Steel, painted blue, photographs (silk screen on glass), flash and illumination
Each stele 180 x 40 x 40 cm
1998
Photo: Rolf Sturm
Monuments and memorials for the victims of National Socialism
[3] Kreim: The newly created memorial for the victims of National Socialism is made from blue steles. When it is approached a flash light illuminates a photograph of one of the victims from Ingolstadt. Why is a technical solution used for this memorial?
Pachtner: We are experiencing, at the end of the 20th Century, a flood of technical developments. It goes without saying that for me they are available to be used in art too. What is important about the blue steles is that they are man size. Each represents a person from Ingolstadt who was persecuted or died in a concentration camp or elsewhere.
More than 50 years after the end of National Socialism such a memorial has to have a relationship to the place where it is erected. Because it has no connection with Luitpold Park, the relationship has to be created out of the individuals whom it would have been possible to meet in Ingolstadt 60 years before. They would have looked then like they look on the photographs. It puts a face on the unimaginable mass murder.
Why flash?
The steles are not at first lit, it is only when someone, by approaching them, shows that they wish to enter into a dialogue is the face of a victim illuminated for a short time: The person is lit for a split second which leads to a subjective understanding by the viewer.
An extract of an interview with Dagmar Pachtner held by Isabella Kreim. In the memorial documentation 1999, Pg. 20