This chapter deals with the establishment histories of the JR, the AJB, the UGIF-Nord and the UGIF-Sud (the ‘Jewish Councils’ in Western Europe) in 1941. It shows that German officials improvised and copied blueprints from elsewhere, and that rivalry between the various German institutions involved in Jewish affairs affected the form and function of these organisations in Western Europe. It furthermore demonstrates that various German institutions interpreted the exact remit of each of the Jewish organisations differently. As a result, the Jewish organisations in Western Europe were all organised in different ways and all functioned differently, despite the strong German desire to unify anti-Jewish policies. The chapter furthermore examines the impact of the rivalry between the various German institutions on the Jewish organisations, arguing that the increasing influence of the SiPo-SD in the Netherlands, together with an overlap of functions, resulted in a rapid succession of anti-Jewish measures in this country. In Belgium and France, by contrast, institutional rivalry not only hampered the establishment of the AJB and the UGIF, but it also resulted in postponements and, from the German perspective, in a looser grip on the Jewish organisations.

The final chapter explores the relationship between the work of art and its diverse spectators by developing the idea of the ‘multi-layered interface’. I argue that this work engages spectators in ways that move beyond previous theory and practice examining images of the body. I focus on performance in photography and video, exhibited in galleries or disseminated online. This art negotiates a way between a complex web of icons, from Samuel Aranda’s photograph of a fully veiled Yemeni woman holding her injured son, to the controversial naked selfies posted on social media by certain women from Tunisia and Egypt in 2011. Lalla Essaydi and Majida Khattari develop a complex interface through Arabic writing, photography and a range of French, other European, or Arabic and Persian imagery, in interaction with the performing body. New means of concealing and revealing the body evoke the revolutions in Tunisia, Libya or Syria in photographic work by Mouna Karray and videos by Naziha Arebi and Philip Horani. Online videos of street art and dance (by Ahl Al Kahf, El Seed, JR and Art Solution) at public sites in Tunisia interpolate their diverse audience in comparable ways, while extending the work in time and space.

Aesthetic experience is a compelling tool for social change. The arts can serve to create constructive disorientation in ways that probe our innermost values and bring them to the surface. The arts offer paths that are closed to logic and argument, and as such have enormous potential for promoting deep learning. The chapter includes examples from both visual and performing arts to show how, by inviting a vision of how things could be different, one is empowered to imagine how things might be different.