I miss you, Jew!

Rafał Betlejewski

Abstract

Focusing on Poland, the Gdansk-born artist Rafal Beteljewski takes a performative approach in his text, which offers a brief meditation alongside the artist’s provocative photographic works on Poland’s ‘absent’ Jewish presence.

Keywords: 

Poland, Polish identity, Jews, Holocaust, absence, absent presence, contemporary art, performance

Full text: Betlejewski_p.165-172 (PDF, 956 KB)

DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.5456/issn.2050-3679/2014s31rb

Biographical note

Rafal Betlejewski is a Polish artist and performer, born in Gdansk, 1969. He is best known for his numerous public space projects concerning identity, social labels, the collective mind and memory. He is the author of art-social projects including, ‘I Miss You, Jew!’, ‘And Would I Go? Warsaw Uprising’. See: http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafal_Betlejewski

An earlier version of this material was presented on the occasion of the project conference ‘Disturbing Pasts: Memories, Controversies and Creativity’ (20 -22 November 2012, Museum of Ethnology/Weltmuseum Wien, Vienna). To view the film footage on the Open Arts Archive, http://www.openartsarchive.org, follow this link: http://www.openartsarchive.org/oaa/content/disturbing-pasts-memories-controversies-and-creativity-conference-2