The CJM:
So the tapestry is the single frame, with an animated soundtrack. Could you talk about the different sounds that are in the audio piece?
GG:
The sounds that I composed in this piece are a collage of a few sounds that I picked, and some that I created myself. One of them is the music from a propaganda animation film against the Nazi that Walt Disney did in 1943; I also added a distorted sound from Donald Duck’s voice itself. I also used records from the Eichmann trial: my grandmother’s testimony, the prosecutor’s words, and I also took sound from Eichmann when I found out that when Eichmann said his iconic phrase “Eid ist Eid” he moved off his chair, stood up and just hit the microphone. I took the little sounds that he made as he began speaking, and I use them to create the rhythm of the piece. It became like trance music.
This was the first sound work I ever did, and since making this piece most of my works have been based on sound. Sounds are now a very crucial element in my work. At that time, I didn't know what would happen at the second minute of the piece. I was working frame by frame, or rather second by second. When you look at the work now, it looks like a cinematic frame out of which sound comes.
The CJM:
The CJM exhibition From Generation to Generation talks about memory, especially inherited memory. When was the first time that you heard about the Holocaust, or the first time that you understood it happened in history? It doesn't have to be a specific moment in time, but I'm interested to know if it was something that you heard in your family, or was it something that you learned elsewhere?
GG:
My childhood was in the 1970s, which is thirty years after the Holocaust. When I was a kid, I'd heard of it, but it seemed to be decades before. Now that I'm 42, thirty years seems like nothing. There's no moment that you hear about it that you can point to, because it grew into it at the time. It was very alive.
I am of the third generation after, and it's very common to invite the survivors to come speak about the Holocaust. Some really don't speak on it at all. My grandparents, my father's parents who survived Auschwitz, I think they spoke about it, mostly my grandfather. Because my mother was asking them a lot of questions, and I was there to hear about it. We also have a Holocaust Day every year, so we learn about it in school; and I even think they mentioned it in kindergarten. You are all into it. That's what I was saying about this image of my grandmother that I found, it's a given thing. When you are born, they put it in your mouth.
To view the full video interview, click below.
