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9/6/2002

Reports From Afield

Mobius, Boston

Significant Others: Jews and Poland"
an artists' talk given by Rachel Kadish, Erica Lehrer and Larry Mayer

(Boston) What does memory offer, what do reparations repair, when is genocide over? The Holocaust recedes in time, but it continues to grow in global significance. Attempts to grapple with it through memorials, financial transactions, court rulings, and moral debate re-animate severed connections between Jews and the places they left behind. Poland - a place of great Jewish intimacy and great Jewish loss - is perhaps the central place in Holocaust geography. Most Jews in the United States are Polish Jews, and they are locked in a tortured embrace with a land whose tragic mythology often obscures its modern reality. As young American Jews, Rachel Kadish, Erica Lehrer and Larry Mayer inherited "Jewish Poland" through lamentations, community neuroses and pieties. Coming of age in multicultural America and a globalized world, they itch for a broader view. In their writing, photography and documentary work, they struggle with these questions: Who are we today as we look back to Poland, to the Holocaust? What business, if any, remains unfinished between American Jews and non-Jewish Poles? In the words of Polish-born Jewish writer Rafael Scharf - "Poland, what have I to do with thee?"

Kadish, Lehrer and Mayer have all spent time in Poland looking for lost things: family roots, identity, cultural memory, property. They are Boston-area artists who work in various expressive media. Each of them comes to the subject of Jewish Poland from a different perspective, incorporating photography, video, creative writing, and scholarly social, cultural and political analysis.

(Bio.) Rachel Kadish is a 1991 graduate of Princeton University. She has published short fiction and essays in Story, Prairie Schooner, Tin House, Pakn Treger, Lilith, Air France, and Bomb, as well as in the anthologies Daughters of Kings (Faber & Faber, 1997), Traveling Souls: Contemporary Pilgrimage Stories (Whereabouts Press, 1999), and in the 1998 Pushcart Prize Anthology. Her first novel, From a Sealed Room, was published by Putnam in 1998, and was released in paperback (Berkeley Signature Edition) and in German translation (Goldmann / Bertelsmann) this year. Kadish holds an M.A. in creative writing from New York University. She has received grants from the Whiting Foundation and the Rona Jaffe Foundation, and has been a fellow at the Radcliffe Bunting Institute and a resident at the Yaddo and MacDowell colonies. She currently teaches fiction and creative nonfiction at the Harvard University Extension School. She was a 2000 / 2001 fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Erica Lehrer is completing her doctoral dissertation in cultural anthropology at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. Her thesis concerns the intersections of Jewish cultural revival, identity, and tourism in Poland. She was a Fulbright scholar in Poland in 1998-99, and her work has also been supported by grants from the Mellon Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the United States Department of Education, the International Research and Exchanges Board and others. She has published essays and photographs in Pakn Treger, Bridges, the International Institute Journal, Polin (in press), and others. An exhibition of her photographs, entitled "The Motives of Memory: Commercializing the Jewish Past in Poland," was shown at the University of Michigan and Grinnell College. Her photography has been recognized by Amnesty International, Lexington (MA) Council for the Arts, and the Anolic Memorial fund for Visual Art. She recently received the Avery Hopwood and Jules Hopwood Graduate Essay Award at the University of Michigan for her writings on Jewish Poland.

Larry Mayer holds a B.A. in History from State University of New York at Binghamton and an M.A. in English Education from Columbia University, Teachers College. His articles have appeared in Hadassah Magazine and the Boston Phoenix. His first book Who will say Kaddish: A Search for Jewish Identity in Contemporary Poland, with photographs by Gary Gelb, will be published in June 2002 by Syracuse University Press (http://www.garygelb.com/bookproj/ ).



In the picture: 'Mathaus kos', photo by Larry Mayer

"Reports from Afield" is an ongoing series of monthly Monday evening talks by members of the Mobius Artists Group and Boston/regional/national/international guest artists. These presentations focus on projects that have been created abroad, and/or in a public arena, and that explore important artistic, socio-cultural, or political issues. In addition, many of the reports reflect Mobius' increasingly international outlook. "Reports from Afield" has been made possible with support from the Boston Cultural Agenda Fund, City of Boston. Please call the Mobius office if you would like more information about this program.

In 2001, Mobius was granted a Boston's Best Performance Art award by The Improper Bostonian. "For more than 21 years, Mobius has been the city's premiere venue for experimental art, programming a 42-week roller-coaster ride of events that range from consciousness-raising to the downright bizarre. The annual ArtRages fundraiser is one of the funkiest and most fun happenings in town, and the group's commitment to the Fort Point artists' community is one of the few things standing between it and the developers' wrecking ball. Our hats are off to them." In 2002, Mobius has received the "best place to get in touch with your inner Yoko" award from the Boston Phoenix. Also, Stuff@Night and Boston Magazine's Concierge have recently cited Mobius as a place that puts "the life in Boston nightlife" and is a "mecca for innovation."

Monday, June 10, 7 pm

Tickets:
free, with reception following; reservations recommended; please call Mobius at (617) 542-7416

Mobius
Boston's Artist-Run Center
for Experimental Work in All Media
354 Congress St.
Boston, MA 02210
phone: 617-542-7416
fax: 617-451-2910

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