Tower of Torment - Opening

“Tower of Torment” was inspired by an old custom that is observed when Jewish houses are built in the diaspora. According to tradition, a specific area of an east-facing internal wall is left unpainted and uncoated in remembrance of the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem. Sigalit Landau, Israel’s most important visual artist of her generation who was celebrated at the 2022 Kunstfest for her project “The Olive Grove”, turns this tradition “outwards”: A person holding a paint roller appears on the balcony on the outer façade of the tower in the Gauforum Weimar, which was built using forced labour under the Nazi regime, and begins painting the area around the window black in a radial pattern. Landau’s outer marking of the inside of the tower points to the fact that something is wrong with this place. The window becomes a hole, a wound and a void. Once the circle is complete and the day is out, darkness falls. An other performer switches the light on inside and continues the act using white paint to cover up the black mark. The artist filmed this striking performance in Weimar in midsummer before the start of the Kunstfest and turned it into a short film. From 20 August to 7 September the installation will be open to the public in the tower of the Gauforum. On August 24, “Tower of Torment” will be shown for one night only at the Redoute. The film will be presented on a large screen and accompanied musically by the piano duo Dina Stojilković (piano) and Ilay Dahan (cello). Sigalit Landau and
Jens-Christian Wagner, Director of the Buchenwald Memorial Foundation, will provide insights
into the artistic and historical dimensions of the work. The video will then go on permanent loan to the new Museum of Forced Labour under National Socialism or the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation’s museum of art.

Opening event