If This is a Man: a practice lead enquiry into questions of Authenticity, Jewishness and Masculinity

If This Is A Man: A practice led enquiry into questions of Authenticity, Jewishness and Masculinity will offer a contribution to an emerging field of art-writing that positions itself at the intersections of literature, performance, and contemporary art practice. The research is driven by my work as an artist that understands writing as a form of practice and includes performative poetic texts, exhibitions, events, and sculptural objects. The central research questions seek to investigate and develop a poetics of lamentation.

The significance of this project comes at a time of heightened conflicting politics. Whilst the last Holocaust survivors are dying, far-right movements and episodes of anti-Semitism and fascism have been increasing. The urgency behind this project is to further the understanding of how artistic research as a mode of production can contribute to combatting such affects. Similarly, there has also been an increase in global male suicide, as such it is vital to ask, what are the narratives, spaces and opportunities that is causing this statistic and what can be done to change it? In achieving this project, I will draw upon my particular personal historical identity as a third-generation member of Jewish diaspora, using the histories of these migrations as the fulcrum around which my research intersects.

Levi's text acts a foundational departure point for the pursuit of this project, combining a particular emotional sentiment with the urgency to understand historical events, producing a platform for contemplating our contemporary political and social climate. The term poetics of lamentation proposes radical openness as a methodology, which encompasses the use of fictionalisation, autobiography, poetry, theoretical analysis and psychoanalysis, in conjunction with the uses of intimacy and presence in performance and exhibition making. The aim is to create work that is vulnerable and honest in combination whilst maintaining a high degree of intellectual rigour. The core questions revolve around notions of authenticity, heritage, epigenetic inheritance, trauma, mourning and constructs of masculinity. In particular I intend to investigate the politics and poetics of testimony, exploring ideas of collective memory, tying them to the act of witnessing, mourning and grief.

This research starts with Paul Celan and Jacques Derrida's analysis of his works in Sovereignties in Question, moving into the works of Louis Zukofsky, Nelly Sachs, Fred Moten and Maggie Nelson. This pursuit is combined with an on-going study of the writings of Walter Benjamin, bell hooks, and Hannah Arendt. I will also explore the scientific field of epigenetic inheritance, which studies the effects of trauma and historical events upon the make-up of DNA. Most recently this research was conducted on survivors of the Holocaust, suggesting that the effects of their trauma had been passed down through generations in the genetic make-up. This research intersects with W.G Sebald's Austerlitz and The Emigrants as well the work of Christian Boltanski. These explorations are attached to questions of auto-biography, debating whether it is possible to authentically understand one's experiences without understanding the migrations and events that lead to one's position, security and place?