in the kitchen of his home in Warsaw very interesting take a close look at everything do not feel defeated when you don't feel well because maybe our mission here will be reporting to the world everything that is happening let the world know what's happening he's a testimony to defend the death defending the death here we have an oil painting marvelous and terrible of the German artist where we see how the corpses were transported from Auschwitz the terrible gaze of that child I don't understand how defenceless those dead people are and here they are reporting the participation of France of the Pruna TVC government who always deny his participation in this transportation and they destroy all the archives in Auschwitz it was also called the confinement camp it was a concentration camp this I showed was a testimony of the French police participating in this transportation and finally Helga Huesova the Czech artist who survived as witch his father, her father told her paint what you see and her drawings were seen as a testimony in the hearings against Nazi crimes I'm going to go to what contemporary artists are doing artists with whom I work artists, international artists from all countries and this is an exhibition that I organized with refugees on a text from Hannah Arendt that she wrote in New York on the condition of the refugees nameless, workless, languageless without documentation also and I followed this text for an exhibition in a museum in the north of Spain what I want to highlight here is this poem by the Afghani star artist living in New York your silence will not protect you because silence means that that didn't happen and this is why we cannot remain silent the absence of language is not democratic democracy is the language, the Guernica by Picasso and the Esfanta on the Malaga the greatest crimes against the population of Spain I'm going to move forward a little bit quicker now this is a memorial I organized last year on 11,000 names of people who were concentrated at the Guards Trump and my inspiration was those lists that you can see on the lower right hand of the transportation of the administration that allowed those crimes to happen those massive killings to happen and here we have the most recent exhibition and the SIGABL, the transportation to the exile this huge map, a topography of the artist Cristina Lucas three screens, seven meters wide in the middle a topography of the bombarding of Guernica and the current situation in Ukraine and on the left we have the data and on the right the registers, the visual registers through the sentry from Guernica to Ukraine and this is the artist from Guatemala Edejina Jose Galindo, performance in Castle headquarters of weapons manufacturing chased by Eleopard 1, we are now in Eleopard 6 Edejina Jose Galindo denouncing and reporting genocides walking on the streets of Guatemala with a container full of blood stops in front of the institutions puts her feet there and walks around the city reporting the crimes of Efraín Ramos the dictator, the president, the genocide of the indigents who can erase the footprints this is the name of the performance and finally the Iranian artist living in Frankfurt Parazzo Fotojar working with symbols of beauty and iconography, symbols of Iranian writings are big installments in Casa Arabe in Madrid and Córdoba and the butterfly is the symbol of beauty and love, but when we look closer we see it's made by people tortured, killed and imprisoned and finally footprints cannot be erased and traumas cannot be forgotten we see and we should pay tribute to our people but trauma cannot paralyze us we should enlighten those who are alive work with the population, the Afghanis artists in exile in London working performances where she recovers all the work artifacts those instruments that have produced death so they are used in wargames wargames is the name of the work of art thank you very much for your attention thank you for this short historic summary through witness artists that witness the horror of war and totalitarian regime debate through a round of questions and my first question is for both Nijo and Ziwai and according to your long and successful careers how is qualitative impact of artistic expressions of solidarity and resistance measures I mean what are the indicators of the impact of how it is influencing the society and the spectators or the public the general public general speaking for almost 20 years we have been dealing with creating memorial and narration of the past of tragic history because until 1990 nothing happened there were monuments and our idea in our environment is to create something which impacts very much and educates in a way that we feel in all senses this is example of Michniów where the museum was created on the grave which said about the memory but nothing was explaining and nothing was educating about what happened and what we do to stop in the future of this tragedy this is why I think the example of Mausoleum of Michniów or Mausoleum Museum of Polish Saving Jewish it's something which stays forever in our minds and in my idea is to create something as expression of the feeling of the trauma so it stays with us for the rest of our life this is why it's important to have memories in the way as young people we understand because we live in a different society and different interpretation of the past this is the interpretation of artists and my goal is to giving the truth about the past and if I see this example of Chmielnik where we actually connect with the Jewish in the way how they felt, how they lived in the past before the war and the recreation of synagogue in some way as an art, as an installation because it's important that we try to and it's my way, a goal to talk in universal language to understand how understand is the past to understand the past, like I said before and I mentioned once again we can create anything but without the witness without the true story which is not the written only part which is very important if we forget about that and our goal is to create some kind of artistic ideology by now on it's not help so when I saw the Jewish people not the survivors but family of survivors who came to opening of the synagogue and they saw the Glasbima which was a recreation of my artistic points as a creation of something which plays a main role in synagogue when I look at the eye and the feeling of those people I said this is something which stays forever I saw people crying I saw people reminding the space before the war and I think say everything about the impact it's no words I don't know if Ziwei shares this opinion Well, I think art could serve as the soft power and I don't honestly believe art alone could mobilize a nation to overturn a dictatorship or a totalitarian regime but I do believe I think it goes hand in hand it depends on the context I just really want to quote a very famous example I don't know whether anyone in the audience remembers the singing protest in Estonia for example just before the dissolution of the Soviet Union this mobilization of the mass and use their national way of expressing themselves in a very subtle way to protest against tyranny was rather powerful and I think art in not a small way could really be that soft power to play a huge role in terms of bringing people together on an emotional level that's my short answer to your question probably emotional level is what can measure the impact of the work my second question is for our two other speakers because you are probably in the other side of the performance and from your professional experience how does art shape our understanding of resistance and solidarity occurring in the past I mean how does art, what are the means of art to present and represent the facts of the past but in terms of solidarity and resistance according that you are a greater writer and you run all this center devoted and dedicated to spread the knowledge and the information of genocide so I can start in my point of view and my experience art provides a different perspective of how to understand the genocidal events war crimes, aggression it is some optional view to the rational scientific description and it is very important that it brings art brings some different language which is universal to all genocidal events to all historical events because everybody in the world understands what is death, what is the mass death and in this respect it brings some new perspective also to solidarity, to resistance it is the way how to understand people who were involved in resistance in revolt as I showed the example of the revolt in the gas chamber this situation is very difficult to understand in a rational way of thinking and this artistic example the theatre performance can help the audience to have some emotional understanding so this is from my perspective we have spoken about the role of artists we have been speaking about the role of artists in Europe for two centuries or three centuries now artists are political subjects considering that they are not only witnesses of historical events not only they take part in resistance movements like in World War II today for example there are many artists working on the line the situation in the Arab world in Guatemala, in South America everywhere in the world here in Europe also there are many exiled artists so we have to take them into account we have to engage with them it's not something the past me as an historian I don't see the past as a straight line as a straight timeline with a past, a present and a future history as a 3D collage where many different events are repeated I have seen that since the war of Spanish liberation of Spanish independence until today in Ukraine the events are repeated constantly so how are we thinking about the past how are we thinking about the past in trauma somehow we have to join the past the present and focus on other concepts that allow us to address this problem in the past and in my opinion the artists realize this past and I believe it's contributed because they act as a bridge they engage with citizens in performances they criticize power bills and they work on trauma also thank you very much the question I have for the doubt I have is whether the content of art is updated when we deal with a sensitive topic so the artistic value can be a pro or a con artistic value of a work art can be questioned what other thing there is any questioning about the Goya war disaster and I believe the artwork is extremely contemporary the audience and reactions in the audience so we are going to have 10 minutes for giving the voice to the audience please I think he was first thank you thank you very much I'm Ion Yonitsa editor and chief of magazine history in Bucharest, Romania and congratulations for your presentations we have two sides of the medal here on the one side is the artist you have presented before a resistant artist against dictatorship and violence and genocide and on the other side we have thousands of thousands of artists who supported dictatorship and totalitarian systems and nazism and communism and they supported the cult of personality you know dictators have a very special relations with arts they love to be presented in portraits in stages and galleries and my question is how you make the difference are these artists real artists are their work art how can only not people know to make a difference between two types of artists thank you thank you very much who wants to answer our question I can answer the same it's time there has been a collaboration in all environments part of the population has supported dictatorships and totalitarian regimes and of course there are also artists who live with power in all contexts and this cannot be denied but from my opinion they do not have the same visual and ethical and moral impact that evokes the nouns corruption or those who use art in a political and ethical way that cannot be compared from my perspective the majority of such artists have not prevailed Picasso has Blumenfeld has all artists who were locked in camps have prevailed whereas those who collaborated in most cases haven't they are the ones we work with in order to rebuild and reinterpret history so from my perspective it makes no sense to let's say compare them of course collaboration is collaborated and they call themselves artists and they did it out of their eagerness to earn money out of evictions etc but I believe that what is ethically still relevant today is the historical and real presence of the artists that I present for example who become political subjects and not those who collaborated any one else in the table wants to add if not we are going to give the microphone another word there and another word there congratulations for all very well done all the presentations and I wanted to ask you what do you think about the art like a mirror because every time we are looking at everywhere everyone talks about art in the other country the work is there we are showing the art because the problem is there but at the end it's our own problem for example I was an artist long ago here in this country 30 years ago and every time I was showing what is going on before what's happening when it's happening it's like okay we almost killed you but no problem we continue but why we are we cannot look because for example we have all this you are showing all this happening but it's happening again and again how we can cut this this round about going and again and again the same okay we are looking, we are going to the galleries we are showing the new architecture and happening again and again and every place is totalitarianism we have to say we have democracy but at the end we know democracy is not there then how we can manage it are you addressing this question to a specific speaker so if I can answer we know that art is very powerful in the stage of preparation and also denial of different genocidal events this is very powerful in terms of identification of the victim identification of the enemy of the chaotic creatures in religious stories and so on and in the same manner same way the art is powerful in the genocide prevention I would like to mention Franz Welfers book 40 days of Musadak which was released in 1933 it's about the revolt of victims of Armenian genocide and it was amazing work of Prague born German Jewish author he didn't have anything to do with Armenian history and he really did it because of course Hitler came to power in that year so both sides of artistic map are still active and unfortunately the genocide behavior cannot be stopped it is something which is part of human nature and if there are no people who will do artists there will be no change so it is not about artists but about the audience thank you Welfare Welfare Welfare today is 90 years anniversary thank you, I think it was someone at the end of the room thank you very much it's very inspiring maybe it's not a question it's a sort of reflection or maybe I want to share with you some experience knowledge of some place in Poland when this place that used to belong to another community Jewish community now is belonging to non-Jewish community and it's insane Sejne is a small town located at the northeast of Poland but it's still that Polish terrain I mean prolonged till Vilnius further on into the 20 anyway that was populated by maybe 70% it was Jewish and of course they had a synagogue and nobody of them remained for reasons we know and that synagogue in a rather dilapidated state was then awarded to a new foundation Borderland for crossing of cultures ethnosis and experience and it's fantastic because they not only first invited of course existing Jewish musicians and they renovated it and they treated it as an art gallery but very open it's open for tourists who come but nothing that happens and now that synagogue is in a sort that could be perceived as too gay, too funny, too too loud yes they keep to a certain line of artistic expression they also show exhibitions and I think it's also thanks to them and thanks to some environment, some circles that in Poland the Gleczmar Music the Jewish Gleczmar Music enjoyed its revival and it still enjoys it so maybe to put a conclusion to my now statement is that there are places of memory that for obvious reasons are very solemn and very serious places mass death, yes, extermination but also there are places that remind us of people who lived there and who were expelled, which are all over Europe and I think maybe the case of Seine the Pagrange Center, the Borderland Center is a good example how to how to live it how to live it through and how to blow new life into such places thank you thank you very much any reaction in the table to this comment there's a question no, she started saying it's more a comment than a question okay if not we can continue with another question in the room, yeah thank you and thanks very much for really interesting and for provoking presentations and insights into people's lives so I just wanted to ask if any of you had used the theater of witness as a mechanism to enable people who have been in conflict looking at people who have caused the conflict and people who have been victims of the conflict and exploring that from an artistic perspective so in Ireland it's often been used in prisons and in different places but in Ireland as part of the conflict that we experienced over a number of years that mechanism or that artistic expression has found to be very useful and the other thing that I would say as well in all museums and artistic installations that it's really important that they don't become just a part of the buildings that there is a dialogue with the generations and with young generations around what they mean because we forget very easily so thank you thank you very much talk about the artists and the environments your rights it's not about memorial it's about structural of the museum which give interaction between past and the future this is why polymuseum and synagogue is a place you can actually remind the community who lived before the war and the goal for the revitalization of synagogue was to bring the past in a good way not bringing the holocaust in the way but bringing the friendship bringing the community who was before the war in the way how everybody imagine so this is why our goal in our development of some memorial is to bring people who remember the good time and this is important in every stage of our project and it's important that we bring to this place the faces the history of the past in the way how everybody could understand and this is important thank you we are about to come to the end one last question very quick question before some final remarks from the table from Austria a quick question maybe to the two architects what is your opinion about the question of monuments about people who were brought down in many countries for instance about people who discovered conquered new countries for European forces after the communism a lot of monuments were torn down now we have debates for instance in Vienna we have a mayor who was rather anti-Semitic after the turn of the 20th century so what would you think or propose is it what do we do with these monuments for instance Christoph Columbus is also in a kind of wokeness topic is it enough that we put something on or should we really destroy monuments as it was done in Britain thank you this is a very deep question and the last question I think no one can really give a simple answer to that commemoration a building memorial is a public display of commemoration it's actually state and doors it's it's a very fluid process in the sense of what was acceptable some 20, 40, 30 years ago might no longer be the case nowadays so I think you rightly pointed out Columbus still standing proud outside and if you look at the Black Lives Matter movement recently it's not just in Australia I'm sure in every country in the UK people are ticking down slave traders statues and all that history I mean the OSA goes all histories are politicized and all politics are historicized ongoing battle really it's a battle of narratives and if you not far from here if you look to Moscow they have a totally different narrative to ours so my answer to you is I genuinely don't know but I think I think we like you said earlier on it's about bringing out the truth I think what will stay eventually should be those memorials that speak the truth and memorials for dictators and for tyranny and all that will eventually be torn down and that's my answer to your question thank you very much thank you to you all for all your contributions and just to summarize all this session I'd like to ask you for one key word regarding this solidarity and the power of art one key important word to summarize in your opinion your perspective under your prism this binomium shall we start from like in the panel so well I think that art enables us to have the solidarity with victims and that's the main reason why for example why we use the art and it is also important to note that the use of art should be balanced with scientific results and also the educational objectives or goals and this process is based on the dialogue scientists, artists and educators in this dialogue in my point of view is very productive thank you I think that art is a very important instrument very important tool or armor to work with injustice against injustice for solidarity and cooperation also in the situations against dictatorship or situations of genocide especially injustice and the museums are today perhaps the most important channels to transmit the memory and to transmit the trauma but also to work with our present thanks a lot I can actually will tell my my experience as I always said if you want to use the art to bring the past and bring the narration to the future you have to be very responsible if you're not ready just don't do it so this is my philosophy of bringing art to the memories I think my remark will be art is most powerful if it genuinely touches thoughts thank you very much to you all for the audience thanks a lot