“...(an) extraordinary and very different work...Tanya Ury's Kölnisch Wasser...video images in a corridor outside a shower unit convey the performer negotiating with an increasingly worried German tattoo artist for a number to be placed on her leg, whilst another monitor relays the live action of the artist herself going boredly through a pornographic routine in the shower-room. Some viewers found this piece ill-considered and intellectually flawed. For myself, the gaps between the issues and their vivid depictions were fertile and liberating.”

Robin Arthur (Forced Entertainment) Hybrid Magazine (GB) June 1993

"Tanya Ury was born in London in 1951. Since 1993 she has been living in Cologne where part of the family lived before being persecuted and fleeing because of their Jewish origins. In her art Tanya Ury works with her German-Jewish identity, the themes of the Holocaust, rediscovering this historical epoch, racism and the role of women in this historical context of lost humanity.
Tanya Ury lives in Cologne. She recalls that her grandmother and her mother both used 4711 Eau de Cologne. In 1993 she had the number 4711 tattooed onto her thigh. When she later heard that the resistance fighter Milena Jesenska was given the number 4714 at Ravensbrück concentration camp and was consequently nicknamed "4711 - Eau de Cologne", she knew that the number and the tattoo were right for her. Tanya Ury is Jewish.

The video performance "Kölnisch Wasser" ("Eau de Cologne"), which the artist first presented in 1993, documents the execution of this tattoo. During the procedure Tanya Ury and the tattoo artist talk about the history of National Socialism, about Germany and about the city of Cologne. On the second track of the video the artist's voice can be heard. She is singing the song of the Lorelei and various carnival pieces. Two additional monitors show Tanya Ury doing a striptease. The dark-haired artist is wearing a blond wig of long hair and is clad in leather. She also takes a shower. The striptease is filmed by two cameramen who also film each other. A fourth monitor shows the members of the public as they watch the striptease and the tattooing procedure."

Author: Cornelia Gerner, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin 2002
www.culturebase.net

1996 Kölsche Juden (Jews in Cologne), interview by Karin Jurschick Stadtrevue Cologne (D)
Article as PDF
2000 Taking on the Mantle by Tanya Ury in: Auf Brüche - Kulturelle Produktionen von Migrantinnen, Schwarzen und jüdischen Frauen in Deutschland (Marginal Cracks - Cultural Production of Women Migrants, Black and Jewish Women in Germany), publ. Ulrike Helmer Verlag ISBN 3-89741-042-7 (D)
2001 The poetic texts from Kölnisch Wassers were published as part of Die Gehangten in Patriarchat der Vernunft - Matriarchat des Gefühls? Geschlechterdifferenzen im Denken und Fühlen (Patriarchy of Rationality - Matriarchy of Feeling? Gender Difference, Thinking and Feeling), publ. Daedalus Verlag Munster, ISBN 3-89126-167-5 (D)
2002 Cornelia Gerner Internet page on Ury for the House of World Cultures, Berlin www.culturebase.net/artist.php?72 (D)
2002 Plath, Hitchcock und die Metaphorik der Shoah: zur Vermitteltheit von Geschichte und Identität in der Kunst Tanya Urys, Dr Cathy S. Gelbin in Deutsch-jüdische Literatur der neunziger Jahre: Die Generation nach der Shoah (Plath, Hitchcock and Metaphors of the Shoah: the Mediation of History and Identity in the Art of Tanya Ury), by Dr Cathy S. Gelbin, German-Jewish Literature of the nineties: The Generation after the Shoah), publ. Erich Schmidt Verlag ISBN 3-503-06125-8 (D)
2003 Metaphern des Genozids Die Repräsentation von Geschichte und Identität in der Kunst Tanya Urys von Dr Cathy S. Gelbin in Gesellschafstheorie und Postcoloniale Kritik (Metaphors of Genocide, The Staging of History and Identity in the Art of Tanya Ury), by Dr Cathy S. Gelbin in Social Theory und Post-Colonial Critique, publ. Unrast Verlag ISBN 3-89771-425-6 (D)
2003 Metaphors of Genocide: The Staging of Jewish History and Identity in the Art of Tanya Ury, by Dr Cathy S. Gelbin in: Performance and Performativity in German Studies, ed. by Caroline Duttlinger et al. Oxford: publ. Peter Lang AG. ISBN 3-03910-150-1 (CH) www.peterlang.com
2007 (12) Reference to Ury’s work (Kölnisch Wasser and Hotel Chelsea - Köln) in Double Visions: Queer Femininity and Holocaust Film from Statni Etap to Aimée & Jaguar, Dr. Cathy S. Gelbin, Women in German Yearbook 2007. Volume Twenty-three. Feminist Studies in German Literature & Culture. Edited by Helga Kraft and Maggie McCarthy. University of Nebraska Press ISBN 0803216017 http://muse.jhu.edul (USA)
2008 (11) Kölnisch Wasser discussed in article on Tanya Ury (in German) by Hartmut Bomhoff, Jüdische Zeitung (monthly), Berlin (D) article as PDF
www.j-zeit.de

Kölnisch Wasser Artist’s Writings & Publications

2007 Script to Kölnisch Wasser, Special Issue: The Performance of Mass Rape: War, Trauma, and Limit Phenomena, Women and Performance, Routledge (GB)