The J. Street Project 2002–5 is a sixty-seven minute film that consists of a sequence of static camera shots of street signs in Germany that incorporate the word ‘Jude’ (German for ‘Jew’). Hiller found a total of 303 signs in streets, lanes, roads, avenues and alleys scattered throughout the country. The work focuses on the dissonance between these mundane, everyday signs and the memories they trigger of a genocidal history. The soundtrack records traffic noise, church bells and other incidental sounds. For this factual, indexical project Hiller maintained a neutral seriality in her approach. Cumulatively, however, it becomes clear that the signs are loaded with the memory of Jewish presence in the locations, not just from modern times but from thousands of years of history. The tension between past and present in the film highlights the sense of absence and traumatic loss. The place names operate as memorials of erasure.
May 2006
