Encountering Survival: an audio guide commemorating Holocaust survivors

Encountering Survival, an audio guide produced by School of Design's Louise Wilson and artist Linda O'keeffe, honours a relocated community of Holocaust survivors and refugees in the North of England.

For the past year, artists Louise K Wilson and Linda O Keeffe have worked with Holocaust Centre North (based at the University of Huddersfield) on a set of ‘audio guides', focusing on ‘objects’ and 'voices' respectively.

Across 10 tracks, their work mediates the histories of treasured objects, and the textures of loss, trauma and childhood memories.They have created an intimate record that bears witness to the act of remembering.

Encountering Survival honours a community of Holocaust survivors and refugees who built new lives in the North of England. It offers insight into their memories of lives lived, and testimony on experiences and objects forever lost.

This audio guide is a tribute to the Holocaust Survivors’ Friendship Association, the organisation the survivors helped build with a community of care at its heart.These ‘audio guides’ invite visitors to reflect on the collection and community, but also draw attention to those things that are not there – those materials, stories, atmospheres, and memories that are absent, lost, destroyed or impossible to archive.

Artist Aous Hamoud, has produced visual responses to each track which are embedded in the browser-based app developed by Nikita Gaidakov. The audio guide is available via the Holocaust Centre North’s website.