ABSTRACT
In the summer of 2014, in the process of making the film As if…, Portuguese artist Daniel Blaufuks visited Terezin in the Czech Republic. Spanning four hours and thirty five minutes in its first version, As if… has since been extended, standing now at a little over five hours. Such temporal extension might transmit the endless quality of memory production, but it might also reflect the constant input of mass media into this same production. Blaufuks began his research into the camp by reshooting a picture of an unoccupied office space in Theresienstadt that he found in W. G. Sebald's book. The artist then created Terezin, a project that included a photobook and a ninety-minute film: Theresienstadt. Fictional representations in As if… help the viewer understand the victims' experiences. Nonetheless, the contrast of these images with those of a motionless, deserted city serves to emphasise the absence of these victims and their physical and symbolical disappearance.
