itourist?

Monday 11th December

John Hansard Gallery, University of Southampton

Griselda Pollock writes that the main difference between those who originally wound up at places like Auschwitz Birkenau and today’s visitors is that today’s visitors are free to leave. So what motivates people to visit Europe’s most notorious sites of mass extermination, many of which have become must-see destinations on Europe’s 21st century grand tour? Who visits these places? And what might these sites and journeys represent to visitor, artist, scholar and state? In addressing these questions Journeys through the Holocaust brings together an international group of scholars, visual artists, film makers and curators whose work focuses on the Holocaust as a contemporary discursive, ideological and economic phenomenon as well as a broader set of concerns related to what has recently been termed ‘dark tourism’.

Journeys through the Holocaust coincides with Paul Antick’s itourist?, a multi-media project that uses billboard art, writing and the internet to pose a series of questions about the relationship between representations of the Holocaust, Jewish identities and mass tourism in the 21st century. During December 2006 fourteen billboards will be simultaneously situated in Southampton, London and Terezin (Theresienstadt ) in the Czech Republic. An accompanying website (www.visual-culture.com/project/i-tourist) will afford audiences the opportunity to comment on the billboards as well as other related materials featured at the website.

Speakers

• Tim Cole (Bristol University, ‘Selling the Holocaust: From Auschwitz to Schindler, How History Is Bought, Packaged and Sold’)

• Elle Flanders (Dir. ‘Zero Degrees of Separation’) & Kay Dickinson (Goldsmiths College)

• Tobias Brinkmann (Parkes Institute for Jewish/non-Jewish Relations, University of Southampton)

• Victor Seedman (University of Luton)

• Richard W. Hill (Middlesex University)

• Paul Antick (Middlesex University)

For speaker’s abstracts click here

Journeys Through the Holocaust will be introduced by Professor Tony Kushner (Parkes Institute for Jewish/non-Jewish Relations, University of Southampton)

Cost

£7.50 / £10 at the door Free entry for students with proof of status (conditions apply) Advanced booking is highly recommended

To book: telephone John Hansard Gallery 02380 592158 or e-mail journeys@hansard gallery.org.uk

For further information on itourist? or Journeys through the Holocaust contact: p.antick@mdx.ac.uk

Sponsors

Journeys through the Holocaust and itourist? are presented in collaboration with the John Hansard Gallery and supported by Middlesex University, the Museum of Domestic Art and Architecture, the Parkes Institute for Jewish/non-Jewish Relations (University of Southampton), and the Czech Center for Contemporary Art.