122,499 Files
Yad Vashem – New Permanent Installation
Ran Slavin
(Video, sound, scans, stills, 2024)
Duration: 44:44 minutes
Curator: Michal Shevid
The video work 122,499 Files addresses Holocaust remembrance through a form of digital sculpture displayed on a vertical screen that maintains an upright posture. The work consists of exactly 122,499 files of scans extracted from the video-sound archives of Yad Vashem. It creates a space for cognitive wandering across categories, images, voices, artworks, and artifacts which, even if not physically present, are alive within the file — as if imprinted in the dark mass of pixels that carry the final testimony of a vast documentation project not yet fully revealed.
122,499 Files acts as a sacred link between recorded testimony and memory, between fragmented accounts and a loss that resists deciphering. Between image, sound, and material, a poetic space of presence emerges — one that is faithful not only to the digital medium but also to the very consciousness of memory itself.
The title 122,499 Files is taken from the number of files in the digital archive folder of Yad Vashem at a specific moment in time — when a single additional or missing file redefines the boundaries of time and responsibility within the subject.
An excerpt:
Part, installation view:
View from the sculpture garden:
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