SHIMON ATTIE'S SITE-SPECIFIC INSTALLATIONS AS ENIGMATIC MONUMENTS TO SURVIVAL

Abstract

Site-specific installations Between Dreams and History (1998) and The History of Another (2002), by American artist Shimon Attie, explore how reinterpretations of the past have helped to promote cultural survival for Jewish communities in the Lower East Side of New York and the former ghetto of Rome. They suggest that reinventing memories enabled people to create new connections between past and present, fostering a sense of shared identity and empowerment. By inviting viewers into multilayered, contradictory relationships with the histories of each site, the projects have the potential to turn viewers into figurative descendents of the people they see, responsible for carrying on their memories in new forms. At the same time, the projects tacitly explore the limitations of memory as a tool for cultural survival and the limits of their own potential to hold people together. They call attention to the lives of people for whom new narratives have not alleviated marginalization and to forms of narrativization that have simultaneously strengthened and attenuated communal identity.

Notes

Egan, “Shimon Attie,” n.p.

Stille, “The History of Another,” n.p.

Quoted in Lerner, “Narrating Over the Ghetto of Rome,” 20.

Lerner, “Narrating Over the Ghetto of Rome,” 21.

Lerner, “Narrating Over the Ghetto of Rome,” 14.

Young, At Memory's Edge, 7.

Young, At Memory's Edge, 2.

Quoted in Young, At Memory's Edge, 100.

Young, At Memory's Edge, 2.

Nora, “Between Memory and History,” 19.

Stow, Theater of Acculturation, 38.

Diner, Lower East Side Memories, 9.

Nora, “Between Memory and History,” 19.

Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, 40.

Zelizer, Remembering to Forget, 3.

Rothberg, “Between Memory and Memory,” 7.

Barthes, Camera Lucida, 26–7.

Hirsch and Spitzer, “What's Wrong with this Picture?” 246.

Hirsch and Spitzer, “What's Wrong with this Picture?” 241.

Bal, introduction to Acts of Memory, vii.

Young, At Memory's Edge, 64.

Hirsch and Spitzer, “What's Wrong with this Picture?” 248.

Hirsch and Spitzer, “What's Wrong with this Picture?” 246.

For an overview of shifting demographics in the Lower East Side between the mid-1800s and 1900s, see Mario Maffi's introduction to Gateway to the Promised Land.

Wallach, “Writing in Light.”

All citations of phrases projected on the walls in Between Dreams and History are from “Creative Time Presents Shimon Attie: Between Dreams and History,” Creative Time <http://www.creativetime.org/programs/archive/1998/BetweenDreams/between>.

Maffi, Gateway to the Promised Land, 93.

Maffi, Gateway to the Promised Land, 91.

Schleifer, “Lower East Side Story.”

Diner, Lower East Side Memories, 28.

Ibid.

Diner, Lower East Side Memories, 8.

Wenger, “Memory as Identity,” 9.

Wallach, “Writing in Light.”

Wenger, “Memory as Identity,” 27.

Grasmuck and Pessar, Between Two Islands, 162; Mele, Selling the Lower East Side, 127–8.

Lin, “The Changing Economy,” 56; Mele, “Neighborhood ‘Burn-Out,’” 133–4.

Lin, “The Changing Economy,” 57.

Sites, Remaking New York, 79–80.

Sites, Remaking New York, 94.

Kamil, “Tripping down Memory Lane,” 237.

In Piedmont, the Jews had been emancipated by King Carlo Alberto in 1848; Jews in other regions had been granted emancipation between 1859 and 1861 with the advent of a unified Italy, with the exception of Venice, which became part of the Kingdom of Italy only in 1866. Roman Jews had previously experienced brief periods of emancipation under the rule of Napoleon and the short-lived Roman Republic. For detailed accounts of Italian Jewish emancipation, see Rossi, “Emancipation of the Jews in Italy” and Segre, “The Emancipation of Jews in Italy.”

Lerner, “Narrating Over the Ghetto of Rome,” 1–2.

Stow, Theater of Acculturation, 128.

Lerner, “Narrating Over the Ghetto of Rome,” 7.

Segre, “The Emancipation of Jews in Italy,” 229; Zuccotti, “Italian Jews,” 72–4.

Segre, “The Emancipation of Jews in Italy,” 227.

Segre, “The Emancipation of Jews in Italy,” 229.

Ibid.

Segre, “The Emancipation of Jews in Italy,” 232–3.

Stille, “The History of Another,” n.p.

Stille, Benevolence and Betrayal, 180.

Stow, Theater of Acculturation, 130.

Stow, Theater of Acculturation, 42.

Quoted in Stille, Benevolence and Betrayal, 179.

Stow, Theater of Acculturation, 30.

Bettin, “Jews in Italy,” 346.

See, for example, Stow, Theater of Acculturation, 129; Hughes, Prisoners of Hope, 2.

Schwartz, “The Reconstruction of Jewish Life,” 369–70.

Hughes, Prisoners of Hope, 3.

Schwartz, “The Reconstruction of Jewish Life,” 369.

Young, At Memory's Edge, 75.

Egan, “Shimon Attie,” n.p.

Young, At Memory's Edge, 72.

Gregorovius, The Ghetto and the Jews of Rome, 86.

Gregorovius, The Ghetto and the Jews of Rome, 19.

Moore and Lobenstine, “Photographing the Lower East Side,” 32–9.

Kamil, “Tripping Down Memory Lane,” 228.

Salkin, “Fading into History.”

Hansen, “Rome's Jews Look Back.”

Stow, Theater of Acculturation, 129.

Stow, Theater of Acculturation, 38.