Trama

In this video Black Milk of Daybreak I am contrasting voices of right wing extremists who are meeting weekly on the streets of Dresden, demonstrating against the politics of the German government and against accepting refugees from Syria - to scenes that represent Germany's Nazi past. My intention was to remind the viewer of the past, to explain the propaganda of the Nazis and to compare this propaganda to the propaganda of hate of today. Since the newly arisen right wing extremism in Germany is directed against Muslims this time, especially against refugees from Syria, I wanted to give agency and a voice to a refugee from Syria. The video includes parts of an interview I had recorded in Berlin in 2016 with Farid Abd Albaki, a sculptor and ceramic artist from the city of Homs. In the video, I projected sounds representing the past onto recent media imagery of today: my voice reading a poem by Holocaust survivor and writer, Primo Levi, (1919-1987) onto images of burning refugee homes in Germany today. With this video, I wanted to juxtapose the consequence of this aggression to current propaganda of hate against people who need our help and support. I want to suggest how things can escalate if the people of a country do not stand up and protect each other. By using my own voice in the video, I am asking what my role is in this today and what I would have done if I had lived under the Nazi regime 70 years ago.