The Blue Skies Project (2018)






The Blue Skies Project are two artworks in dialogue:

One Thousand and Seventy-eight Blue Skies (2018)
   and
The Tracking of One Thousand and Seventy-eight Blue Skies (2018)
by Ruben Samama


The Blue Skies Project became part of the Victoria & Albert Museum permanent collection in 2022, thanks to a generous donation by Anne Carlier and Dirk Spillebeen. The two works are joined by connected works such as There is Nothing Here (2021), Zero (2021) and Two Hundred and Sixty-nine Steps, Looking up (2017), as well as independent platform initiatives in a combined long term effort.

The Blue Skies Project is curated by Monica Allende


Details



Peel-apart instant film mounted on aluminium sandwich panel, wood. Datasheet
Installation dimensions variable (676 x 253 x 85 cm)
Generative audio piece with visual component, duration 4775 days









Collections

    • V&A Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK
    • ICP International Center for Photography, New York City, US
    • FoMu FotoMuseum Antwerp, BE
    • Collection Vanmoerkerke, Ostend, BE


Research sources

    • Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945, published by Indiana University Press & United States Holocaust Memorial Museum – USHMM.org
    • Der Ort des Terrors. Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager, Wolfgang Benz/Barbara Distel, published by C.H.Beck (9 volumes)
    • Bundesministerium der Justiz und für Verbraucherschutz, Sechste Verordnung zur Durchführung des Bundesentschädigungsgesetzes (6. DV-BEG); Anlage zu § 1 Verzeichnis der Konzentrationslager und ihrer Außenkommandos gemäß § 42 Abs. 2 B








Literature

    • Ulrich Baer, Spectral Evidence - the photography of Trauma, The MIT Press (2012)
    • Otto Dov Kulka, Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death, Allen Lane (2013)
    • Eva Hoffman, After Such Knowledge, Vintage (2005)
    • Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, Penguin (2003)
    • Mark Godfrey, Abstraction and the Holocaust, Yale University Press (2007)
    • Georges Perec, W or the memory of childhood, Vintage (2011)
    • Eyal Weizman, Forensic Architecture, Zone Books (2017)
    • W.G. Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction, Penguin Books (2003)
    • Judith Butler, Frames of War - When is Life Grievable
    • Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, Abacus (1986)
    • Geoff Dyer, The Missing of the Somme, Canongate Books (1994)
    • Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, Penguin Books (1977)
    • Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer - Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Stanford University Press (1998)
    • Robert Hariman, No Caption Needed, University of Chicago Press (2007)
    • Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands - Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, Vintage (2010)
    • Judith Butler, Precarious Life, Verso (2006)
    • Susie Linfield, The Cruel Radiance, University of Chicago Press (2010)
    • Ariella Azoulay, The Civil Contract of Photography, Zone Books (2008)
    • Giorgio Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz, Zone Books (1999)




Essays








Press





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