“We had to be Aware that People are Thinking about this for the First Time”: Interview with Gabriela Bulišová and Mark Isaac

Tali Nates: Thank you for joining us for the next episode of “Standing up to the assault on Democracy”, and what a treat it is to have Mark Isaac and Gabriela Bulišová with us today. Mark and Gabriela are joining us from Warsaw, Poland. They are both artists. Gabriela and Mark are artists, writers, musicians and so much more. But can you tell us in your own words, who are Mark Isaac and Gabriela Bulišová?

Gabriela Bulišová: Thank you so much for inviting us. As you said, we are artists who focus primarily on long-term socially conscious projects, and the key issues we explored over the past decade were in the realm of environmental justice with a special focus on the climate crisis, and on social justice, memory, diversity, and reconciliation.

We are tuning in from Warsaw, Poland, where we have been working on our projects for the past ten months under the auspices of two Fulbright scholar grants. These projects are related to the “dispersed Holocaust” or the “Holocaust by bullets” and to the environmental history of the Holocaust.

Mark Isaac: Before we plunge into the details of those projects, it might be interesting to say a few words about our strategies as artists. Both of us come from a photography-dominated background, but we added video, sound recordings, writing, and we also experimented with music that is based on scientific data. We like to think of our work as bridging a gap between fine art and documentary practices, breaking down the boundaries between those two. We collaborate with scientists, academics and with other artists, but our biggest collaboration of all is between the two of us.

A few years back we thought that it would be enough to say that we are trying to enhance awareness about the various social issues that we are working on, but considering the gravity of the climate crisis and the brutal war in Ukraine, we now try to link our projects more directly to specific changes in policy that can be accomplished. We think that we all need to work on those more emphatically than before and like to think that we are involved in arts-based research. A few years ago, we did not know what that meant, but now we have embraced this idea that our work is a form of research that is using art to achieve small breakthroughs in solving problems. One of those key problems is to create a sustainable and a less violent future. So those are a few of our strategies that help define us as artists in all the projects that we do. It is also worth mentioning that, in recent years, we worked on projects related to the environment and diversity in Ukraine, and we created a major project on the ecological challenges facing the most important lake in the world, Lake Baikal in Siberia. After that we moved on to the Czech Republic and Cyprus to work on a project that was focused on the role of trees in the climate crisis. These are some of the projects we have done in the last few years that led us to projects that now combine the two strands we have been working with: the environmental strand and the strand focused on memory, diversity, and reconciliation.

Tali Nates: And that is fantastic because your project that we will speak about today, “The Landscape of our Memory”, is also looking at trees, at people, at the environment, at memories, at so many of these trends all together, bringing them all into one space, and through your art you stand up to what we call the assault on democracy that we see in our world. You are also basing your work in part on the findings of the organisation Yahad-in Unum and Father Patrick Desbois, who are mapping out many of those landscapes of memory and working in Ukraine. Bjorn?

Bjorn Krondorfer: As Tali Nates mentioned, your project, “The Landscape of our Memory”, is based partially on Father Desbois’ earlier work, meaning that you are looking at mass graves from the time of the Holocaust in Eastern and Central Europe. To some degree one could say that has already been done before with people being interviewed about their local history. Yet, you bring in a very special and new angle to this topic, which you call the “anthotype” technique of photography. If you could please explain what it is, why it is relevant and what is so new and exciting about it.

Gabriela Bulišová: Firstly, I would like to explain that the “dispersed Holocaust” was a rather new area of research for us. We were supposed to conduct this project that we are now doing in Poland, in Ukraine, but because of the war we could not go there.

We first encountered the “Holocaust by bullets” in Ukraine, in the southern Mykolaiv region, where we became aware of a very large mass grave site near the village of Bogdanovka. We learned that in the winter of 1941 about 40,000 Jewish people, many from Odessa, were shot, burned or frozen to death over several days, and their bodies thrown into a ravine. In the local community there was barely any commemoration and any memory of what happened there. After this experience, we pledged to each other that we must do something about this lesser-known and little-commemorated part of the Holocaust.

We were all taught about extermination camps and concentration camps; Auschwitz-Birkenau became the metonym, the terrifying symbol of the Holocaust. Yet, over 2 million people were killed outside of these death camps, often very close to their homes, and as Father Patrick Desbois notes, often in broad daylight. These were Jewish people, in the case of Poland, also Polish people, Roma, Sinti and others.

Ever since our experience in southern Ukraine, we have been thinking about how we can say something new about the Shoah. As you said Bjorn, much work has been done already and the subject certainly has been addressed in the arts. So how can we bring a new visual strategy into the discourse?

We learned about an antique process that we felt was the most appropriate visual strategy, the “anthotype” process (Figures 1 and 2) discovered in 1842 in Great Britain. The word “antho” in Greek means plant or flower. This is a flower- and plant-based process, it is environmentally friendly and sustainable.^[1]

Figure 1:

Avraham Zelicki, murdered in Białystok in June 1941. Anthotype on Arches watercolour paper with emulsion created from Siberian peashrub flowers (Caragana arborescens), 2023.

Figure 2:

Basia Bebelski, a student aged 15, murdered in Tarnów. Anthotype on Arches watercolour paper, with emulsion created from Germander Speedwell (Veronica chamaedrys), Red Deadnettle (Lamium purpureum) and Wood violet (Viola odorata), 2023.

With the information that we obtained from organisations like Yahad-in Unum or more importantly from a Warsaw-based organisation called the Zapomniane Foundation (The Forgotten Foundation) about specific locations of these mass-killing sites, we would visit these sites, gather plants, flowers, and whatever was growing there, depending on the season. Because these plants draw nutrients from the soil, underneath which human bodies still lie, the plants and the resulting “anthotypes” may contain, at a molecular level, traces of human remains.

We weren’t interested in photographs of atrocities; I mean we all have seen so many of them. What we wanted to do was to focus on individuals, to turn statistics and numbers into human beings, into individuals, who lived and loved and were loved back. We created these liminal anthotype portraits, which are easier to show than to describe, but hopefully we can link to some of them on your platforms.^[2]

Mark Isaac: I think one thing I would add is that these portraits are kind of liminal in nature. They are not as distinct as a regular photograph or a modern photograph might be. We like to think of them as “traces” of the people that were lost. I am certainly no Derrida expert, but Derrida has this concept of a trace as being defined by an absence, or by something that is not present. We think that it is extremely apt for all of European Jewry, which is largely defined by its absence. Another thing, there’s a book about the resurgence of interest in Judaism in Poland called “Resurrecting the Jew” by Geneviève Zubrzycki. The author says that for absence to be meaningful and to be experienced as a loss, it must be discovered and brought to the surface of history.^[3] I think that is a good way to think about our project. With the “anthotypes” we try to surface this history that hasn’t been fully processed yet in Poland, in this entire region.

Figure 3:

Untitled 2, lumen print created with soil collected near Mszana Dolna, 29.7 × 21 cm, 2023.

Figure 4:

Untitled 4, watergram created with water collected in the Vistula River (where ashes of Holocaust victims were dumped during WWII), archival inkjet print, 100 × 77 cm, 2023.

Figure 5:

Untitled (Witness Tree in Okopowa Jewish Cemetery, Warsaw), archival inkjet print on Moab Entrada Natural Rag, 152.4 × 270 cm, 2023.

Tali Nates: It’s very moving that you are working with a fantastic grassroots organisation in Poland like Dariusz Popiela and ‘People, not Numbers’. For example, in my father’s grandparents’ hometown of Mszana Dolna, there is amazing work happening concerning memory. The connections are just incredible. Andrea?

Andrea Pető: Congratulations on this fantastic project. I am glad you mentioned the concept of traces and Derrida because it brings up the question of what is not there? Derrida was criticized so many times, concerning who is the person or who has the power to decide what is not there and how they are looking for the traces that are not there. I wanted to ask about the methodology of your work, mainly the responsibility and the decisions you are making and the social impact of your project. Because, of course, the artists are creating artistic work, but your work has an impact on the local community, not only the collaboration with different NGOs, but when you are leaving the communities, they will remember that you were there, and the impact of your work will stay with that community. So, I was wondering if you can share a story with us about the impact of your work, from this project or some of the other fantastic projects that you are doing. For example, around Lake Baikal, when you conducted several interviews with those who were the subjects of your work. So, I am looking forward to a story.

Gabriela Bulišová: Great questions! It is certainly amazing that you mentioned Mszana Dolna because that was one of the communities that we visited very early on when we first went to Poland in September 2022. The organisation Sztetl Mszana Dolna is doing excellent, timely and very important work, and they were highly recommended to us. They do not have an easy work environment there, often encountering difficult obstacles when trying to bring back some of the memories, to commemorate the local Jewish population, and to take care of the mass killing sites and the cemeteries there. These people are some of our heroes because they, being non-Jewish, really understand the importance of what this lost past means to the local community.

Mark Isaac: You know we get this question a lot: “You are dealing with such a dark topic, and how do you cope with it?” One of the most important things for us has been this very extremely uplifting experience in Poland of repeatedly meeting the local activists, for example in Mszana Dolna – and also in Mielec. Mielec is the town in Poland where my family emigrated from, one of two towns actually. In Mielec we met a wonderful local activist named Izabela Sekulska. She went out of her way, even in advance of our arrival, to do extensive research and actually discovered new things about my family history. Immediately upon our arrival she brought us to many important sites in that town. She found the site where my family lived, the place where the Synagogue stood, the killing field, where my great-grandmother probably lies and the concentration camp right in Mielec. There is a fence that still exists from that time where my great-grandmother’s son was probably held captive, it’s now part of a Europark development. And I did not start this project for personal reasons or family reasons, but what’s important to say is that this woman and the others like her are standing ready to do this for anybody around the world who needs to connect to their roots. They are doing this in such a giving and touching manner that for us it became so much easier to pursue this heavy topic.

And the same was repeated when we went to Sanok, the other town where my family originated from, and in many places throughout Poland. When we talk about impact, I think there was the impact for me of experiencing that element of my family life that I had not been aware of. But it also goes both ways. For them as activists it is extremely meaningful when people show up from the Diaspora engaging with them and starting a dialogue.

We were also part of many meetings where people tried to engage in Christian-Jewish dialogue. For example, we met a colleague here who runs an organisation called the Matzevah Foundation, which is aimed at broadening this kind of dialogue. There are many extraordinary things going on in Poland. There are certainly obstacles to overcome, but we are very heartened by the extent of positive things that are going on now to engage in dialogue and point towards reconciliation.

Tali Nates: It is so important to also concentrate on those who do good, those that are standing up together with you. We do tend to concentrate on the parts that are very difficult. Steve?

Steve Carr: I just want to go back a little bit to you, Mark, when you said something about art-based research. I am really intrigued with this idea of using art to create breakthroughs to solve problems. I am wondering in terms of your current work, what do you see as a problem that exists at the intersection of ecocide and genocide that needs solving or needs to be addressed? Given that, if you take each of those, apply them to problems that need to be solved, I am interested in your big picture vision of this.

Mark Isaac: The most important thing to say is the most basic: we have done many talks in Poland in which we called attention to the linkage between ecocide and genocide. What we noticed is that for most people this concept is completely new. It certainly was new to us. It is a field in which many Polish academics are leading the way. But in most of the instances where we have made presentations, we were very aware that most people are thinking about this for the first time.

Through specific elements of the work, for example the use of witness trees and living memorial trees, we start to address these issues. Some academics and artists have already dealt with this idea of trees as witnesses or memorials to the Shoah. What we have done with our project is to expand this concept to include trees that are witnesses or memorials to the contemporary problem of environmental trauma or damage or even ecocide. Even by simply presenting trees that are involved with both genocide and ecocide, we are provoking a dialogue that can achieve some sort of breakthrough in thinking, that leads people to understand that the events of the Holocaust and other atrocities that occurred, for young people in a distant time, are linked very closely to things that we are dealing with in the present moment.

Tali Nates: I will ask my question next in the last few minutes that we have together [where you left off], to connect to the present moment. The trees serve as witnesses and bear traces of people’s memories (memories are traces, kind of awkward formulation). Simultaneously, the map of these locations, once sites of mass graves in the past, now bears witness to current atrocities. Can you touch on the broader perspective and discuss your artistic connection to today’s world and its challenges.

Mark Isaac: In this critical moment, it’s vital to acknowledge the predictions made by numerous scholars regarding the escalating climate crisis. The looming threat of genocides becomes more pronounced as the climate crisis intensifies. The gravity of the situation extends beyond an uptick in genocidal events – we are now confronted with the unsettling prospect that climate change might directly result in catastrophic loss of human life or even the extinction of the human race. Our project, still in its initial stages, seeks to unravel these linkages, not only in terms of human suffering, but also by looking into the accelerated extinction of plant and animal species. So, for instance here in Poland, we met with a biologist just last week, and we were trying to identify with him those plants and animals that have experienced extinction in Poland due to human-caused environmental damage. We succeeded with him in identifying a set that may now be interpreted artistically through our project.

Gabriela Bulišová: Building on Mark’s point, our project’s roots, as was mentioned earlier, trace back to Ukraine, where we initially encountered the dispersed Holocaust. Unfortunately, our return to Ukraine to further explore this subject was hindered by the ongoing war. But it is precisely in Ukraine, where we find the convergence of those two harrowing phenomena – genocide^[4] and ecocide – unfolding before our very eyes. Despite our repeated vows of “Never again,” we find ourselves failing to internalise the lessons from the Holocaust, perpetuating these tragedies.

Mark Isaac: Adding a forward-looking perspective, we are actively addressing the specific challenges faced by Ukraine. Collaborating with Ukrainian scientists battling environmental damage, particularly ecocide resulting from war-induced destruction, is a crucial aspect of our initiative. They are collecting soil samples at bomb sites and analysing them, and they are exploring methods for remediating soil and other environmental damage. The next phase of our project will center on Ukraine, involving direct engagement with scientists, on-site visits, and an exploration of the connections between genocide and ecocide in the Ukrainian context.