Encountering Campscapes.
Encountering Campscapes consists of a series of 3 video artworks and 2 lightbox artworks, produced through the initiation of a ‘roaming residency’ (2017-18) by Branthwaite, that engage publics with modern-day Holocaust archaeology, and which was grant-funded by Arts Council England. It supplements the iC-ACCESS (2016-19) forensic archaeology project Accessing Campscapes, a trans-European collaboration between Staffordshire University and five European HEIs. iC-ACCESS seeks to extend the detailed understanding of the Holocaust by examining the entanglement of remembrance with the silencing of competing historical narratives. In turn, Encountering Campscapes seeks to investigate how publics can engage with archaeological study through arts exhibitions and events.
- Submitting institution
-
Staffordshire University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- Lists 80
- Type
- L - Artefact
- Location
- Wiesenthal Institute, Vienna; Jasenovac Concentration Camp, Croatia; Lety Concentration Camp, Czech Republic; Westerbork Transit Camp, Holland; Treblinka Extermination Camp, Poland; Paradise Works, Salford
- Open access status
- -
- Month of production
- -
- Year of production
- 2019
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- Yes
- Number of additional authors
-
0
- Research group(s)
-
A - The C3 Centre: Creative Industries and Creative Communities
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- Yes
- Additional information
- Encountering Campscapes produced a set of two lightbox artworks and three video artworks that depict materials gathered from site visits to the Jasenovec, Lety, Westerbork, and Treblinka camps. The works were produced on-site and at the same time as archaeological works were conducted. Branthwaite worked in proximity to the iC-ACCESS team, producing artworks that juxtapose objects’ material characteristics against the archaeologists’ activities and discussions. The works provide public engagement questions based on the aesthetics of Holocaust memorialization, where objects are often framed as records of human experience and of processes of historical documentation.
Exhibitions of the video artworks were synchronized with iC-ACCESS’s public workshops. This delivery framed the video artworks as opportunities for archaeologists, artists, and publics to explore the possibilities of interdisciplinary learning and discussion encounters, rather than the possibilities of a Holocaust site in and of itself. The exhibitions included the screening of the three video works (Of Species, Total Station, and Ground Radar) at the Wisenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, Vienna (‘VWI’) (October 2019). This presentation was part of the iC-ACCESS public conference, ‘Accessing Campscapes: Inclusive Strategies for Using European Conflicted Heritage Sites’. It included a post-screening public discussion panel chaired by Eva Kovacs, VWI Research Programme Director.
Branthwaite designed the project’s dissemination strategy to have public engagement feedback into ongoing research. It allows for ongoing, varied, and unpredictable public ‘entry’ into the project, which in turn invites publics to consider parallels between their responses to Branthwaite’s video artworks and his artistic examination of the iC-ACCESS archaeological project.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
