Mid-South News
(2008-02-21)
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Richie Duchon (Michigan Radio)
Trimpin is an artist from a small town in the Black Forest area of southern Germany. That's his full name Trimpin. His art is tough to describe. Think Rube Goldberg or maybe the old board game Mousetrap. It's kinetic sculpture with lots of moving parts that make sound.
Trimpin has brought a special instrument to Ann Arbor. His Fire Organ is a series of tall bright red pipes. It sounds like a regular organ, except flames pull air up through the pipes to make the sound. Trimpin has brought it here from Germany. He is here to begin a massive art project. Trimpin is trying to tell the story of the Holocaust from the perspective of his tiny hometown in Germany. Trimpin says he has wanted to use his art to talk about the holocaust for many years, but he says he has been searching for the right way to do it.
"I knew that I don't want to do it the same way like I was confronted always, with picture material or just books with a few pictures in there of maybe the victims or of the concentration camps," said Trimpin.
Now Trimpin says he has found his missing link, a series of more than 100 letters written during the Holocaust by a family from his home town. The letters are written by the parents and uncles of Victor Rosenberg. He is a professor at the University of Michigan. Rosenberg says the letters tell a difficult story.
"The narrative is just this desperation of trying to get a Visa, trying to get an affidavit from somebody, some way of getting out of Germany, of escaping," Rosenberg said.
Trimpin is bringing Rosenberg's family letters to life in one of his sound-art sculptures. The letters will be read. They will also be sung by four different sopranos and accompanied by Trimpin's fire organ.
Rosenberg says he is happy his family's letters are being used to tell the story of the Holocaust in a new way. He says he is concerned people are losing interest in learning about the Holocaust.
In fact, this is a real phenomenon. Michael Berenbaum is a Holocaust scholar at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles. He says the Holocaust is a story that is known almost universally and has already had a deep cultural impact.
"A number of people have developed what one calls Holocaust Fatigue," said Berenbaum, "which is tiredness of confronting this material. Therefore, it tempts artists and educators, writers and scholars to find new ways to grapple with the material so that it pierces through the numbness that has developed and invites a brand new encounter."
That's exactly what Trimpin hopes to do with his work. Picture this: water is falling. It's basically raining, but the raindrops are synchronized. The patterns in the rain are spelling the names of Holocaust victims. There is a rhythmic percussion pattern going on. The rain is falling on heated metal plates, which make steam. The steam will be used as a screen, where all the victims pictures will be projected.
Victor Rosenberg says he hopes this work of art, inspired partly by his family's letters, will help give people fresh perspectives on tragic images of the past and the ones today.
"Now we see [terrible images] in Darfur, and we saw them in Rwanda. And we see them in Iraq and Afghanistan. And we see all these horrible photographs, and I think after a while, we're just numb to the meaning of them," Rosenberg said, adding, "I think it's through art that we can really get people to understand at some basic level what happened and why they should work hard to make it never happen again."
Trimpin's art-piece is a work in progress. He says it could take him eight or nine months to finish. But he says it was essential to begin his work in Ann Arbor with Victor Rosenberg, whose family's Holocaust letters are central to the piece.
Trimpin will speak about his work tonight in the Slusser Gallery at the University of Michigan School of Art and Design. © Copyright 2012, Michigan Radio
