VIDNESS – Video Spaces as a Medium of Memory Practice
360° video / AR & VR platform, 2022-2023.
Concept: Kaya Behkalam. Programming: Farhan Khalid. Produced in the framework of the research project SPUR.lab, a collaboration between the memorial sites Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen, Film University Konrad Wolf Babelsberg and the Museum für Brandenburgisch-Preussische Geschichte Potsdam.
Watch a report about the project on German news “Tagesthemen”
The project “Vidness” turns the landscape of Brandenburg into a virtual excavation site: Inside and outside the former concentration camps Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen, 360° video spaces lead through historical terrain and uncover traces of the NS past that reach into the present and uncover the wide network of Nazi terror in Brandenburg. An interactive and growing map links various video documents and 360° spaces that can be explored and walked through on site via smartphone and tablet or at a distance as a VR installation.
The video spaces approach the topic of memory practices in a variety of ways: they include documentary explorations and the search for traces and lifelines of the victims of the Holocaust in Brandenburg, interviews and conversations with contemporary witnesses, as well as artistic and associative approaches that critically address the question of how and whether the traumatic events between 1933 and 1945 can be depicted. The format of the 360° video makes it possible to address users of the project directly and to give them the opportunity to position themselves in relation to the events, to reflect on their own presence in these places and to confront themselves with other subjective, temporal and spatial co-presences.
Read more about the project in German >>here