From September 7 to 17, the Jewish Museum is once again erecting a temporary site in the urban space: the Pop Up Monument on Willy-Brandt-Platz in collaboration with the artist collective raumlaborberlin. While last year the Pop Up Boat was located in the leisure zone of the Main embankment, this year the museum is shifting its activities into the middle of the city and making Frankfurt's urban space itself its subject.
In collaboration with the artist collective raumlaborberlin, it is undertaking a temporary intervention on Willy-Brandt-Platz and creating a monument whose form reflects the temporary and fragile character of Jewish places as such. It is an inflatable and walkable bubble made of translucent material that offers glimpses of what is happening inside from the outside and views of the urban landscape from there.
As a sculpture in public space that is inflated anew every morning and collapses again at night, the Pop Up Monument both references other monuments in public squares and places in the city, but differs from them in its temporary character. Accordingly, it does not so much commemorate historical events or personalities, but rather directs the gaze to the present and addresses the fragility as well as the plurality of Jewish cultures in the Diaspora.
In the immediate vicinity of the new Jewish Museum, which is in the process of being built, the Pop Up Monument serves during the day as a lab for the new permanent exhibition. Visitors can not only gain an insight and overview of the advanced space and exhibition planning by means of selected objects, interactive elements, room plans and three-dimensional models, but also get to know individual objects from the museum's collection more closely and study them in depth with curatorial guidance. In workshops with specially invited groups of visitors, individual exhibition segments will be presented in detail and their comprehensibility will be examined.
Moreover, two participatory exhibition elements invite visitors to participate in the conceptual development of the new permanent exhibition. One of these two displays is located outside the monument on a specially produced table and asks them the question, "Which Jewish personality would you like to get to know better?" Here, biographies of significant individuals are presented and asked to answer the question on a postcard. A second exhibit element circles the question, "What is a Jewish place to you?" This display consists of a large city map of Frankfurt am Main that invites visitors to mark Jewish places from the past or present. Hands On materials encourage people to write texts about these places; an accompanying crowdsourcing action on social media calls for uploading photos showing Jewish places in Frankfurt, which will then be found on the map.
In the evening, the Pop Up Monument transforms into a platform for contemporary Jewish culture. Readings, film screenings, concerts and discussions will take place in the middle of the city space, expressing the polyphony of the Jewish present.
A highlight of the program will be the concerts by Trio Scho with the project Odessa Express and by singer Maya Saban with the formation Jewdyssee at the beginning and end of the festival. Other highlights include a reading by journalist and columnist Linda Rachel Sabiers, who sees her Facebook posts as "prose moments in the metropolis" and expands them into a Berlin novel, and a reading by actress, theater director and writer Adriana Altaras from her latest book, "The Sea and I Were in the Best Age: Stories from My Everyday Life."
Most daytime events are free, with an admission charge for evening events.
For an overview of each event, visit: <link http: popupmonument.juedischesmuseum.de index.html _blank>
