Web / Auschwitz, No. 2, 2010 (excerpt)
Running time: 4:18 minutes / HD / black & white

Auschwitz, May 2010. Spiderwebs are illuminated by light in Auschwitz II, Birkenau, Sector Bla.

Camera: Sylvia Safdie
Editing: Patrick Andrew Boivin, Sylvia Safdie
Audio: Silent

On the 2nd day of my visit to Auschwitz, I headed towards the barrack of the women’s latrines in the Auschwitz/Birkenau Sector B. It had been raining non-stop for several days. As I looked into the latrines, I noticed cobwebs floating on the surface of the water. As I focused my camera the image seemed to transform; it was as if I was looking at the cosmos. The sequences that I filmed became the series of videos entitled Web/Auschwitz.

[…] Web focuses on the subtle rise and fall of a complex network of fine threads that remains ostensibly undisturbed, unknown particles knitted into its tangled fibers.”

(1) Scott McLeod, Press Release, Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art, Toronto, 2014.

This video was shown in the exhibition The Absent Present, Prefix, Toronto, in 2014.