Agenda

Je vous offre les oiseaux / Us ofereixo els ocells

Audiovisual installation by Marta Marín-Dòmine

From December 4th, 2020 to May 18th, 2021

Museu d'Història dels Jueus

Je vous offre les oiseaux / Us ofereixo els ocells is an installation born out as an acknowledgment of a perception expressed by many survivors of Nazi concentration camps: not having seen any bird overflying the camps.

The installation takes the camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau as its point of reference in order to highlight the contrast between day to day life and its distortion under a situation of extreme violence. Birkenau was both a concentration camp for those persecuted for political, religious, sexual and social reasons, and an extermination camp for the European Jews, Sinti and Roma. Birkenau was also a large birch grove that served as a screen to hide the gas chambers and the crematoria. In 1940, the ornithologist Günther Niethammer, who had enlisted firstly in the SS and later in the Waffen-SS, was granted permission to birdwatch in the zone. He catalogued 127 birds.

The installation invites visitors on a brief journey into some visual and sound landscapes of the camp as it is in the present through images filmed in Birkenau and a sound composition created with the sounds and songs of all 127 birds.