18:18:18

18:18:18 (2018) is a set of eighteen time-based works that exist in the cracks between cinema and photography.  In the spirit of Andy Warhol's durational cinema, each film is comprised of a single take exactly 18 minutes, 18 seconds and 18 milliseconds long, creating a non-narrative visual meditation in a 1:1 relation between cinematic time and real-world time.  The films are purely observational in method, with the camera assigned a simple receptive task, and no cutting or splicing in post-production.
Each film was made at a Holocaust site, one among the 42,500 such sites that the US Holocaust Memorial Museum has identified.  Each film’s time-span is defined by traditional Jewish symbolism––the number 18 corresponds to the Hebrew word "chai," life—such that each film presents an encounter with a site of genocide that lasts for the time of life itself.  Each encounter has its own character, much in the way that silence is not a simple, undifferentiated thing, rather there are types and qualities of silence.  In each film, there is a live discrepancy between seeing and knowing, the everyday world of the present and the violent world of the past, the visible and the withdrawn-from-visibility.  In this way, each film questions what it means to bear witness to memory, suggesting that remembering is not the overcoming of of the tensions that the films stage, rather the courage to dwell within them.
In and through whatever happens in each film, nothing also happens, i.e. the nothing that the Holocaust made of Jewish worlds.  The films perform the simple and radical gesture of allowing that nothing a time and a space also to happen in consciousness, alongside that which is recognizable and comprehensible.  In this way, the films invite a practice of mindfulness, itself a life-affirming activity, to turn toward grief and incomprehension, perhaps toward an experience of unity, even echad. 
The films are designed for installation in a two-channel projection, floor to ceiling on opposite walls of a single large space.  They have never been so shown.  The pictures on this webpage show stills from each of the films.  The project is a companion to Alive and Destroyed:  A Meditation on the Holocaust in Time.

Șimleu Silvaniei, Romania / Unmarked site of the ghetto/transit camp for the Jews of Șimleu Silvaniei.


Zhovkva, Ukraine / Site of the mass grave of the Jews of Zhovkva and surrounding region.


Budapest, Hungary / The last surviving fragment of the ghetto wall, reconstructed in the last decade.


Lviv, Ukraine / Unmarked site of the destroyed Great City Synagogue.


Kraków, Poland / The longest surviving fragment of the ghetto wall, whose scalloped design morbidly recalls Jewish tombstones.


Rava Ruska, Ukraine / Unmarked site of one of the town's largest synagogues.


Kiev, Ukraine / The Babi Yar ravine, site of the massacre of the city's Jews.


Rava Ruska, Ukraine / One of several remote mass graves for the Jews of Rava Ruska, with a concrete memorial but no signage.


Lviv, Ukraine / Unmarked site of the Great Suburban Synagogue.


Zhovkva, Ukraine / Mass grave in the town's destroyed cemetery––the precise location of the mass grave now a garbage dump.


Vežaitine forest, Lithuania / Marked site of the mass grave of the Jews of the small town of Gargždai.


Baia Mare, Romania / Unmarked site of the ghetto/transit camp of the Jews of Baia Mare.


Câmpulung Moldovenesc, Romania / Partially destroyed Jewish cemetery of the town of Câmpulung Moldovenesc in southern Bukovina.


Kraków, Poland / One of the famous intersections in the city's ancient Jewish district, Kazimierz, where Corpus Christi Street meets Rabbi Meisels Street.


Lviv, Ukraine / Unmarked site of the Or Shemesh synagogue.


Satu Mare, Romania / In the reconstructed center of what was the Jewish quarter, still containing one of the city's synagogues.


Varėna, Lithuania / Mass grave of the Jews of Varėna, deep in the forest outside of the town.


Kharkov, Ukraine / Drobitysky Yar, massacre site of the city's Jews.