Disturbingly Familiar is a visual and textual diary of my first trip to Poland, from where my grandparents fled to Brazil after World War I. The piece comprises a sound installation and 16 postcards, which come together to recount my travel experience through images, first-person accounts and quotes from other authors including Hal Foster and Andreas Huyssen.
Disturbingly Familiar
(transcription of the text narrated by me)
Beiguel like bagels
I arrived in Poland without any mental images.
Landing in Warsaw, I discovered that I was entering into neither a black hole nor a blank white page of sorts, but into a gray area; a land without narratives.
My only reference was one memory, from when I was 9 years old, of my grandma Sonia, in winter, the snow covering her legs up to her thighs. My mother told me how she missed the flowers of her city, Przelmysl, and that there had been an apple tree in the orchard.
I take that back. There was one more memory. My father used to tell the story of his great-aunt, who wore her veil while sunbathing during the brief summer in Deblin/Irena, terrifying all the children of the shtetl. She lived to be over 100 years old. And every morning she fasted, drinking a bowl of aquavit…
And that was all that I knew, or what was left of them.
Mostly what there was were the losses.
This must be why I am so attached to names. I have great difficulty understanding how people don’t associate my name, Beiguelman, with bagels, the famous Jewish bread.
But it surprised me even further when I discovered that my interlocutor didn’t even know what a bagel is!
Full text: PDF
Commissioned by Culture.PL, as part of the Polish culture in Brazil program. Presented by Videobrasil at Galpão VB.
June 25th-August 20th, 2016.
Disturbingly Familiar
(transcription of the text narrated by me)
Beiguel like bagels
I arrived in Poland without mental images. Landing in Warsaw meant discovering that I was entering neither a black hole nor a kind of blank page, but a “gray” screen, a territory without narratives. My only reference was a memory of my grandma Sonia at nine years old, in winter, with snow covering her legs up to her thighs. My mother said she also missed the little flowers of her town, Przelmysl, and that there was an apple tree in her orchard.
I take that back. There was another memory too. My father told the story of his great-aunt, who would put on her shroud to sunbathe during Deblin/Irena’s brief summer, terrifying all the children in the shtetl. She died at over a hundred. And she drank a bowl of aquavit on an empty stomach every morning…
And that was all I knew, or all that remained of them. Beyond that, there were losses.
That must be why I am so attached to names. I find it very difficult to understand how people fail to associate my name, Beiguelman, with bagels, the famous Jewish bread. Even more surprising is discovering that the person I am talking to does not even know what a bagel is… Continued: PDF