Next Year in Jerusalem: Artists Respond to Testimony from the Holocaust
Performance: Thursday, April 14, 2011, 7:30 p.m.
Forum with R. Clifton Spargo: Friday, April 15, 2011, 12:00 p.m.
Can there be, as philosopher Theodor Adorno declared, “no poetry after Auschwitz?" Or is it possible for artists to hold up a lens to unimaginable horrors and help us move through the heartbreak of history into a new realm, where we can transform the present? On Thursday, April 14th, Visions and Voices presents a performance of Next Year in Jerusalem, a powerful new piece created by USC faculty artist Stacie Chaiken in collaboration with Brighde Mullins. Chaiken’s performance will be followed by a conversation moderated by scholar and fiction writer R. Clifton Spargo about the nature of testimony, its relationship to creative expression, and the power of art to convey what cannot be spoken.
David Olère, Le crématoire III en activité from the Yad Veshem Art Museum in Jerusalem. Olère's painting is reproduced with permission from Serge Klarsfeld ed., David Olère: A Painter in the Sonderkommando at Auschwitz (New York: The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, 1989).
Stacie Chaiken created Next Year in Jerusalem based on materials she and Brighde Mullins discovered while exploring the USC Libraries’ newly acquired Holocaust and Genocide Studies Collection, which includes journals, photographs and firsthand testimonies from survivors and other witnesses of the World War II genocide. Following the performance, R. Clifton Spargo will facilitate a panel discussion with Chaiken (Theatre) and Mullins (Master of Professional Writing), Brent Blair (Theatre), Wolf Gruner (Jewish Studies and History), filmmaker Gabor Kalman and Stephen Smith of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education.
On Friday, April 15th, join Spargo for a conversation about testimony—or the first-person reporting of events—and the ways it can inform artistic expression. His story “Anne, Afterward” and Next Year in Jerusalem will be available on this page prior to the forum. Afterward, join us for a visit to the USC Libraries’ Holocaust and Genocide Studies Collection.
Next Year in Jerusalem Performance
Thursday, April 14, 2011, 7:30 p.m.
The Ray Stark Family Theatre
USC School of Cinematic Arts, 108
Admission is free
Forum for Creative Writers with R. Clifton Spargo
Friday, April 15, 2011, 12:00 p.m.
Doheny Memorial Library
Intellectual Commons, Room 233
Admission is free. Refreshments will be served
Links
- "Anne, Afterward," by R. Clifton Spargo
- Next Year in Jerusalem, by Stacie Chaiken of the USC School of Theatre
- USC Libraries Holocaust and Genocide Studies Collection
- LibGuides on USC's resources for studying the Holocaust and genocides
- Resisting the Path to Genocides research cluster at USC College
- USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education
- Visions and Voices: The USC Arts and Humanities Initiative
- Panelist Gabor Kalman's documentary film There Was Once
For more information about the Next Year in Jerusalem events on April 14th and 15th, please contact Tyson Gaskill at gaskill@usc.edu or (213) 740-2070.