EXIT Materialien zum Dachau-Projekt

EXIT Materials for the Dachau-Project

CR 38. Year 1972/1974

Exit Jochen Gerz CR 38 Materialien Zum Wiesbaden

Gerz Exit Paris 96 97 3 Photo Adam Rzepka Centre G Pompidou Copy

The photographs for the Dachau-Project were taken on the 3 September 1972 at the site known as Dachau Concentration Camp which today hosts the memorial with its museum. The photographs did not ...

If today for convenience’s sake the museum keyword ‘Exit’ hangs over doors that once led directly to a certain death, ... then the thoughtless analogy with reference systems, distorted through this discrepancy, takes on a macabre dimension.
Gottfried Knapp 1977

The museum which commemorates the camp, which supposedly reflects on all of this, is shown by Gerz in his project to function along not unsimular guidelines in which the public is marshalled, classified and meagrely informed through a sign system of authoritative regulation which equally ends with an exit. Thus the camp and the ‘camp as museum’ are systems which are imbricated in one another. In the installation of the project another system, one of the study of information by orderly desks lit with weak lamps, was added to the system of exhibition. His project was therefore primarily concerned with these systems; the information, interdiction and signage which were set up to marshall and contain the facts and representations of those who had been marshalled and contained and finally annihilated. Thus what is achieved is a recognition that this re-presentation is little more than a translation of one system into another while furthering little consciousness of the language of representation nor of the viewer’s position within such a system. This work begins in shifting the discourse, at a Structuralist level, through the recognition that it is the systems of representation that establish and re-establish the processes and meanings.
Irit Rogoff 1993

Gerz zeigt in seinem Projekt, daß das Museum, in dem des Lagers gedacht wird und in dem all dies [Greul des Lagers, Anm. Red.] reflektiert werden soll, nach nicht unähnlichen Führungslinien funktioniert. Die Öffentlichkeit wird reguliert, klassifiziert und nur spärlich informiert durch ein Zeichensystem maßgeblicher Regulation, das gleichermaßen mit einem Ausgang endet. So werden das Lager und das "Lager als Museum" zu ineinandergreifenden Systemen. In der Installation des Projekts wurde ein anderes System, eines des Informationsstudiums mit Reihen von Schreibtischen, die von schwachen Lampen beleuchtet waren, der Ausstellung hinzugefügt. Sein Dachau-Projekt befasste sich daher in erster Linie mit diesen Systemen, der Information, dem Verbot und der Zeichen, die erstellt wurden, um die Fakten und Repräsentationen jener zu regulieren und zu speichern, die eben reguliert und gespeichert und schließlich ausgelöscht wurden. So ist das, was erreicht wurde, die Erkenntnis, daß diese Wieder-Darstellung nur wenig mehr als eine Übersetzung des einen Systems in ein anderes ist und sie nur wenig das Bewußtsein über die Sprache der Darstellung oder über die Position des Betrachtes innerhalb eines solchen Systems fördert. Diese Arbeit hat aufgrund der Erkenntnis, daß es die Repräsentationssysteme sind, die den Bedeutungsprozeß schaffen und neu schaffen, angefangen, den Diskurs auf ein strukturalistisches Niveau zu verlagern.
Irit Rogoff 1993

In this installation, he hoped to draw attention to the ways our experience shapes the history we've come to remember, so that we never mistake one for the other, even if we cannot know one outside of the other. In the process he issued an implicit challenge to the museum to distinguish itself ever further from the legacy it would now preserve. ... But in this project, Jochen Gerz was the first artist to critique the Holocaust memorial museum as a formal, if ironic extension of the authoritarian regime it would commemorate.
James E. Young 2000

Keywords

Installation

1st version: photo dossier (52 pages with cardboard covers, bolted together), 23 x 34 x 3 cm, table, 78 x 105 x 56 cm, chair, 86 x 38 x 42 cm, light bulb, cassette recorder, cassette

2nd version: 20 copies of an edition (Hossmann & Howeg, Hamburg/Zürich), each 2,5 x 34 x 23 cm, 20 tables (framing boards), each 78 x 105 x 56 cm, 20 chairs (framing boards), each 86 x 38 x 42 cm, 20 light bulbs, 2 cassette recorders, 2 cassettes, 4 speakers

The exhibition room is darkened. The breathing sounds of a person walking can be heard but are drowned out again and again by the click and clack of electric typewriters. Tables and chairs are arranged in two parallel rows, weakly illuminated by the light bulbs. A copy of the edition lies on each table. It was created following a visit to the Dachau memorial in 1972 and documents the language of the Dachau Museum in 50 photographs (783). The installation is used as stage set for the performance of Die Berliner Ermittlung (128) in 1998.

Kunstmuseum Bochum.
Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein.

Exhibitions

Kiel 1974. Hattingen 1974. Berlin 1974. Paris 1975. Karlsruhe 1975. München 1977. Wien 1984. Hamburg 1988. Paris 1996/97. Wiesbaden 1997. Berlin 1997/98. Berlin 1998, Vaduz 2001, Krakow 2011, Vaduz 2021

Bibliography

I: Berlin 1974a. Bochum 1975, pp. 7-8. Karlsruhe 1975a, pp. 15-16, 77-79, 95, 102-106, 132-134. Paris 1975a, pp. 15, 19-20, 40-43, 61. Berlin 1977a, pp. 122-123. Frankfurt 1978. Duisburg 1979, pp. 117-123. Luzern 1979, pp. 96-98. Frankfurt 1980, pp. 13. Paris 1980d, p. 13. Paris 1983, pp. 60-62. Bielefeld 1985, pp. 30, 197. Bruxelles 1985, pp. 75-77. Hamburg 1988, pp. 146-147. Bonn 1989a, p. 166. Darnétal 1991, p. 45. Davis 1992, p. 2. Tarazona 1992, p.93. Stuttgart 1993, pp. 161-162. Regensburg 1995a, p. 231. Warszawa 1995, p. 11b. Paris 1996d, pp. 17, 353. Paris 1996/97. Wiesbaden 1997, pp. 9, 28, 32 - 37. Berlin 1997/98, pp. 442-444. Zürich 2000, p. 49. Ivry-sur-Seine 2017, pp. 52-57, 164-165, Vaduz 2021, pp. 35-41-204-205

II: Rhode 1974, p. 25. Chabot 1975, p. 4. Fehr 1, 1975. Fehr 2, 1975. Giroud 1975. Halder 1975. Hohmeyer 1975, p. 209. Lascault 1975, pp. 152-153. Levêque 1975, p. 33. Metken 1975, p. 141. Naggar 1975. Red. 5, 1975. Teyssedre 1975. Tillmann 1975, p. 43. Parent 1975. Pradel 1975,p. 16. Rickelt 1975. Schlocker 4, 1975. Bast 1976. Blasius 1977, p. 10. Bode 1977. Bröder 1977. Dultz 1977. Jorissen 1,1977. Jorissen 2, 1977. Knapp 1977, p. 34. Lehmann 1977. Maase 1977. Müller-Mehlis 1977. Roh 1977, pp. 96-97. Fritsch 1978, p. 6. Gatard 1978, p. 35. Red. 2, 1978, p. 24. Tilmann 1978, pp. 44-49. Grasskamp 1979, p. 77. Platschek 1979, pp. 38-39. Molderings 1, 1980, p. 130. Gravel 1983, p. 32. Winter 1988. Drateln 1989, p. 46. Schmid 1989, p. 35. Drateln 1990, p. 63. Dreher 1990, pp. 56, 9. Holmes 1990, pp. 20-21. Koenneke 1991, pp. 22, 24. Jhering 1992, p. 95. Pejic 1992, p. 78. Steinhauser 1993, pp. 107-111. Red. 25, 1994, p. 19. Fleck 1995, pp. 74-75. Paris 1996,p. 353. Asmuth 1, 1997. Bonekämper 1997. Crüwell 1997. Feeser 1997. Fischer 3, 1997. Gries 1997. Haase 2, 1997. Henke 1+2, 1997. Huther 1-5, 1997. Kuni 1997. Melten 1+2, 1997. Rudel 1+2, 1997. Schneebeli 1997. Schossig 1997. Schwarze 1997. Stöckmann 1997. Völkel 1997. Wagner 2, 1997. Reininghaus 1999, p. 118

III: Gravel 1978, p. 49. Pohlen 1978, pp. 14-15. Kunz 1979. Lichtenstein 1993, p. 14. Bouyer/Klein 1994. Huther 1997. Lichtenstein/Wajcman 1997, p. 78. Bouyer/Klein 1998, p. 130

V: Metken 1977, pp. 126, 132. Blümler 1989, pp. 3, 5. Dickel 1994, pp. 25-26. Gillen 1995, pp. 46-47. Kunstamt Schöneberg 1995, p. 28. Reichel 1995, pp. 152-154. Gütersloh 1989, pp. 92-93. Young 2000, p. 124. Baqué 2004 and 2006, p. 173. Zweite 2018. Debary 2019, pp. 105-106, Quercioli Mincer 2021, pp. 296-297. Becker 2021, pp. 240-242

VI: Art Dimension 1976, pp. 23-25. Schmidt 1978, p. 136. The Event Horizon 1987, p. 267. Art 3/1989, p.76

Access general bibliography

Documentation

Photographic dossier, project book (Frankfurt 1978)

Exhibitions of the documentation