SEHNSUCHT
Architecture of the concentration camp juxtaposed with the modern residential community. Building a post-traumatic identity.
The district of the city that I discovered is not well-known and does not constitute a typical, hegemonic site of memory - it's an area where, during the II World War, Nazists established the Gross Rosen concentration camp, and where today (in the same buildings), 32 families live.
The residents do not perceive their homes as "cursed". To improve their quality of life, immediately after the war, they started rebuilding the camp into apartments on their own. When asked about the "bloody" or "tainted" connotation of the land, they simply reply, "We live well here," trying to focus on the present because they need to "move forward," while at the same time addressing history with respect.
Studying the visual aspects of both, the camps and the today's residential architecture, reveals deep ties between the modern-day landscape and the historical trauma that permeates it. Differences in the architecture of these two periods reveal how the identity of the local residents was being built. At the same time, this land represents natural wealth (not without reason did the Nazis establish their camps here, as prisoners worked in granite mines), and this wealth is a source of tourism in the city. It's because of granite that thermal springs occur here, which today hundreds of people benefit from. Bathing in or drinking this water is therapeutic due to its abundance of minerals. The extraordinary healing properties of the water, as well as the attitude of the district's residents, have inspired me to create a well from which people can draw health-giving water. It will also serve as a symbol of healing and the desire for a better life. It serves natural mineral water, believed to possess healing properties, reflecting the community's adaptive nature and capacity for change.
The purpose of this project is to ask whether the lack of cues that would connect the modern-day community to its unique history is laying a false fundamental that makes it difficult to cope with the trauma, or whether, perhaps, it liberates the community from the traumatic memory, allowing them to reclaim the space and define it as they wish, leaving history behind.
The title SEHNSUCHT is a German word that can be translated as "longing" or "desire". It's an emotional feeling of striving for something unattainable, sometimes associated with nostalgia or melancholy, blending a sense of yearning for what has been or what one has experienced, as opposed to mere desire for
something that has never existed and remains a dream, this feeling resonates closely with the approach of the residents.
Work shows the area from 1944 (during the existence of the concentration camp), and images of the district of the "Fampa" at Wojewódzka Street in Jelenia Góra - Cieplice (Poland).