Arts & International Affairs: Volume 2, Issue 1 | Page 33

Figure 15. Manuel Botelho, Contagem Descrescente 1967– 1969 (�). Photograph: Manuel Botelho. (Courtesy: The artist) The (artist as) moral witness Wieviorka (����), writing about Holocaust memories and the politics of these memories, characterizes the ����s and early ����s as the “era of the witness.” The era of the witness is one conditioned by visual culture. Audiovisuality, used in particular by Claude Lanzmann, not only helped systematize the collection of survivors’ testimonies, but it also gave survivors the feeling that someone was listening—and watching. An audience listening to survivors’ testimonies is what survivors need, and this audience was largely absent prior to the era of the witness. Wieviorka does not address the question of whether or not such artists as Lanzmann can be witnesses of events they did not personally experience but she notes that survivors’ testimonies can be transformed into artworks. She does not ask whether or not this is what survivors want. However, this transformation does not seem to have 32