Souvenir - Subjective Cartographies from Israel 2014

The artistic research project, “Souvenir” juxtaposes contemporary individual life stories of Israelis against official national narratives.

In Israel, I conducted fifty interviews with two groups of second and third generation, 1. Group offsprings from Austrian Jews and second group Israelis of non-European descent.
Along with the question of their current perception of Austria, the conversations revolved around the impact of their (grand)parents’ origin to the construction of their own identities in Israel today.

The aim is to exemplify the contrast of the „national remembrance/myth“ of both countries with the „invidual memory/reality“.

Each of the 10 selected conversations will be translated into a Subjective Cartography.

"Souvenir" expresses the contradictions and ambivalences of the individual and the culture of Israel, and contextualizes historical facts with personal memories, emotions and experiences. It is about changing perspectivety and questioning the offical narrative and myths of both countries.

The goal is comprehensible visualizations that show differences in order to represent “more real” impressions, namely stories from, not about, Israel.