ARTISTS TALKING

# 31 [13 July 2009]

It was my wedding anniversary yesterday, my wife and I dined out at midday instead of the evening as it was easier to organise a babysitter. As a special treat I suggested we visited the camp because I needed to make some new footage in HD, after my wife had been wined and dined she complied.

I’m making a new series of videos in HD for a festival which will screen only videos made in HD.  Up until now, I didn’t realise that I could make videos in HD; so far all my footage has been shot in HD, but as I don’t have an HD disk-burner the DVDs have ended up being standard definition. A friend who works in the industry in Soho has informed me that if I save the HD footage as a data file it can be viewed in HD, so, now, at last, I can put my HD camera to good use.

When we arrived at the camp the temperature must have been 35 degrees, no breeze, stifling (during the war it was known as the Sahara of France). I had eaten quite a lot which was a mistake as I planned to make a ’spin’ video amidst a copse of fir trees. Well … I did it, but suffered, three minutes of spinning is not good for you, even if you hadn’t eaten a huge meal. The sound of crickets filled the air, a sound I can definitely work with.

Back at home I edited the footage and am pleasantly surprised, especially with the sound which I have distorted in such a way that a high pitch note resounds with many harmonic layers. The images drop from the top of the screen to the bottom, almost like a waterfall of oranges and reds.

http://www.jonathan-moss.com/

# 32 [13 July 2009]

Some friends kindly invited us to the stay with them at the coast. After a morning of swimming we decided to visit the ‘Maternite Suisse’ not far from their house. During 1942 mothers-to-be from Rivesaltes and other local camps were allowed to stay for a month before their babies were born, give birth and then they had to return to the camps.

I had planned to film at the hospital a while back, so when I arrived I was eager to experiment. The trial footage of the rooms lacked contrast and colour, so I headed for the roof terrace, here I found a quite stunning metal glazing structure which I hope will form the basis of a new series of videos.

The walls of the building are lined with old photographs, some showing shockingly thin and tiny babies but many showing happy times too - a line of babies sleeping outside in the shade, smiling children being bathed in the garden... You can't help imagining what a haven of peace this must have been. 

Whilst I was filming in the hospital my wife chatted to a lady at the desk who explained a little about the history of the place.

The Red-Cross worker, Elisabeth Eidenbenz, who started the hospital tried to keep the mothers in this sanctuary for as long as possible, up to four months. She also hid them and tried to help them escape. There was a story of Lucie who was taken to the Maternite by the Germans, when they returned for her she wasn’t there – they told Elizabeth that she had three hours to find her or she would go in Lucie’s place (on the train to an undisclosed destination); Elizabeth packed her bags, but the Germans found Lucie in a field.

My wife questioned the lady on the reception about current reactions to discussing France’s involvement with the Nazis and she replied that the memory of the war is still too close, there existed too much animosity, some people saw terrible things and some people did terrible things. She believes that it is the next generation who will change this.

We wanted to chat longer, but had to leave. The assistant has our email address and is going to contact us as my wife has offered to voluntarily translate the hospital’s leaflets from French in to English. She is also going to track down a copy of Friedel Bohny-Reiter’s ‘Journal de Rivesaltes’ (also a Suisse Red-Cross worker, who documented the day-to-day goings on at the camp and who sent expectant mothers to La Maternite Suisse), it’s out of print and quite essential for my research.

http://www.jonathan-moss.com/

# 33 [21 July 2009]

I had a good week last week - been invited by Ottica TV to show in The Hague at the 'Streaming Festival' in November, had a video accepted to be shown at  'One Minute Film Festival', Aarau, Switzerland and sold a painting (one from the new Argeles series based on the 'spinning' videos made on the beach last year).

I am making a new video for Ottica TV - I was invited by some friends living in the village to help celebrate a 60th birthday by spending the day on a tourist train to Rivesaltes with their friends visiting from Germany. 

So, off I trundled to the station at Axat (20 mins from my home) in Andi's car, the sheep-farmer who had showed my work in his barn during the spring - he had organised the trip for our mutual friend, Suse whose birthday it was. This was to be no ordinary train journey - as soon as we boarded the train coffee and biscuits were offered to everyone in the carriage we had commandeered  - five minutes later Blanquette de Limoux (local bubbly) was passed around.

I placed my audio-recorder on the chair and surruptiously pressed record - the sound of the train whistle, screeching breaks and rhythmic chugg-chugga was accompanied by the sound of children and adults having fun on a grand day out. I hung out of the window and started to record the train-track, trees and bulidings as we hurtled through a changing landscape: woods, gorges and vineyards slowly disappeared as we approached the flat arid plain at Rivesaltes. 

For me the atmosphere approaching the station at Rivesaltes was laden with the gravitas of the past, from this seemingly anonymous station carriages took Jews to Auschwitz - but today it was the destination of a fun day out with some friends.

We ate lunch on a palm-tree lined square in front of a typically grand town hall - 30 minutes before we caught the train back was just enough to eat foie-gras, baguette and to drink Muscat de Rivesaltes (the other reason Rivesaltes is known).

I reflected on the bizarre situation in which I found myself - what was a mini-pilgimage for me was augmented by being accompanied by German friends and aquaintances on a day when all that mattered was enjoying the sun, food and drink in good company, but I do hope I've got some decent footage with an atmospheric soundtrack.

http://www.jonathan-moss.com/

# 34 [27 July 2009]

On Saturday I had a video screened at The Tenderpixel Gallery London as part of Rushes Soho Shorts. Unfortunately other commitments meant that I couldn't attend. It will be showing every afternoon until 31st July.

http://tenderpixel.com/rushes09.html

They have also produced a DVD of all the films showing as part of their 'experimental film' screenings which will be sold in their new shop: Tenderproduct.

I'm planning to visit the gallery next month to pick up my copy - it will be good to make contact.

http://www.jonathan-moss.com/

# 35 [19 August 2009]

I was pleased Andrew Bryant chose one of my comments as quote of the month; I emailed him with the request for a forum on Artists Talking and as it turns out is something they've been discussing at chez A-N recently. Wouldn't it be good if Artists Talking became more a community, good for advice, support and discussion?

http://www.jonathan-moss.com/

# 36 [19 August 2009]

I managed to drag myself away from framing and video-editing to start a new series of paintings. I locked the studio door to avoid any distractions from little Emilie and Louis and started to 'drip' over textures I made earlier in the year. The initial inspiration for the images was the HD video I completed last month (post 31).

Drips of cadmium yellow, titanium white, burnt sienna and prussian blue took quite some time to control and didn't have that elusive something that the painting needed; I'm not sure if it was the exasperation or inhalation of turps, but I found the largest brush I could (15cm) and started to drag it down the canvas, low-and-behold that elusive something appeared . . . So now I have a prototype and look forward to starting the others in the series when I've finished the framing and editing (which at the moment seems like no time soon).

http://www.jonathan-moss.com/

# 37 [7 October 2009]

Since the previous series of paintings I've been taking the opportunity to reflect on what I've been doing artistically. Its been a year since I started the blog and what an aid to the creative process its been; it has helped me focus the themes of my work and how I can best link the experience of the studio with the subject of the camp. I always direct those interested in my work or the history of the camp to this blog and it acts as a great introduction to those interested in the Holocaust in the south of France, I suppose my work gives an insight in to one approach to dealing with the past's influence on the present.

Three interesting meetings are coming up, the first with the curator of the Holocaust exhibition at The Imperial War Museum - I contacted her last year regarding my project and she is planning a visit to this area soon so I shall be giving her a tour of the camp. The second is with an American lady who stumbled across this blog a couple of months ago, she is involved in teaching Holocaust awareness; she too is visiting this area. I plan to take her to the camp at the end of the month where she wishes to say a prayer and lay a stone brought back from the Kotel (Western Wall). I'm looking forward to meeting her and hope she may even allow me to record her whilst at the camp. The third is a long-overdue tour of the camp by Elodie Montes who works for the Rivesaltes Memorial, chatting with her will provide a new insight in to the layout and knowledge of the camp before I show the other two around.

http://www.jonathan-moss.com/

# 38 [7 October 2009]

Following a stint of DIY preparing the studio for winter (so I can hopefully carry on working whilst it's blowing a gale outside) I got back to some painting, I decided to finish a series that I started last year, they needed something, at the time I didn't know what, then, I suppose with the benefit of a little distance (in time) I could drip over the surface with the red I experimented with in my Argeles series of videos made a year ago. All went well and they seem to have that elusive something that paintings need . . . I need to live with them a little before I give them the necessary tweaks.

So, I plan to spend a few weeks on some new paintings as I seem to be on a roll before I start editing videos again. I need to finish editing the rushes made on the train to Rivesaltes for a screening in the new year, hopefully the software problems will be a thing of the past.

http://www.jonathan-moss.com/

# 39 [17 October 2009]

It looks like the summer has ended, it seems difficult to believe we were in T-shirts and shorts just three days ago: it was too hot to sit outside, now all I seem to be doing is stoking the fire. Yesterday we went to the camp where I had arranged to meet Elodie Montes, the education officer for the Rivesaltes Memorial; stupidly I didn't take a coat thinking it would be warmer than our house in the mountains, it was, but was so windy that I could barely hear Elodie talking.

Meeting her was enlightening and helped fill some of the gaps in my research on the camp, she confirmed some of my suspicions and recounted some great anecdotes.

We started at 'Ilot F', the section of the camp owned by the Conseil General of Languedoc Rousillon (regional government). We looked at the devastation of last January's storm, she explained that many of the paintings on the walls were being rescued, dismantled and preserved in the archive before the huts crumbled. I pointed out a drawing of children in striped tunics on one wall, she was not aware of it and is going to bring it to the attention to an historian to see if it dates from 1941/'42.

Elodie confirmed that the large paintings of figures with tools in a hut in Ilot K were painted in 1941/'42 to decorate the interns' workshop (which was established by one of the charity organisations working in the camp with the aim of teaching the young men a trade). Ilot K is owned by the army and the plan is to knock down the huts in the near future; the memorial is in discussion with them to try to save the paintings before the huts are dismantled.

Ilot K was the only hut totally surrounded by barbed-wire, this was where the Jews were held later in addition to Ilot F. At first the camp was open, as it is in an isolated place and was called a 'Centre Rassemblement Familial'. Despite this, mothers and children were separated from the men. Boys of 14 were considered to be men and therefore taken from their mothers, so the mothers with little foresight to lie lost contact with their sons. It was the Tsiganes (Gypsies) who could remain in family units, apparently because they protested strongly and had the energy that the Spanish and the Jews lacked to make their case.

At the edge of Ilot K is the remains of the railway track built especially to take some of the Jews to the main line from Perpignan to Paris; the sleepers are still there, but not the lines themselves. At different times during 1942 interns were transported not only by train, but by lorry to Rivesaltes station.

Mothers-to-be were also transported by lorry to Elne to the Maternite Suisse, but had to return to the camp all too soon.

http://www.jonathan-moss.com/

# 40 [17 October 2009]

Some of the Spanish who were held at the make-shift camps on the beach at Argeles were recruited in work parties to extend the already-standing military base at Rivesaltes, little knowing that they would be interned there themselves.

During the '60s when the Harkis were housed at Rivesaltes the huts were in bad repair, most of them uninhabitable, so they slept in tents. When the last Harkis left the camp in 1970 they were housed on an especially constructed estate, unfortunately on a flood-plain, even after flooding they remain there today.

One issue that has interested me is the organisation of the camp during the war, at no time were German Nazis involved in the running of the camp, it was the Vichy administration who were in charge. The Jews who were sent to Auschwitz were sent by Vichy government chief-of-police Rene Bousquet; the Nazis had requested 40,000 Jews to be sent to concentration camps in Eastern Europe from the south of France, he sent an extra 10,000, 2,313 of which were from Rivesaltes. Elodie explained that in this way Rivesaltes played a real part in the Final Solution. The guards were all French, mostly local Gendarmes from Rivesaltes and Perpignan.

The Jews held at the camp were mainly from Germany and Poland, French Jews were not held there (unlike other camps in the south). I found it interesting that the French Rabbi from Perpignan visited the camp. Jewish festivals were celebrated and other interns, Spanish and Gypsies, joined in - language was not an issue. Vivette Samuel, an aid worker for the OSE: With a trembling hand, one of the veteran inmates lights the first small flame of the gigantic Menorah built by the detainees. And the traditional song borne by hundreds of voices ascends in the night that falls on the camps. For a moment the suffering recedes and I allow myself to be invaded by an immense hope.

Another piece of information which had eluded me was what happened to the bodies of those who died at the camp from malnutrition and disease, I knew that the few graves at the cemetry at Rivesaltes did not account for the thousands who died there. Elodie explained that there are a few graves at Perpignan, but it is largely believed that many were incinerated or buried in a mass-grave outside the camp, however no evidence has been found.

Whilst walking around Ilot K, Elodie pointed out the hut where Friedel Bohny-Reiter wrote her journal ('Journal de Rivesaltes'). The hut was covered in frescos on the interior, ones I had not noticed before, a Swiss mountain landscape. On the exterior, covered by bushes a painting of a train (a strange subject to us, but they didn't know their fate) plane and boat. Elodie said that the thinking behind these depictions of transport was to encourage people to consider how they might leave the camp. It is such a shame that soon these may be lost.

http://www.jonathan-moss.com/