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