Artistic Interventions

Highlights

• Using theatre and performance to address contemporary war, political violence and moral uncertainty
• Creating artistic spaces for dialogue after performances through talkbacks and discussions
• Engaging Jewish artists, curators and cultural workers across borders
• Exploring the relationship between Jewish identity, nationalism, antisemitism and contemporary crises

Background

Memory work does not happen outside the present. Contemporary crises — including the aftermath of 7 October, Russia’s war against Ukraine, escalating violence in the Middle East, attacks involving Iran, growing antisemitism, polarisation around Israel/Palestine, and the normalisation of militarised language — reshape how audiences encounter difficult heritage today.

For organisations working with Jewish memory, Holocaust history, migration, violence and minority identities, this creates a particular challenge. Public programmes cannot treat the past as closed or safely distant. At the same time, they must avoid using contemporary trauma merely as illustration, provocation or spectacle.

Artistic interventions can offer a way to address these tensions. Theatre, performance, satire, immersive video, public discussion and artist-led networks can create spaces where audiences are invited not only to learn, but also to confront their own ethical positions. This is especially important when the issues at stake are politically charged, emotionally difficult and socially divisive.

Case Study 3: Contemporary Jewish Theatrical Interventions, Dresden, Cracow, Warsaw, Lublin (Germany, Poland)

Description

This case study brings together several artistic and curatorial practices that respond to contemporary crises through performance, dialogue and network-building.

One important strand is the development of a Jewish curators’ and artists’ network in Dresden, organised in connection with FestivALT. The network creates a space for Jewish artists, curators and cultural practitioners to exchange experiences, reflect on the pressures placed on Jewish cultural work after 7 October, and discuss how institutions can respond to antisemitism, war, polarisation and public expectations around political positioning.

Rather than treating artists as symbolic representatives of a single community or political view, the network supports a more complex understanding of Jewish artistic practice. It recognises that Jewish artists may be asked to comment on crises, justify positions, perform identity, or mediate conflicts that exceed the scope of their work. A curatorial network can help transform this pressure into collective reflection, mutual support and more ethical institutional practice.

A second strand consists of theatrical interventions developed or presented in connection with FestivALT.

If I Had a Gun, I’d Take Them All Down is a monodrama combining live performance with immersive video. FestivALT presented the work as part of its 2025 programme, with a preview performance on 21 June 2025 in Polish, English and Ukrainian. The performance was later presented in several Polish contexts, including Warsaw and the Konfrontacje Teatralne Festival in Lublin.

The piece examines violence, war, power and the limits of individual moral responsibility. Large-scale immersive video footage functions as a walk through contemporary Kyiv. The city becomes both a real urban landscape and a metaphorical space shaped by revolution, political tension, memory and Russia’s war against Ukraine. As the performer guides audiences through Kyiv, spectators are invited to ask what people are willing to sacrifice in pursuit of justice, freedom or a better world.

The work does not present political violence as a simple opposition between good and evil. Instead, it focuses on ambiguity: the unstable boundary between resistance and violence, justice and revenge, loyalty and betrayal. Its use of immersive video allows audiences to encounter Kyiv not only as a news image or war zone, but as a lived city with beauty, history and contradictions.

After performances, talkback sessions with the artists invite audiences to reflect on the ethical and political questions raised by the piece. This format is crucial: it prevents the performance from becoming a closed statement and turns it into a platform for conversation.

Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła / Poland Is Not Yet Lost uses a very different artistic language. It is an interactive, satirical and futuristic performance imagining a world in which the State of Israel has been destroyed and three million Jews return to Poland. In this alternate reality, Poland is governed by Jewish leaders, and the country’s president is played by Maciej Stuhr.

The performance is structured as a political rally and invites the audience to participate in a fictional referendum on whether to establish a new Jewish state in Poland. Its interactive format turns spectators into quasi-citizens within the imagined political world. They are not only watching satire; they are asked to take a position.

Through humour, absurdity and provocation, the performance addresses Polish-Jewish relations, nationalism, antisemitism, restitution anxieties, identity politics and fears surrounding Jewish return. Its strength lies in using satire to expose fantasies and fears that are often present in public discourse but rarely addressed directly. The performance has been presented in partnership with Teatr Barakah in Kraków.

A third theatrical reference is Woods / Las, associated with Michael Rubenfeld’s theatre work, In the context of this handbook, it can be understood alongside the other theatrical interventions as part of a broader artistic strategy: using performance to enter difficult terrain where personal history, Jewish identity, political violence and collective memory intersect.

Together, these works show that artistic practice can address contemporary issues not by explaining them away, but by making audiences experience uncertainty, contradiction and responsibility.

Equally important is the presentation of a critically engaged artistic programme outside major metropolitan centres, as well as collaboration with and support for emerging Jewish festivals and other cultural initiatives and events in cities such as Radom, Włocławek, Dąbrowa Tarnowska or Otfinów.

Challenges

• HOW to address current political crises without instrumentalising trauma?
• HOW to speak about war, antisemitism, Israel/Palestine, Ukraine or Iran without turning artistic work into political messaging?
• HOW to connect contemporary crises with difficult heritage without collapsing past and present into one another?

Solutions

• Using artistic formats that allow ambiguity, contradiction and emotional complexity.
• Pairing performances with moderated conversations, talkbacks or facilitated reflection.
• Providing historical, political and ethical context without over-explaining the artwork.

Key Takeaways

• Contemporary crises reshape how audiences understand difficult heritage; cultural institutions need tools to respond responsibly.
• Artistic interventions can create spaces for complexity where public debate is polarised.
• Contemporary issues should be addressed with courage, but also with care, moderation and attention to audience safety.

Case Study 4: Artistic interventions at memory sites (Poland / Spain)

How can art, local memory and community participation help commemorate unmarked or neglected Jewish graves?

Context

Many Jewish burial sites in Central and Eastern Europe remain unmarked, neglected or only partially remembered. Some are located in forests, fields or village landscapes. Others exist in urban spaces, absorbed into parks, hillsides or public infrastructure. In many cases, knowledge about them survives through local oral histories rather than formal documentation.

These places raise difficult ethical and practical questions. They are burial sites and must be treated with respect. At the same time, they are often not recognised by local communities as places of memory. They may lack visible boundaries, official markers or any public information. In such cases, commemoration cannot rely only on monuments or institutional ceremonies. It must often begin with listening, research, local trust-building and small gestures of care.

Participatory artistic commemoration offers one possible approach. It can help communities engage with painful histories without imposing a finished narrative from outside. Artistic gestures – placing leaves, stones, sound, music, guided storytelling or collective walking — can make a site visible while respecting its fragile status. They can invite residents, descendants, artists, religious representatives, local authorities and civic organisations to participate in remembrance together.

The following examples from Przegaliny Małe, Pawlichy and Gdańsk-Wrzeszcz show how contemporary artistic practice can support grassroots memory work, especially where Jewish graves or cemeteries have been forgotten, hidden or left without adequate recognition.

Highlights

• Commemorating unmarked or neglected Jewish burial sites through participatory art
• Combining historical research, oral testimony and local community engagement
• Activating neglected urban Jewish heritage through contemporary Jewish artistic practice
• Involving Jewish artists, descendants, local residents and civic organisations
• Using symbolic, non-invasive gestures such as paper leaves, stones, music and collective walking

Description

This case study brings together three examples of participatory artistic commemoration of Jewish burial sites: Przegaliny Małe, Pawlichy and the Jewish cemetery in Gdańsk-Wrzeszcz.

4.1. Red leaves in the forest, Przegaliny Małe (Poland)

On 14 May 2025, the Zapomniane Foundation organised a commemorative ceremony in the village of Przegaliny Małe, located in the Komarówka Podlaska commune. The event was dedicated to the memory of two Jewish girls murdered during the Holocaust and buried in a nearby forest.

The grave had been marked by the Zapomniane Foundation in 2021 with a symbolic wooden matzevah. Since then, it has become a place of informal remembrance, carefully tended by members of the local community.

The meeting began in the village community centre. Representatives of the Foundation introduced the historical background of the execution and explained the process of locating the burial site. The event brought together a diverse group: village residents, representatives of local authorities, members of civic organisations and two Jewish artists from Germany invited to participate in the project.

A central element of the ceremony was a collective, art-based act of remembrance led by Berlin-based Jewish artist Atalya Laufer, whose family also suffered during the Holocaust. Earlier workshops with community members had resulted in the creation of red paper leaves. During the ceremony, participants placed these leaves on trees surrounding the grave.

This simple gesture transformed the forest into a participatory space of remembrance. The red leaves marked the site without disturbing the ground. They also created a visible, fragile and temporary sign of memory — one that depended on collective participation rather than permanent construction.

The event combined historical research, local oral histories, participatory art and grassroots collaboration. It showed how artistic gestures can activate marginalised histories and strengthen connections between local communities and Jewish memory.

4.2. Stones for Sura Teller, Pawlichy (Poland)

In June 2025, as part of the ReActMem project, an event was held to commemorate the burial site of a Jewish girl, most likely Sura Teller, in the village of Pawlichy in the Lublin region of eastern Poland.

The initiative continued activities that began in 2021, when information about the site first reached the organisers. According to oral testimonies passed down by local residents, the girl buried in the unmarked grave was most likely Sura Teller, born on 13 March 1923 in the nearby village of Stare Króle. Until this event, the place of her death and burial had not been officially marked or commemorated.

The event was organised in partnership with the Municipal Cultural Center in Księżpol. It was attended by many residents of Księżpol and neighbouring villages, including teachers, cultural workers, representatives of local authorities and adult members of the community rooted in local life, memory and history.

The gathering began at the Municipal Cultural Center in Księżpol, where participants were introduced to the historical context and goals of the initiative. Local residents shared personal and family stories from the Second World War. Some accounts concerned the fate of Sura Teller, while others pointed to additional, still uncommemorated wartime burial sites in the area, which may become the subject of future research.

Participants then walked together to the site of Sura Teller’s grave. There, artistic and commemorative actions took place, led by guest artists Anna Schapiro from Germany and Marcin Król from Poland. Both artists are affiliated with Jewish artistic networks Dagesh and Kultur-Lige and have long worked with memory, identity, contemporary art and intercultural dialogue.

The artists prepared memory gestures that invited all those present to participate in a collective act of reflection and symbolic reclamation of the site. Local residents responded spontaneously and movingly. They cleaned leaves from the grave area, spoke aloud, prayed and, together with Anna Schapiro, laid stones to mark the symbolic boundaries of the grave.

These simple acts transformed an unmarked burial place into a recognised part of local cultural memory. The commemoration was not based on a finished monument, but on shared action, presence and care.

The Pawlichy event demonstrated how local communities can become active participants in reclaiming historical landscapes. It also showed that remembrance can emerge from small, embodied gestures: clearing leaves, walking together, speaking, praying and placing stones.

4.3. Music, descendants and civic remembrance, Gdańsk-Wrzeszcz (Poland)

A third example concerns the Jewish cemetery on Królewskie Wzgórze in Wrzeszcz, Gdańsk. The commemorative event is planned for 27 March 2026 at the former cemetery site near Traugutta Street.

The cemetery was probably established before 1775, alongside the formation of the local Jewish community. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it was repeatedly damaged, including during the Napoleonic wars. Its final degradation occurred during the Nazi period and in the post-war decades. Today, only fragments of matzevot and relics of tombs remain on the wooded hill.

In recent years, a process of restoring memory of the site has begun. Activities have involved the Zapomniane Foundation, FestivALT, the Zbliżenia Culture Foundation and the Formy Wspólne Foundation, in cooperation with social and institutional partners, including the Jewish Religious Community in Gdańsk, Gdańsk University of Technology, the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk and the municipal authorities.

The ceremony will include an introduction to the history of the cemetery, the story of one of the families buried there and an artistic programme. Special guests will include Rabbi Rebecca Lillian, a descendant of Gdańsk Jews whose family is buried at the cemetery, and musician Mikołaj Trzaska, a saxophonist, bass clarinettist and composer associated with Gdańsk. Trzaska will perform with the ensemble Remont Pomp, a group connected with the Polish Association for Persons with Intellectual Disabilities in Gdańsk.

This event brings together several dimensions of inclusive memory practice: descendant participation, Jewish religious presence, experimental music, disability-inclusive artistic collaboration, local history and civic engagement. It invites residents, local authorities, cultural institutions, academic communities and civic organisations to take part in a symbolic act of commemoration.

The Gdańsk-Wrzeszcz example shows how a neglected Jewish cemetery can become a site for building awareness of the city’s multicultural history and strengthening contemporary practices of care for difficult heritage.

4.4. LABA Live, Casa Adret and the Montjuïc Jewish Cemetery, Barcelona (Spain)

A fourth example comes from Barcelona, where LABA Barcelona used contemporary Jewish artistic practice to activate public reflection on the neglected medieval Jewish cemetery of Montjuïc.

The LABA Live event, held on 23–24 November 2024, marked the culmination of the LABA Barcelona fellowship programme. It showcased works by fellows inspired by classical Jewish texts on the theme of “Night.” The event took place at Casa Adret, one of Barcelona’s oldest habitable buildings and LABA Barcelona’s central venue, located in the heart of the medieval Jewish quarter.

The programme included a performative gathering and guided walk towards Casa Adret, artist-led exhibition tours, roundtable discussions, theatre performances, sound art and a collaborative ceramic performance. These formats allowed audiences to encounter Jewish heritage through movement, sound, text, performance and public discussion rather than through conventional historical interpretation alone.

A central part of the event addressed the neglected medieval Jewish cemetery of Montjuïc. Several artistic projects brought attention to its historical, cultural and religious significance, while also suggesting ways to return it to public awareness.

Artist Dafne Ortiz presented a performative work centred on a monumental incantation bowl sculpture. The work invoked the urgency of returning sacred human remains excavated from the Montjuïc cemetery in 1946 and held in the Barcelona History Museum. The piece included illustrations, poetic texts by fellow artist Ionah Nour, and Hebrew calligraphy with the names of the interred. Through these elements, the artwork became a symbolic call to action and a ritualised form of public remembrance.

Artist Kevin Buckland documented the Yan Miriam commemorative ceremony, which he initiated and organised at the cemetery site. He also created a theatrical play, performed during the event, based on his study of Jewish halachic laws concerning burial and cemeteries. The play offered an artistic exploration of burial ethics, cultural memory and the responsibility to protect Jewish graves.

Sound artist and composer Gil Dori presented Ashmorot, a sound piece using manipulated recordings of Sephardic lullabies and readings from the Song of Songs. Played through vibration-sensitive speakers, the work reverberated through Casa Adret, combining ancient text, sound, body and architecture. In this way, Casa Adret itself became part of the memory practice.

The event concluded with a panel discussion titled “Collective Memory Stop/Play: Activating Landscape Memory through Art.” Panelists included Dominique Tomasov, architect and historian specialising in Jewish heritage, together with other cultural leaders. The discussion explored how art can reactivate historical memory in the urban environment. On the second night, a discussion with art curator and cultural researcher Ruth Oppenheim addressed artistic action in a blurred reality.

This Barcelona example expands the logic of participatory artistic commemoration beyond rural graves and local forest sites. It shows how a neglected urban Jewish cemetery can be addressed through artistic research, Jewish textual tradition, sound, theatre, sculpture, public discussion and architectural memory. The case also demonstrates how contemporary Jewish cultural practice can create a symbolic and public call for recognition where institutional responses remain incomplete.

Challenges

• HOW to work respectfully with graves located in forests, villages or fragmented urban landscapes?
• HOW to involve local residents without imposing memory from outside?
• HOW to combine oral histories, historical research and artistic practice responsibly?
• HOW to include Jewish artists, descendants and religious representatives without making them symbolic tokens?

Solutions

• Beginning with local knowledge, oral testimonies and careful historical research.
• Using non-invasive gestures such as paper leaves, stones, walking, sound, music or temporary markings.
• Inviting local residents to co-create the commemoration rather than only attend it.
• Working with Jewish artists, descendants and religious representatives where possible.

Key Takeaways

• Participatory artistic commemoration can help make unmarked Jewish burial sites visible without physically altering them.
• Commemoration does not always need to begin with a monument. It can begin with listening, cleaning, placing stones, attaching leaves, making music or gathering in silence.
• The most sustainable forms of remembrance often emerge when local residents, artists, descendants, civic organisations and institutions work together over time.