Islands of Memories on the main stage - film and conversation

Tickets: www.bjornsonfestivalen.no/festivalprogram-2021

In 2016 the artist Siri Hermansen received an art award from the Bavarian Minister of Arts and Culture consisting of an eleven-month residency at Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia in Bamberg. The result of that stay was Islands of Memories, a three-channel video installation.

The film investigates how memories and traumas of World War II have been passed on to and received by third generation descendants of German families. How does public history correlate with the histories of private families? We are given insights into human processes of adaption and the negotiation mechanisms that allow descendants to carry their family heritage.

In the film we meet the cultural historian Georg Habermehl, the psychiatric nurse Martin Jansen, and the professor of social science, Claudia Lenz. Through conversations, the three protagonists reveal different strategies and methods for understanding the history of their families and country during the Nazi era. Whereas George Habermehl denies that his grandfather was a Nazi, despite the fact that he was a highranking officer who participated in the occupation of Narvik, Martin Jansen has internalized his family history, trying to fill the emotional void of his own cold upbringing with new ideas of family life filled with love. Lastly, we meet Professor Claudia Lenz, who has devoted her adult life to researching collective memory, with a particular focus on the period of World War II. Her research on generational studies reveals that although many traumatic experiences of World War II have been told to close relatives, the receiver often negotiates and transforms these painful memories into something positive, in order to be able to endure their family history. The underlying question in the project thus becomes how we can learn from history.

Siri Hermansen is a Norwegian filmmaker, photographer and installation artist. Through her artistic practice she investigates unforeseen effects in societies that are undergoing deep economic, environmental, or cultural change. Her work offers unusual micro perspectives on contemporary methods of survival and processes of adaption from societies that can be considered as uncertain zones. Her artistic research method resembles a form of shared anthropology, where the outcome of the material is dependent on the interrelations created on location and the artist’s personal experience of the place. Siri Hermansen completed her doctorate at the National Academy of the Arts in Oslo in 2016. She holds an MFA from École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and a BFA from Parsons School of Design.