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Image of a Traitor
Felice Hapetzeder. 2017 (8:36)
(Felice Hapetzeder video archive) 

 

The material in Image of a Traitor is from a meeting with a person from my childhood who had links to Nazi Germany, and who suddenly appeared in my hometown of Stockholm. How could it be that he was still alive, after all these years? And how could it be that he had come here? For me, he had always existed only in that mountain town near Linz. There was something very wrong.

Filming it was an impromptu way of protecting myself, itself a revelation of childhood's mute shame for the inability to confront a reprehensible outlook on life.

Years later, the footage became a reason for the Carousell collaboration for me. I was ashamed of the material because of what it represented for me. While this isn't apparent in the footage, it is rendered visible through my addressing it. So why not just leave it alone? It was quite simply something I couldn't get past in my work; it was chafing.

 

 

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