ABSTRACT
Recent art demonstrates how a new commemorative culture is emerging with the advent of mass tourism and social media. The chapter examines two art projects: Yolocaust, by Shahak Shapira, reacting to selfies taken at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, and Austerlitz, a documentary film by Sergei Loznitsa, recording the behaviour of visitors at concentration camp memorials. As spectators to the suffering of others, we may be ironically caught between moral blindness and obsession when visiting memorials commemorating mass murder. Yolocaust and Austerlitz encourage viewers to stop and think about where they are, to be present rather than to view each experience from the mediated perspective of a possible photograph. It is not simply that we should put down our devices but rather be mindful of the power that the camera’s mediating filter has on how we experience and share the world. In looking for the desired photograph or perfect selfie, we project ourselves forward into a near future that may inadvertently lead to our removal from the very place we came to visit.
