Catalogue > At random

`UNAMERICA Relocating memories’, by the artist Luise Schröder, deals with the commemoration of the internment of Japanese-Americans at the former War Relocation Center in Manzanar, USA during World War II. Once a year survivors, their relatives, as well as sympathizing groups come together to commemorate the forced displacement and detention of more than 10,000 people to Manzanar authorized by president Roosevelt through the Executive Order 9066. In 1985 the place was declared a national memorial site. Since 9/11 the Japanese-American community intensively expresses its solidarity also with Muslim communities in the USA and invites them to participate in the events at Manzanar. The video focusses on different historical, political and visual narratives with the purpose to understand how and in which way the historical events are represented and reconstructed today. The historical photos used in the video are taken by Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange.

Luise Schroeder is a visual artist, photographer and filmmaker, who is based in Potsdam, Leipzig and Berlin. Within her artistic practice she is dealing with aspects of “history in the making” from a today’s perspective and how cultures of remembrance and commemoration are influenced and formed by media and image production. In recent years, the artist has taken part in solo exhibitions at the Kunstverein Bielefeld and the C/O Berlin Amerikahaus in Germany and in numerous group exhibitions. Among others in the Brno House of Arts (Czech Republic), in the 7th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art in 2012 and in the Gallery Eigen+Art in Berlin as well as in the Goethe Institut Washington DC, USA. In 2016 she was awarded a three-months scholarship in Los Angeles at the Villa Aurora and in 2018/19 she was holding a residency at the Cité des Arts in Paris, France.