MOURNING WITH STRANGERS: MARC ADELMAN’S STELEN

Abstract

Marc Adelman’s Stelen is a collection of 150 images of men posing at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Germany. Understanding the photographs that compromise Stelen involves tracking a number of shifts that have taken place across different fields: a change in the understanding of the role of the public memorial which has seen the construction of ‘anti-memorials’ or ‘counter-monuments’ such as the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe; a turn towards participatory memory practices in museums and at memorial sites; digital photography and the impact of social media. In the first part of this paper, I explore how these trends intersect in order to give an account of the conditions of production of the photographs. Adelman has proposed that the photographs might be understood in relation to the role that the memory of the Holocaust plays in contemporary queer life. In the second part of this paper, I use Michael Rothberg’s concept of Multidirectional Memory to consider Stelen as a counter-archive that offers a multidirectional articulation of grief.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Unfortunately it has not been possible to reproduce any of the images from Stelen. A selection can be seen at https://www.marcadelman.com/installation

2. Adelman cited in Valentine, “Gays, Grinder, the Holocaust.”

3. As James E. Young who served on the design commission notes, the completion of the memorial means that an ‘even more difficult job awaits’: ‘The question of historical content begins at precisely the moment the question of the memorial design ends. Memory, which has followed history, will now be followed by still further historical debate’. At Memory’s Edge, 223.

4. Ibid., 96.

5. Young cited in Sion, “Affective Memory, Ineffective Functionality,” 245.

6. Popescu and Schult, “Performative Holocaust Commemoration,” 138.

7. Sturken, “Pilgrimages, Reenactment, and Souvenirs,” 281.

8. As Patraka has noted; ‘many of our responses to the images, objects, and worlds connected to the Holocaust are “hard wired,” provoking automatic emotional meanings and an attitude of reverence. […] Some of the strategies of this discourse are manipulative; they solicit our anguish, horror, and fear as the grounds for asserting larger meanings to which we may not wish to assent.’ “Spectacles of Suffering,” 91.

9. Sion, “Affective Memory, Ineffective Functionality,” 244.

10. Quentin Stevens’ fieldwork study of visitor behaviour at the memorial even includes an example of a student using two stelae as ‘tables’ to work on an art project. Stevens, “Visitor Responses.”

11. Eisenman cited in Bareither, “Difficult Heritage,” 7–8.

12. Sion, “Affective Memory, Ineffective Functionality,” 250.

13. Pinchevski cited in Ebbrecht-Hartmann, “Commemorating from a Distance,” 1101.

14. Papailias, “Witnessing in the Age,” 443.

15. Caruth, Trauma; Caruth, ed., Unclaimed Experience; and Felman and Laub, Testimony.

16. Laub, “Bearing Witness,” 57. There has been substantial criticism of the early model of trauma theory. Amongst others, Walter Benn Michaels has argued, there is a danger that the privileging of a performative encounter with trauma transforms the prohibition against understanding the Holocaust into ‘the requirement that it be experienced instead of understood’ Michaels, “You who never was there,” 12; my emphasis. See also Radstone, “Reconceiving Binaries”; Luckhurst, The Trauma Question; and Leys, Trauma.

17. Molloy, “‘Auschwitz Selfie’ Outrage.”

18. Dekel, “Ways of Looking,” 81.

19. Ibid.

20. Commane and Potton, “Instagram and Auschwitz.”

21. Interiview with Adam in Bareither, “Difficult Heritage,” 65.

22. Interview with Tara ibid., 68.

23. Douglas, “Youth, Trauma and Memorialisation,” 3–4.

24. Dunn, “Grinding Against Genocide.”

25. Ibid., 368–9.

26. Ibid., 376.

27. Hatherley, “However Brutal.”

28. Dunn, “Grinding Against Genocide,” 383.

29. Ibid., 383–84.

30. Adelman cited in Valentine, “Gays, Grinder, The Holocaust Memorial, and Art.”

31. Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory, 2.

32. A multidirectional approach such as that outlined by Rothberg is important in that it allows for a recognition of different subject positions and different relations to historical events. For example, in his study of visitors’ photography at Auschwitz, Till Hilmar gives the example of a South African man whose use of photography aided a personal reflection on Apartheid. In particular, ‘it led him to contemplate his passive stance when witnessing racial injustice as a child […]: “there are some bitter memories and there’s a lot of shame that I wasn’t more aware at the time when I was younger how wrong it was.”’ Hilmar, “Storyboards of Remembrance,” 462.

33. Goshert, “The Aporia of AIDS,” 52.

34. Caron, “Tactful Encounters,” 173.

35. Ibid.

36. McBean, “Being ‘There’,” 258.

37. Ibid., 256–7.

38. Dunn, “Grinding Against Genocide,” 377.

39. Whilst not a part of the standard corpus of memorial practices, this would not be an anomalous response. As Molloy notes of his visit to Auschwitz: ‘Auschwitz is a place of almost incomprehensible death, but also a place to celebrate Hitler’s failure to exterminate entire groups of human beings. Israeli students at the site wave massive, defiant Star of David flags. We’re here, they announce. We’re alive.’ Molloy, ‘“Auschwitz Selfie” Outrage.’

40. Krause, “Cruising Eisenman’s Holocaust Memorial,” 69.

41. Butler, “Performativity, Precarity,” xiii.

42. Butler, “Violence, Mourning, Politics,” 5.

43. Butler and Yancy, “Interview,” 435.

44. Stevens, “Visitor Responses,” 45.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sally Miller

Sally Miller is an independent researcher. She was previously Senior Lecturer in Historical and Critical Studies in Photography at University of Brighton, UK. Her first book Contemporary Photography and Theory: Concepts and Debates was published by Routledge in 2020.