Schoolman family papers, undated, 1889-1994

The Schoolman Papers reflect Dr. Albert P. and Mrs. Bertha Schoolmans' staunch dedication to Jewish education, Jewish causes, and Israel. Bertha Schoolman, a lifelong member of Hadassah, assisted thousands of Israeli youth as chairman of the Youth Aliyah Committee. Her diaries, photos, scrapbooks, and correspondence record her numerous visits to Israel on which she helped set up schools, met with Israeli dignitaries, and participated in Zionist Conferences and events. The collection includes a 1936 letter from Hadassah founder, Henrietta Szold, praising Mrs. Schoolman's work as well as a letter from the father of Anne Frank, thanking Mrs. Schoolman for naming a Youth Aliyah center the "Anne Frank Haven" after his later daughter.

Blindversuch

Blindversuch ist eine dreiwöchige performative Arbeit im Rahmen meiner plastisch-künstlerischen Arbeit, die ich im Februar 2007 durchgeführt habe. Über einen Zeitraum von drei Wochen habe ich meine Augen verschlossen und das physische Sehen eingestellt. Damit verzichtete ich freiwillig auf mein wichtigstes künstlerisches Werkzeug. Ich gab vor, blind zu sein und trug die Zeichen des Blindseins: Brille, Armbinde und einen weißen Stock. Unter der Bedingung des Nicht-Sehens und in der Begleitung von Assistenten führte ich mein Leben und Arbeiten weiter. Während dieser Zeit ersetzte ich meine visuelle Wahrnehmung durch technische Mittel. Ohne zu sehen produzierte ich mit Fotoapparat und Videokamera visuelles Material. Diese Aufnahmen entstanden infolge motorisch-akustisch-haptischer Eindrücke und situativer Reflexionen. Ergänzt werden meine Aufnahmen durch visuelles Fremdmaterial. Verschiedene Personen wurden beauftragt, mich filmisch und fotografisch zu begleiten. Auch ich selbst erstellte eine Audiodokumentation meiner Erfahrungen und Reflexionen als Nicht-Sehende: Wahrnehmung, Untersuchung und Notierung der veränderten rezeptiven Bedingungen. Es fand eine bewusste Aneignung des Raums als Nicht-Sehende statt. Dazu habe ich meine Fähigkeiten sowohl im Atelier als auch im Außenraum trainiert. Darüber hinaus wurde der Blindversuch durch das Max-Planck-Institut für Hirnforschung in Frankfurt am Main wissenschaftlich begleitet.

Wolf Creek by Sonya Hartnett

Australian screen classics are seminal for a range of reasons: whether it is a particular title’s popularity and impact upon popular culture, its cultural and textual meaning, or what the film tells us about the social, political and cultural climate from which it emerged. Wolf Creek (Greg McLean, 2005) is undoubtedly an Australian screen classic. The film was an impressive low-budget breakout success, which played a big part in the renaissance of contemporary Australian genre cinema by opening doors for genre filmmakers targeting international markets in ways that haven’t been seen in Australia since the 1980s. Wolf Creek has become the quintessential Australian horror movie. It has captured collective national fears and anxieties about the Australian outback – the isolation, the repressive desolation, the idea that the landscape itself is your enemy. It challenges traditional representations of Australian masculinity and the “ocker larrikin” to show a negative image of the rural ocker which dominated Australian screen in the 1970s and, to lesser extent, the 1980s.

Wolf Creek, rurality and the Australian gothic

As with Crocodile Dundee before it, the recent Australian film Wolf Creek promotes a specific and arguably urban-centric understanding of rural Australia. However, whilst the former film is couched in mythologized notions of the rural idyll, Wolf Creek is based firmly around the concept of rural horror. Wolf Creek is both a horror movie and a road movie, one which relies heavily upon landscape in order to tell its story. Here we argue that the film continues a tradition in the New Australian Cinema of depicting the outback and its inhabitants as something the country's mostly coastal population do not understand. Wolf Creek skilfully plays on popular conceptions of inland Australia as empty and harsh. But more than this, the film brings to the fore tensions in the rural idyll associated with the ownership and use of rural space. As an object of urban consumption, rural space may appear passive and familiar, but in the context of rural horror iconic aspects of the Australian landscape become a source of fear – a space of abjection.

Outdoor group portrait of Marga Abel, Franzche Wolf, Miss Mahler, Margot Frank and Else Hirschfeld; Bad Kissingen Portraits Groups Women

Handwritten caption: Wir tragen nur Bemberg-Seidenstruempfe! (We wear only Bemberg silk stockings!)

Portrait of (l-r) unidentified man, Thomas Mann, Singer (painter), Lion Feuchtwanger and unidentified man Portraits Groups Men

Digital Image

Reproduction of World War I portrait of Dr. Nathan Wolf of the 2nd Company of the 1st Landsturm Infantry Regiment Portraits Men

Dr. Nathan Wolf's medals: (bottom left) silver Wound Badge; Iron Cross 2nd Class; Iron Cross 1st Class; Zaehringer Loewe (Baden); (on right) Medal of the Turkish Crescent

Reproduction of World War I portrait of Dr. Nathan Wolf of the 2nd Company of the 1st Landsturm Infantry Regiment Portraits Men

Dr. Nathan Wolf's medals: (bottom left) silver Wound Badge; Iron Cross 2nd Class; Iron Cross 1st Class; Zaehringer Loewe (Baden); (on right) Medal of the Turkish Crescent