The video diptych The Day the Clown Cried explores the power of performative arts in dealing with the legacy of WWII through three post-war generations. We follow Dönci Bánki, a mime artist of Hungarian Jewish descent as he visits Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland. The video features a series of dances by Bánki on-site that are combined with rare fragments of the filming of The Day the Clown Cried, 1972, forming a parallel world to the mime artist in Auschwitz in the present day. The Day the Clown Cried is a movie by American comedian Jerry Lewis about a clown who is sent to a concentration camp. Considered too distasteful by art critics, Lewis decided never to release the film. In a second video we see Elise and Clémentine perform frail songs on the Ukulele, interceded with fragments of playing schoolchildren on-site. They face the ‘Citadel’, a military fortress which was used by the American military to imprison Gestapo agents after the fall of Liège in 1944.

1.

Charlotte Lagro
The Day the Clown Cried, 2015
Double channel, loop, HD video, colour, sound.
1.The Day the Clown Cried. 00:10.40

Charlotte Lagro
The Day the Clown Cried, 2015
Double channel, loop, HD video, colour, sound
2.Elise et Clémentine, 00:07:09

3.

Fête de la Gestapo (2015)
Drawing on archival photo from 1944 in Liège, Belgium. 2015, 80 x 80 cm.

‘Fête de la Gestapo’ shows an 80 x 80 cm printed photograph of Gestapo agents captured in a cell in the Citadel of Liège (military fortification) in 1944, right after the fall of Liège. The photocopy is overdrawn by four girls (aged 6 to 14 years), transforming the desillusioned agents into clownlike figures.Their drawing reflects the clowns in the video ‘The Day The Clown Cried’.

Exhibition’s views at Résidences Artistiques Internationales Vivegnis (RAVi), Liège, 2015

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