ARTISTS TALKING

# 43 [4 November 2009]

Pat Weed from Kansas came to the studio today. She stumbled across the blog whilst researching the history of this area of France before her holiday to the area. She is Judeo-Christian and takes a deep interest in the Holocaust. Having read this blog she wanted to visit the camp with me which she did this afternoon.

She arrived at 1.00 with her husband and daughter. Following a good while getting to know each other better the conversation veered towards the Holocaust; as we were discussing the nature of Rivesaltes as not only a transit camp, but as a concentration camp and the implications of both names, Louis burst into the room dressed as Darth Vader, it was clearly time to start looking at my videos.

Pat asked where the images that I painted originated, so I showed her the video RQV2 and explained that my work is more evocative than descriptive, the context giving the work meaning rather than it emerging from the images. I would say that my work is 'difficult' to view/interpret if not allowing yourself to be absorbed by the ethereal sound and images on a meditative level, which they seemed to appreciate. Then we got on to the paintings.

They listened attentively as I explained how I interpreted the video-stills through using various materials in the studio. They seemed to like the work as they left with one of the new red drip paintings 'Argeles. 1.i' based on the Argeles video.

Helen dropped the children off with the grandparents and off we went to the camp. As usual wind and rain featured, but even on a sunny day the camp is grim. Following a tour of a small section of the camp we headed for the railway siding where Pat wished to place a stone from the Western Wall (Wailing Wall) which she collected earlier in the year. She handed out sheets for us to follow the Kaddish mourning prayer, which she then prayed and we all finished with an Amen, it was moving. Before we parted we went to the memorial stones to each of the peoples held at the camp for a photo opportunity.

The memorial stone for the Jews, vandalised in 2003 reads:

 ... Delivered to the Nazis in the Occupied Zone, by authority of the French government, deported to the extermination camp of Auschwitz and murdered because they were Jews. We will never forget these victims of racial and xenophobic hatred.

She is going to speak with a friend at the Mid-West Centre for Holocaust Education in Kansas about the work I'm doing based on the camp, so a longer-lasting link may have been formed... all due to this blog.

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

# 42 [23 October 2009]

Nick Griffin (BNP leader) on BBC's Question Time was controversial and caused violent protests. People say to me that the Holocaust is not a relevant subject today, so why did a Holocaust denier stir up so much anger?

Before QT, BBC news broadcast the following:

Although he now says Hitler was wrong, he once said about the Holocaust:

Orthodox opinion is that six million Jews were gassed and cremated. Orthodox opinion also once held that the world is flat.

But without a formal ban on the BNP and with the party polling 6% in the European elections the BBC felt he could be allowed an occasional slot on Question Time.

Nick Robinson, BBC Political Editor, commented:

He's also been given the chance to deny that he is a Holocaust denier, to simply confirm that he thinks that the Nazis did kill millions of Jews. He failed to do that tonight...

The QT show mainly focused on Griffin. Amongst questions from the audience, regarding his comments on race, immigration and the BNP hijacking the image of Winston Churchill, was the following:

David Dimbleby:

Which is the untrue quote that's been said about you? The Holocaust denial possibly?... Did you deny the Holocaust?

NG:

I do not have a conviction for Holocaust denial.

DD:

But you did deny it... Why are you smiling, it's not a particularly amusing issue.

NG:

I was very critical for the way in which the Holocaust was and is in fact abused to prevent serious discussion over immigration.

DD:

Just you say you're misquoted...

[Quoting NG]:

I want to see Britain become 99% genetically white just as she was 11 years before I was born.

...I can't find the misquotations and apparently neither can you.

The discussion continued, then came a question from the floor:

Winston Churchill put everything on the line so that my ancestors wouldn't get slaughtered in the concentration camps but here sits a man who says that that's a myth just like a flat world was a myth. How could you say that?

NG:

I cannot explain why I used to say those things... anymore than I can tell you why I've changed my mind. I cannot tell you the extent to which I've changed my mind because European law prevents me...

DD:

Have you actually changed your mind or do you only say you've changed your mind because the law makes it illegal to be a Holocaust denier?

NG:

I have changed my mind, a lot of it is about figures. One of the key things which makes me change my mind is British radio intercepts of German transmissions about the brutal mass-murder of innocent Jews on the Eastern Front...which changes the figures very greatly.

Jack Straw:

What about Auschwitz? Couldn't people see with their own eyes what happened in Auschwitz? You didn't need a subsequent radio intercept to find out that people were gassed at Auschwitz.

Maybe my work is about a contemporary issue afterall.

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

# 41 [18 October 2009]

Another interesting insight in to the camp  was the system of heating used during 1941 - 1942. The huts weren't heated, only the school huts (where the Quakers organised wood stoves), administration buildings and ilot G - the health centre. At one moment the camp staff realised that there were a lot of beds missing and it was discovered that the interns were burning their beds, so desperate were they to keep warm.

Many charities worked at the camp, obviously the Red Cross, but also the Quakers, YMCA and the OSE, a Russian Jewish charity. The last one interests me personally as my Jewish family is from Russia . . . I'll do a little more research.

The hour or so was really helpful, especially discovering the hut where Friedal Bohny-Reitel wrote her journal. Elodie is mainly concerned with giving teachers the tools to teach awareness of the Holocaust, particularly the role of the camp at Rivesaltes in the Final Solution, but is soon off to Auschwitz to take part in a conference. I plan to visit Auschwitz myself sometime in the future, perhaps travelling by train from Rivesaltes to make a new series of videos.

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/

# 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/

# 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/

# 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/

# 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/

# 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/

# 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/