What role do displacement, loss, incorporation and mutual exchange play in collections and archives? What can be learned from this about the complex constellations of identity and memory, private and public, ideal and real value in the cultural realm? Based on the Hebrew/Aramaic folk song Chad Gadya, a counting story in which the character of each verse defeats the protagonist of the preceding stanza, the juxtaposition of destruction and restoration is understood in this event as an ordering principle that reveals the perplexing cultural successions and accumulations of memories in collections and archives with dialogues, performances, music, images, humor and drama.
The event was based on Gruber's long investigation into the movement of art objects inside the different venues of the Art Collections of Dresden (SKD) for the preparation of his film Transient Witness. It is a polymathic performative encounter featuring Mieke Bal, Heide Rezepa-Zabel, Joshua Simon, Elena Vogman and moderated by Post Brothers with whom Gruber conceptualized the evening.