Deutsche Bank, Amsterdam. May 24, 2022. On Friendship / (Collateral Damage) IV

On Friendship / (Collateral Damage) IV
How to Explain Hare Hunting to a Dead German Artist
[The usefulness of continuous measurement of the distance between Nostalgia and Melancholia]

(September 2021 – December 2022)
A critical project concerning post-war artist Joseph Beuys.
Created by Joseph Sassoon Semah, curator Linda Bouws
May 24 2022, Deutsche Bank Amsterdam
De entree 195, 1101 HE Amsterdam

כיצד להסביר ציד ארנבות לאמן גרמני מת
[The usefulness of continuous measurement of the distance between Nostalgia and Melancholia]

Please remember, ‘Hare Hunting’ was a [codeword] euphemism for killing Jews by the Nazi troops during the Holocaust.
According to Jewish tradition, the hare is among mammals deemed not kosher, and therefore not eaten by (observant) Jews.

As will be clear, Jose[f]ph Beuys who always already surrounded himself by old Nazis has managed to promote himself as the (symbolic) Victim of the Third Reich in the (extended) territory of Post-Nazi West Germany.
Jose[f]ph Beuys who volunteered to sacrifice himself for the ideology of the Third Reich – succeeded to transform himself symbolically as it were, into the great healer of post-Nazi-Era, and with him, West Germany will cure itself.

Therefore, as a consequence of the need to further the authentic status of The Guest – The Guest was forced on 24 February 1986,
to correct the statement of Jose[f]ph Beuys’: “Wie man dem toten Hasen die Bilder erklärt / How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare” 26 November 1965. Since then, it should be read as follows –
” כיצד להסביר ציד ארנבות לאמן גרמני מת / How to Explain Hare Hunting to a Dead German Artist / Wie man einem toten deutschen Künstler die Hasenjagd erklärt”.

Finally, if the Guest is the symbolic Dead Hare, he may in the [end] has a Voice – in such a context obviously, the Guest’s conversation with the Dead German Artist changes in significance – because the words of the Guest already shifted to a certain power; That is the Guest’s / the Jew’s power to transform Jose[f]ph Beuys the ex-Nazi soldier from a self-made Victim to his original status i.e. the Victimizer.
Basically, we should remember that the actual transformation from a Victimizer to a Victim takes place in radical circumstances.
In our context, this implies that the transformation of post-war Jose[f]ph Beuys into a Victim took place in Post-Nazi West Germany;
Eventually, it would be tempting to say that the authentic Victim ‘The Guest’ i.e., The Jew, cannot be defined by his Victimizer.

Performance

Joseph Sassoon Semah with friends:

Baruch Abraham
Masja Austen
Peter Baren
Bülent Evren
Jom Semah

Camera & editing: Bob Schoo, http://www.n-p-n.info

© Stichting Metropool Internationale Kunstprojecten 2022

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