Artur Zmijewski

80064
Video, transferred to DVD, 11 min., colour, Polish with English subtitles, 2004

To the Holocaust survivor, Jósef Tarnawa, the number 80064 is not just any number. In 1943, this number was tattooed on the forearm of the 92-year-old man in the film, a former prisoner in the concentration camp of Auschwitz – the number has become a part of his body.

In the video 80064, the old man tells the artist Artur Żmijewski in a tattoo studio about the dreadful time in Auschwitz. As if to prove what he is saying, he shows a photograph of himself as a young man in prisoners’ clothing with the concentration camp number on his skin. In the meantime the number has faded a little. When the artist asks if he tried to resist, Jósef Tarnawa replies that the only way to survive was to submit and adapt to the circumstances, and avoid any kind of revolt. Mercilessly, the artist persuades the old man to have the number on his arm renewed with black ink. Although the old man fears that the authenticity of the number will be destroyed, he agrees and stoically bears the renewal of that terrible, historic sign, which stigmatises and makes him a victim all over again.

Żmijewski manipulates and stages this video as actor and director. He makes the audience his accomplice by again ascribing the role of Holocaust survivor to the man Jósef Tarnawa: history repeating itself is a disturbing experience for the ostensibly uninvolved observer.

Human bodies often play a role in Żmijewski’s artistic work as carriers of signs of power and standardization, like in his probably most famous work, Repetitions (2005), where he recreated the legendary Stanford Prison Experiment of 1971 for the 51st Biennale in Venice. Lots were drawn to assign roles as either warden or prisoner to the participants, who played their parts as perpetrator or victim to the point of self-abnegation.

Angela Rosenberg



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