Beyond the Witness

In a time when the very last Holocaust witnesses will soon be gone, a possible route for commemoration is the return to images, asking what testimony they can give. Beyond the Witness: Holocaust Representation and the Testimony of Images seeks to answer the question of how images can bear witness by examining them as multifaceted entities produced, reproduced, and resituated in conflicting political and historical situations. In the three archive-based works, Respite by Harun Farocki, A Film Unfinished by Yael Hersonski, and The Specialist: Portrait of a Modern Criminal by Eyal Sivan, the moving image is reactivated and reinterpreted resituated. Footage produced as internal Nazi propaganda and the video recordings of a politically charged trial in the aftermath of the Holocaust have accrued new meaning. The archival status, context, and conditions for production, and the means of representation offer a framework for an analysis through which the testimony of images can be understood.