Hung Up /​Die Gehängten

Audio­cas­sette for walkman with noose, German 28 mins, English 26 mins, with Texts from Kölnisch Wasser 1993

As slide reading with 57 slides

German trans­la­tion Die Gehängten Tanya Ury and Jörg Pattberg 1999

Extract Die Gehängten — Hung up published in English and German in Menschen wie Du und Ich (People Like You and Me), exhi­bi­tion cata­logue, produced by Ury, Cologne City Museum, publ. Korridor Verlag, ISBN 3−9804354−6−6 (D) 1999

German version Die Gehängten publ. in Patri­ar­chat der Vernunft — Matri­ar­chat des Gefühls? Geschlechterfd­if­ferenzen im Denken und Fühlen (Patri­archy of Ratio­nality — Matri­archy of Feeling? Gender Differ­ence, Thinking and Feeling), publishers Daedalus Verlag, ISBN 3−89126−167−5 (D) 2001

Die Gehängten — Hung up, written six years after Tanya Ury moved to Cologne relates family history and stories about contem­po­rary encoun­ters in the city from which much of her Jewish family originated.

This bi-lingual audio­cas­sette was made for the exhi­bi­tion: Menschen wie Du und Ich (People like you and me) curated by artist Tanya ury and running parallel to the noto­rious touring exhi­bi­tion: Crimes of the German Army 1941 – 44 in the Cologne City Museum, April 1999. The spoken narra­tive concerns itself with Ury’s personal and histor­ical connec­tion to Cologne and Germany. The title is after a painting in the muse­um’s collec­tion ​‘Die Gehängten’ (The Hanged Ones) by Bert May 1945 which depicts the public hanging in 1944 of 11 Soviet and Polish pris­oners who had been deported by the Nazis and forced into slave labour in Germany. It is not hard for the artist to iden­tify with the protag­o­nists of this painting; members of her own Jewish family suffered a similar fate. Tanya Ury worked for a year from 1997 – 98 as archivist in the Kölnis­ches Stadt­mu­seum (Cologne City Museum).

“I worked in the Kölnis­ches Stadt­mu­seum for just over a year, from July 1997 onwards. Amongst the several duties dele­gated to me was the super­vi­sion of all of the objects in the perma­nent collec­tion. I was to measure the degree of light falling on each object and the temper­a­ture and damp­ness in each of the vitrines. On exhi­bi­tion are German items collected from the Middle Ages, up to this day.

I also worked in a museum depot at Merlo Strasse, doing restora­tion work on a collec­tion of 19^th century casting moulds made out of iron. These were oiled, wrapped in wax paper by me, numbered and stored in chrono­log­ical order on shelves.

There was a large arma­ment collec­tion that consisted of pieces of armour, swords and also weapons from this century. One glance into these rooms was more nerve-wracking than walking into a chamber of horrors. This building was a sort of ghost house — there were rumours that it had once been Gestapo Head Quar­ters. I don’t have to look far; there are traces every­where, indi­ca­tions of the crimes of the past. Every November, I attend Art Cologne, the big art fair in the Deutzer Messe and think about Grete and Ella Unger, two of my grand­fa­ther’s sisters, who were deported from there and were never seen again.”

Extract from Hung Up

Infor­ma­tion 

Audio­cas­sette German 28 mins, English 26 mins 

Sound Engi­neer Marc Rensing

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Presen­ta­tion

1998 Solo slide reading, Schnürschuh Theatre, Bremen (D)

1999 Audio­cas­sette, group exhib­tion, Menschen Wie Du Und Ich (People Like You and Me), Kölnis­ches Stadt­mu­seum (Cologne City Museum) (D)

1999 Extract Die Gehängten — Hung up published in English and German in Menschen wie Du und Ich (People Like You and Me), exhi­bi­tion cata­logue, produced by Ury, Cologne City Museum, publ. Korridor Verlag ISBN 3−9804354−6−6 (D)

1999 Audio­cas­sette, group exhi­bi­tion, Kultur­bräuerei, Prenslauer­berg, Berlin (D)

1999 Audio­cas­sette, group exhi­bi­tion, Jüdische Zentral-Labyrinth (Jewish Central Labyrinth), Berlin (D)

2000 Audio­cas­sette, group exhi­bi­tion, Space Hotel, Heimat Kunst, Haus der Kulturen der Welt (House of World Cultures), Berlin (D)

2000 Solo slide reading, Hildesheim Univer­sity (D)

2000 Solo slide reading, Women’s Univer­sity, Hannover (D)

2001 German version Die Gehängten publ. in Patri­ar­chat der Vernunft-Matri­ar­chat des Gefühls? Geschlechterfd­if­ferenzen im Denken und Fühlen (Patri­archy of Ratio­nality — Matri­archy of Feeling? Gender Differ­ence, Thinking and Feeling), publishers Daedalus Verlag ISBN 3−89126−167−5 (D)

2002 Slide reading, Jüdis­cher Wider­stand gegen den Nation­al­sozial­ismus (Jewish Resis­tance to National Socialism), Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung