The Ethical Challenge in the Object Quality of the Problem

In the summer of 2008 Penelope Curtis, advised by Israeli architect and cultural theorist Eyal Weizman, curated an exhibition at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds entitled The Object Quality of the Problem. This exhibition won the Visual Arts Award 2008 at the London Jewish Cultural Awards. The citation by the proposing judge, Jeremy Lewison, reads:

Above all the exhibition eloquently and quietly laid bear the dilemmas faced by diaspora Jews in the face of the Palestinian-Israeli problem: how do we judge our fellow Jews who commit acts that in British society we would deplore; how long can we go on making allowances for the Holocaust in condoning belligerent behaviour? In indirectly raising such issues this exhibition makes a valuable contribution to Jewish culture in the United Kingdom.

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The Long Journey Home

A bit of reinvented truth. A child with a story full of holes, can only reinvent for herself a memory. Of this I am certain. Therefore the autobiography in all of this can only be reinvented.  Memory is always reinvented in a story full of holes as if there is no story left. What to do then? Try to fill in the holes — and I would say even this hole — with an imagination fed on everything one can find, the left and the right and the middle of the hole. One attempts to create one’s own imaginary truth.
Chantal Akerman

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