ARTISTS

Video on DVD, mute, 15:20 min., 2008

This video, according to the artist, documents a visit paid by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now pope Benedict XVI, to the Auschwitz concentration camp. The blurred video stills, which appear to have been recorded by the CCTV cameras on the memorial site, show a white Audi with tinted windows and the registration plate “HBE F 114” (hence the title of the work), surrounded by a cluster of security personnel in black suits. The site is deserted apart from the car and the bodyguards, though we never see the distinguished visitor getting out of the car. The actual proceedings are thus cleverly shrouded in mystery. While evincing a confrontation of paradigms that could not possibly be more contradictory, Bałka’s work comes full circle: Benedict XVI, former archbishop of Munich and Freising, had in fact been enrolled in the Hitler Youth, and in 1943, while he was serving in the German Wehrmacht, his regiment was stationed in the Dachau concentration camp. In his public addresses on the subject, the archbishop later downplayed his political past as well as the equivocal attitude of the Catholic Church during National Socialism. Bałka’s video dispenses with voiceover commentary, text and soundtrack, letting spectators be the sole judges of what they see. Similarly, the question how the artist was able to secure the footage remains open. Inke Arns