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Dachau 1974

Beryl Korot

1974 00:23:32 United States, GermanyB&WStereo16:91/2" open reel video
Tags:
Architecture, History, Installation, Jewish, Memory

Description

Dachau 1974 was recorded on Korot’s visit to Dachau, Germany, the site of the former concentration camp, in the Fall of 1974. What she saw when she arrived was a sanitized former prisoner camp that was now a tourist site. Organizing the material she recorded at the camp for a four-channel work based on weaving structures, she created a non-verbal narrative work that moves the viewer from outside the camps walls, into barracks, past crematoria, to a quiet pastoral scene in its final images. This 24-minute work focuses on the architecture that remains from the past and the tourists moving through it. The artist has described this as a fragile work in that it relies on human memory and the structure of the work itself to endow it with meaning.

“…easily does justice to the claim of being a classic…Korot has deftly structured the installation in the manner of tapestry…She literally wove together threads of images into a carefully articulated pattern in which time and context are warp and woof…Dachau 1974 has a quality of visceral presentness in which memories are movingly embodied…”
— Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Herald Examiner, 1988

The installation work is a limited edition of three, and is in the collections of the Thoma Foundation, the Kramlich Collection, and shared between the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (NYC).

VDB is pleased to offer a single-channel composite of Dachau 1974 for educational use. For installation inquiries, please contact info@vdb.org for more information.

Korot's notations and pictogram for Dachau 1974 is included below and also available here.

Dacahu 1974 notations 1-24Dachau 1974 pictogram

About Beryl Korot

Beryl Korot is a pioneer of video art, and of multiple channel work in particular. By applying specific structures inherent to loom programming to the programming of multiple channels she brought the ancient and modern worlds of technology into conversation. This extended to a body of work on handwoven canvas in an original language based on the grid structure of woven cloth and to a series of paintings on canvas based on this language. She co-founded and edited Radical Software, the first publication to focus on the potentials of video as an art form (1970-74) and tool for social change.

More recently she has created drawings which combine ink, pencil, and digitized threads, as well as large scale “tapestries” where threads are printed on paper and woven.

Two early multiple channel works—Dachau 1974 and Text and Commentary—have been installed in exhibitions on both the history of video art and textiles. Her works have been seen at the Whitney Museum (1980, 1993, 2000, 2002); the Kitchen, New York, NY (1975); Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, NY (1977); Documenta 6, Kassel, Germany (1977);  the John Weber Gallery, NYC (1986); the Köln and Düsseldorf Kunstvereins (1989 and 1994); the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, PA (1990); the Reina Sofia, Madrid, (1994); the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT (2010); bitforms gallery, New York, NY (2012/2018); the Whitworth Gallery, Manchester, England (2013); Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, Germany (2013); Art Basel, Basel, Switzerland (2014), the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA (2014); Tate Modern, London, England (2014); the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH (2015); Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, ICI Project 35, Moscow, Russia (2015/16), SFMOMA, San Francisco, CA (2016), Santa Fe Thoma Art House (2017), LOOP festival, Santa Agata Capella, Barcelona (2017), ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany (2017-18); Thinking Machines: Art and Design in the Computer Age, 1959–1989 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (2017-18); Documenta Politik und Kunst, Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin (2021/22); Core Memory, Newcomb Museum (2022); Key Operators, Kunstverein Munchen, Fall, 2024; Radical Software: Women, Art & Computing 1960–1991, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2025), amongst others.

Two video/music collaborations with Steve Reich—The Cave (1993) and Three Tales (2002)—brought video installation art into a theatrical context and have been performed worldwide since 1993. Both works continue to be performed and were exhibited as video installations at venues including the Whitney Museum, NYC, NY (1993); the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, (1994); the Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain (1994) , the Kunstverein, Düsseldorf, Germany (1994); Historisches Museum, Frankfurt, Germany (2000), ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany, 2008.