Som Chai meets my family & friends
I am so excited that Som Chai is now in Oz and has been granted a partner visa.
He's met my family and friends, and even come along to Uni with me.
It is wonderful having him here with me - no more lonely nights or awkward outings on my own!
I can throw my wish list in the fire now because he fulfils all my dreams. I am so proud of him - he is charismatic, generous and kind, and he is also Budhist and a meditator!
I wondered whether there was a difference between art made by a human and art made by a machine? So I made a fan that painted, and I became a painting human fan.
Conclusion: there was no difference.
Just an Ordinary Peasant is based on my uncle’s experience as an inmate at Treblinka extermination camp in 1944. His memoir recounts that while being forced to carry corpses from the gas chambers to an open-air pyre, he was handed a sack which held little children who were still alive. The guard commanded the sack be thrown into the fire. The woman I play in Just an Ordinary Peasant is a hybrid character created from the memoirs of my uncle, my parents and my own research. She sings and dances and also throws a sack of babies into the fire. This piece explores my own biases as well as questions the culpability of ‘ordinary people’ who were accomplices to the atrocities carried out during the Third Reich.
'Dancing Auschwitz: I Will Survive'
In June 2009, I travelled to Poland, the Czech Republic and Germany with my father, my four children, and my niece to retrace my parents’ past.
From this journey emerged Dancing Auschwitz, a multi-part installation comprising three video works, a large-scale photographic image, my father, as ‘living art,’ and three trays of email responses to my work, grouped into Love, Hate and Healing.
The three video works combine contemporary performance, archival footage, and documentary. The contemporary dance and documentary were filmed during our family journey through Europe, while the archival footage comes from a childhood home-movie.
I Will Survive: Dancing Auschwitz. Part 1 presents three generations of my family — awkwardly dancing to the pop song I Will Survive at concentration camps and other traumatic sites of trauma from my parents’ past.
The dance celebrates life, but also evokes absence, loss and mourning. I chose Gloria Gaynor’s anthem as it references the struggle of marginalised groups — Black communities, women, LGBTQ+ people, and Jews.
This video is a celebration of life and a tribute to my father’s survival. Because he survived, my sister Celina and I were born — and so the generations continued...
! עם ישראל חי
Dancing Auschwitz: I Will Survive
 'Survivor'. 3 generations ( L->R) Gil, Jane, Gil, Justine, Adolek, Yasmin, Sunny, Coby). On the railway tracks at Auschwitz extermination camp |  'TO WRITE POETRY AFTER AUSCHWITZ IS BARBARIC'. A quote soon after the liberation of Auschwitz by the German philosopher Theodor Adorno, member of the Frankfurt School. On the railway tracks at Auschwitz extermination camp, the site where Adolek last saw his mother and members of his family |  'ART MUST GO ON EVEN AFTER AUSCHWITZ.' Quote by Theodor Adorno decades after the war |
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 Three generations in front of the cattle wagon that transported the Jews and gypsies to Auschwitz L->R Justine Peleg, Yasmin Vinkler-Korman, Adolek Kohn, Sunny Inbal-Korman, Gil Korman & Jane Korman |  Dad says Kaddish at Auschwitz before we danced |  Dancing in front of the gates of Auschwitz with the sign 'WORK MAKES YOU FREE' |
 Still from the video 'Dancing Auschwitz: I Will Survive.' At Theresienstadt Ghetto in the fortress town of Terezín, in the annexed Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, (after the German occupation of the Czech lands). |  Still from the video 'Dancing Auschwitz: I Will Survive.' At Theresienstadt Ghetto in the fortress town of Terezín |  Still from the video 'Dancing Auschwitz: I Will Survive.' At Auschwitz |
 Still from the video Dancing Auschwitz: 'I Will Survive.' At Theresienstadt concentration camp, Terezín. |  Still from the video 'Dancing Auschwitz: I Will Survive.' At Dachau concentration camp, Germany Adolek & Yasmin |  Dancing at Dachau Concentration camp, Germany Adolek & Jane |
 Still from the video 'Dancing Auschwitz: I Will Survive.' At Theresienstadt concentration camp, Terezín. Sunny,Yasmin & Gil |