After an extended period of research and reflection, our team congregated again for the second workshop of “Redrawing Stories from the Past II: Escape and Migration in Europe” (July 1st to 6th, 2018). This time round, we travelled to Leipzig where we were hosted at ZusammenLeben e G in the beautiful district of Leipzig-Connewitz.
As all participating artists had already come up with possible story ideas, we went straight to work, discussing sources, angles and storyboards. Lina Itagaki will be telling the story of a Jewish family from Poland who fled to Kaunas, Lithuania, where they were issued visas for Japan by the Japanese vice consul who is now famous for helping Polish Jews escape Nazi persecution. Emilie Josso will be following various roads of displacement that criss-crossed Italy in the aftermath of WW2, joining the fates of Jewish, Ukrainian and Baltic refugees. Julia Kluge’s comic will depict the life of Philipp Schwartz, a Jewish professor at Frankfurt University, who helped fellow academics struggling to leave Nazi Germany by finding them positions at Turkish universities. Alice Socal will be focussing on southern Italy where Heinz Skall, born into a Jewish family in Prague, survived Nazi persecution and terror in a detention camp in Campagna.
Most workshop days were spent elaborating these plots and finalising storyboards. Sascha Hommer and Ole Frahm held consultation sessions with each of the artists, assisting them in finding additional sources and fine-tuning their storytelling approach.
Throughout the workshop, we had a number of visitors who were involved in the project on various levels: Johanna Wand of Goethe Institute Naples spent two days with us, reporting on our project for the Goethe Institutes in Italy. David Schilter of Latvian comics publisher kuš! joined us on Tuesday. As he will again be in charge of the final publication, we spent a lot of time discussing deadlines, measurements and layouts with him. Lilian Pithan, who takes care of our project PR, came for a visit on Thursday and helped videographer Johannes Buchholz record a short round of interviews with the artists.
On Thursday, we visited the Leipzig Nazi Forced Labour Memorial where we attended a guided tour of the permanent exhibition. This gave us a valuable insight into the workings and hierarchy of the forced labour system as well as its different stages during National Socialism in Leipzig.
So what’s up next? At the moment, all artists are working hard on creating their comics as the publication “Redrawing Stories from the Past 2” is scheduled for release in March 2019. It will be accompanied by an exhibition (March 16th to April 6th, 2019) at Berlin gallery neurotitan. We’ll keep you updated!
Redrawing Stories from the Past 