At the heart of this collection of short writings are three provocative texts extracted from important artworks by Rosen, offered here as genre-defying
literature at the intersection between reality and fiction, speculative narrative and historical-political critique,
humor and
eroticism.
Live and Die as Eva Braun and Other Intimate Stories is a bilingual edition of short writings by Roee Rosen. At the heart of this collection are three provocative texts extracted from important artworks by Rosen, offered here as genre-defying literature at the intersection between reality and fiction, speculative narrative and historical-political critique, humor and eroticism.
Live and Die as Eva Braun (1995–97) leads the viewer through a virtual-reality scenario in the role of Hitler's lover. The project stirred a public and political controversy when first shown in Israel. It was later recognized by many as a watershed work concerning the representation of trauma, Nazism, and the Holocaust. When the work was presented in New York, Linda Nochlin wrote, “The experience of Live and Die, both textual and visual, is unforgettable, like nothing else.” The film The Confessions of Roee Rosen (2008) offers yet another uncomfortable doubling of identity, in which three illegal female migrant workers serve as surrogates for the character “Roee Rosen.” As a text, these highly condensed monologues reveal themselves to be disorienting subversions of the tradition of literary confession. Finally, the script of Hilarious (2010) offers a torturously bad attempt at dysfunctional comedy, set in the Twin Towers as they collapse.
These three texts are complemented by three of Rosen's short political-aesthetic essays, chosen to reflect the theoretical underpinnings of his approach. The volume concludes with a conversation between the artist and the historian Moshe Zuckermann, an insightful critic of the political instrumentalization of the Holocaust. Live and Die as Eva Braun and Other Intimate Stories is published on the occasion of Rosen's first survey exhibition in Germany, at the Edith-Russ-Haus for Media Art, Oldenburg, and was edited by its curators, Edit Molnár and Marcel Schwierin.
Published following the eponymous exhibition at the Edith-Russ-Haus for Media Art, Oldenburg, fron January 29 to April 10, 2016.
The paintings, films, and writings of Israeli artist Roee Rosen (born 1963 in Rehovot, Israel) have become known for their historical and theological consciousness, novelistic imagination, and psychological ambition. His work addresses the representation of history, the political economy of memory, and the politics of identity, often exploring the tension between trauma, horror, humor, and truth.
Rosen received degrees in visual art from the School of Visual Arts and Hunter College, both in New York. He now lives in Israel, where he teaches art and art history at Bezalel Academy of Art and at Beit Berl College. In 1997 Rosen's controversial exhibition “Live and Die as Eva Braun” at The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, was aggressively attacked by Israeli politicians. It won critical praise, however, for its new approach to the representation of the memory of the Holocaust. Rosen's projects include the exhibition “Justine Frank (1900–1943): A Retrospective” (2009) and the films Two Women and a Man (2005) and The Confessions of Roee Rosen (2008). He has authored the books A Different Face (Shva, 2000), Lucy (Shadurian, 2000), Sweet Sweat (Babel, 2001), and Ziona™ (Keter, 2007).has invented
