Celan

Original and found images, excerpts from the poetry of Paul Celan, and Heideggerian terms – this is a suite of giclee prints with gold leaf that examines the troubled and precarious relationship between Celan, a poet who survived the Holocaust, and Martin Heidegger, the philosopher who paid dues to the Nazi party from 1933 until 1945. While quite a bit is known about the influence of Heidegger on Celan, almost nothing is known about the discussion they had at Heidegger’s Black Forest hut in 1967. All translations of Celan’s poetry into English are by John Felstiner. The typography is from a 1971 edition of Heidegger’s “Poetry, Language, Thought” and from a transliteration into English of “Kaddish”, the prayer for the dead, in a prayer book that survived arson in 2002 at the Anshei Minsk synagogue in Toronto. The images have all been cropped and heavily manipulated.