Shimon Attie, Present day refugee with dormitory ship ("Flotel Europa") used to house refugees in Copenhagen harbor, 1995, 2 X 1.75 meter "fuji-trans" photograph mounted on light box submerged 1 meter under water, Borsgraven Canal, Copenhagen, Denmark
Shimon Attie, Mulack strabe 37 - former Jewish residence 1932, slide projection of Jewish residents, 1993
Shimon Attie, The Attraction of Onlookers: Aberfan - An Anatomy of a Welsh Village, high-def digital video, date unknown
I enjoyed the first project he showed, but for the most part I was not impressed with Attie's work. His first project was of projections of old photographs on the same buildings that the old photos were taken at. The aesthetic of this was interesting to me and it was an interesting juxtaposition of past and present, but like the rest of his work, I found the subject inaccessible. All his work seems to deal with historic stuff and honestly I find no interest in it. Even though the projection project dealt with German history and I am part German, I still don't really get it. He also did a project on the Welsh village of Aberfan where he asked "what does it take to make a Welsh village?" This made me wonder, who cares? What does this mean for or have to do with me? I understand it was about the tragedy that happened there, but other than trying to show the residents differently than they had been before I'm not sure what this had to do with these people. He made claims like "every Welsh village has a South Asian store owner." Does every Welsh village have a South Asian store owner and why is that? It seemed totally ambiguous. How is this different from any other village, town, or city? I also couldn't understand his recurring method of having people standing still while they rotate on a platform in a black void as if they are statues in a museum. For some reason, it made me angry because I couldn't understand why this was even art, it just seemed weird, random, or inaccessible to me.
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