The Interpreter, 2011, video installation, 22:00 min.

Claude Lanzmann’s monumental film Shoah (1985) serves as the point of departure for this video installation by Tali Keren. Lanzmann’s film is composed of a series of testimonies, and includes no archival footage; the emphasis is on the use of language, on the act of narration, and on the theatrical dimension of memory and the imagination. In The Interpreter, Keren similarly shifts the focus from the horrors of the Holocaust to the acts of storytelling and translation, which partake of the examination of historical narratives. The soundtrack is composed of excerpted testimonies from Lanzamnn’s film, while the work centers on the figure of the interpreter – an invisible presence that appears as little more than a transparent mediator between Lanzmann and his subjects.