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Visitors to the symposium and other exhibitions respond


The combination of symposium and exhibit seemed most effective. Would the show
make as much sense to viewers without the symposium?Particularly enriching was the presentation by the artists.

The work contributes an effective solution to the question of legacy by offering the language of creativity as evidence of a process. As another dimension of their dialogue the artists offer  objects, leaving something lasting that can be taken on by the 3rd generation.  There is a sense of friendship in the work, a positive underlying current of respect and nurturing that must play a role in the strength of the art in the exhibit. The work inspires 
a path to conflict resolution on other levels of life.
Martha Jacobs




"The work 'Obituaries' brought up many issues about my own grandfather: how aunts' 
and uncles' off-the-cuff anecdotes and unguarded remarks complicate--in my 21st century interpretation--his 'public' biography. The work 'pushmepullyou' made me think of how cultural and historical factors influence the dynamic of scapegoating. Are Jews still the primary scapegoat in 21st century Germany? Or have new scapegoats appeared?"
Andra Alvis





"Your work does eloquently approach some of the unspeakable."
Claus Cluever





"I could have listened intently to you and Bjorn at our gathering [symposium] until--as they say in Wisconsin--"the cows come home." It was so moving, compelling, and real....I too thought the panel's questions and both your responses put so many issues on the table. This is all a credit to the creative power of what you have both accomplished. Is there a place in your dialogue that is still too toxic, where you can not go to yet?"
Ed Linenthal




The filaments so prominent in “pushmepullyou” emphasize how frayed our recovery of Jewish culture before the war remains; our knowledge of what happened to our own relatives during the war is incomplete and (because speculative) fragile and tentative.  We are connected by only a thread to a past which we simultaneously want to push away and pull toward us.

 Yet despite its emphasis on pushing away, Push-me-pull-you also addresses pulling 
toward and it does so by choreographing a dance of intimacy between two artists whose collaborative work suggests that the post-memories of Germans and Jews in the twenty-first century will inevitably lead them to unite and divide, divide and unite in their common need to get closer and then, feeling too close for comfort, back away, retract, or retreat in order to regroup and reflect until they draw nearer on new grounds.   From this perspective, the filaments between the artists—between their two ears, for instance, in a number of the pieces—represent the ties that bind us not to sacrifice the other but to connect with the other.
Susan Gubar



With Tearing, my eye is initially drawn to the tangled mass in the center. While it comes from two different sets of hands, it is tangled together in the same way that yours and Karen’s trauma is: messily. Ultimately, what this piece tells me is how you and Karen reconciled your families’ pasts. Untangling the mass must be done carefully and slowly. If one of you was to move more quickly than the other your ties to the mass, and consequently to each other, would have tore.
Melina Diamond-Sagias



I finally took the time to read your article written in collaboration with Karen Baldner. Thank you so much for having shared it with me. This long path you have initiated with Karen is truly fascinating, and you describe it very well. It is a text both dense and soft, that gives a lot to think about embodied human relationships and the deepness of the experience of time. You have healed many things through this process, not only personally, but also collectively.
Laure Guilbert