Captured
In Captured, filmmakers Arnoud Holleman and Batya Wolff explore the complex relationship with photography within Batya’s family. Her father, Max Wolff (1926–2025), bought a camera after the war and photography became his coping mechanism for dealing with war trauma. But as he photographed, the war remained ever-present. In Captured, Batya explores her father Max’s vast image archive to tell her own, new story about the lasting impact of the war. A discovery in the family archive shifted her perspective on her family’s traumatic past.
Twice Upon A Time
Videoloop on two screens, 3'29. In collaboration with Batya Wolff, 2022.Twice Upon A Time was part of the installation The Kiss of Life, on view at the Jewish Cultural Quarter in Amsterdam in 2022. Filmmakers Arnoud Holleman and Batya Wolff sought new connections in the immense visual archive in Batya's family. How are photography and film connected to processing the Shoah? What were the motives for photography and filming before the war? And with what after? In Twice Upon a Time, Batya's oldest sister Jozee, first born after the war, is simultaneously filmed by both her father and her grandfather.
Immovably Centred
De Appel, AmsterdamAt De Appel, Arnoud Holleman invites actors, curators and museum directors to read his text. The title "Immovably Centred" derives from the motto that Rainer Maria Rilke used for his biography about Auguste Rodin: 'The hero is he who is immovably centred'. Rilke puts Rodin on a pedestal as a superhuman genius, Arnoud Holleman stages a contemporary artist who, still, identifies with this kind of artistry.
10.000 lives
Gwangju Biennale, South KoreaAs an artist and writer, Arnoud Holleman's extraordinarily diverse output is connected by a strong thematic concern with the life and significance of images. Often this concern is manifested through acts of appropriation that transform an image's meaning through a shift in context, or a removal of contextual elements. This concern with the lives of images has also led him to create works that explore the historical prohibitions on image making.
Just in Time!
Stedelijk Museum, AmsterdamJust in Time (JIT) is the name of an economic principle, based on producing the right component at the right place at the right moment, in order to prevent waste. Artists manage their time in the opposite manner. They deliberately choose indirection, and are open to mistakes and unexpected tangents. Guest curator Kopsa asked the artists to define what they regarded as 'necessary'.
Untitled (Staphorst)
In this mediation between being and non-being we can do nothing else than continually behave as camera-genic as possible. See and be seen via the image has become a cultural and existential duty. This primacy of image and visibility however is no universal, natural condition: Islam?s interdict on images originally, according to the second commandment, also applied to Christendom.