Radio Warszawa | Radio Warsaw

Sława Harasymowicz undertook several years of research trying to understand the circumstances behind her great-uncle's death in the British RAF bombardment of German ships anchored in Neustadt Bay near Lübeck, May 1945; the air-raid resulted in the deaths of thousands of prisoners evacuated from Neuengamme concentration camp.

In one of her projects dealing with this history Harasymowicz used a form of reenactment to create a sound installation dramatising a real, prohibited cultural activity - a spoken radio performance created by the prisoners at Neuengamme, the core group of "journalists" including the artist's relative.  

The broadcast, scripted by Sława, was recorded in Sigmund Freud’s former study at Freud Museum in London. See also: Radio Warszawa at the Freud Museum London, 2016.
https://sharasymowicz.com/projects/radio-warszawa-radio-warsaw

Instead of the theatricality of (impossible) reconstruction, the performance works through repetition, using a variety of voices and accents to reconnect with the historical moment of respite, and resistance.

At Neuengamme Memorial in August 2021, the "broadcast" in the former Brick Factory building was accompanied by a montage of animation and provisional video footage of the Neuengamme site as it is today (the film is currently in editing stages). 

The point of the action was to "sound out" the reenactment on the site, and to consider the experience of place in invoking memory, in the often complex negotiations between remembrance, forgetting and imagination.

The visit: a crucial (and yet another) point of departure in the artist's on-going enquiry.

The visit was supported by Adam Mickiewicz Institute Warsaw.