While all projects centered around the notions of re-humanization of the deportees, involving the visitor in some kind of conscious reflection process and embracing the idea of “memory as a task”, the spectrum of their concrete realizations spanned from the use of “brick-and-mortar” analogue solutions to the deployment of interactive cross-medial installations fusing screens, haptic elements and augmented reality.

The first concept combined the imageries of the Jewish tree of life and the autumnal trees and leaves that dominated the scenery at the Rumbula and Bikernieki forest memorials with an impetus to make the visitor actively discover or unearth the history of the Hamburg deportations him- or herself. A screen would cover the entirety of the respective wall in the entrance hall, showing some kind of representation of leaves falling onto and thus slowly covering railroad tracks. The visitors’ movements in front of the wall would cause the leaves to whirl around in the air, further intriguing them to pay closer attention to the installation. At closer examination, a visitor would notice that some of the whirling leaves were bearing the names of deportees, which he or she could then explore further via an AR based exhibition-accompanying media app.

In comparison to most other concepts, which tended to strongly rely on direct visitor-installation-interaction, the second concept’s main component consisted of a more subtle interaction based on a video-installation. This installation sought to evoke a sense of entanglement of memory and emotion by juxtaposing historic and contemporary images of displacements, war crimes and their victims with emotionally loaded large-scale projections of words like “love”, “hope” and “fear”. While the movie would be on constant display within the entrance hall, its sound would only be audible when stepping under the sound showers installed right in front of the screen. This installation would not only catch the eyes of strollers passing by the entrance hall’s glass window front, but would also subtly involve the visitor by depicting mirrored names of deportation victims as well as further emotions. The visitor would only be able to decipher these words on his or her way out of the museum, where a mirror facing the video wall would be installed next to another small video screen. By looking at the mirror and the second screen, the visitor would connect the deciphered words to imagery of current anti-Semitic and antigypsy events, but also acts of solidarity, commemoration and recognition today, thus leaving the visitor reflect on what he or she just learned and on what he or she could do him- or herself.

Concept number three was informed by the notion of memory as a task, presenting the workshop with a movable matrix-style array of stone cubes. This installation would force the visitor to actively take part and try to turn the different cubes in order to discover that all of them are mechanically connected, so that if one cube flips its counterpart is moved, too. The four different sites of the cubes would represent different aspects of selected deportees’ stories, made up of pictures, text (German, English and Braille) and other media. The turning of the cubes would, like a Rubik’s cube, create a variety of different story patterns. Because different story arrays would be on display constantly, the installation would also work as a piece of art the visitors could just look at. At the same time, it would evoke a strong sense of memory being continuously (re-)constructed and thus invite the visitors to think about the artificiality of memories and their representations. The physicality of this installation brings many realization options to the table; for instance, the different cubes could be made of different minerals and materials symbolizing different emotions or tangible locations associated with the deportations.

Concept number four is ought to involve the visitors in an interactive and performative setting: It uses both the idea and the physical experience of ringing a doorbell to get in touch with the stories of victims, survivors and perpetrators that made up the society of Third Reich Hamburg. Subsequently, one of the entrance hall’s walls is going to be made up of a semi-analogue/semi-digital video screen wall covered in doorbells, which will be mounted on top of the screen, providing the visitors with both a haptic experience and a possibility to connect with a historic object. Ringing one of the many doorbells will lead to an explosion of associative video bits juxtaposed with and heavily relying on an elective soundscape, e.g. the nightly banging on a wooden door or the rattling of a heavy train. In this setting, the visitor, for a few seconds, becomes a traveler in time, briefly glimpsing at one of the many histories behind the deportations, stimulating his or her sense of historical imagination and making him or her want to take an even deeper dive into this history. The video bits will provide an ultra-short glimpse at an artistic representation of a significant moment within the respective family‘s or individual‘s life. Using doorbells as envoys of a historic community, this installation will attempt to tell the history of the Hamburg deportations as the history of a formerly functioning society torn apart, of neighbors turning against each other.

Last but not least, concept number five put a strong emphasis on the politics and social dynamics that led to the deportations and the subsequent exterminations by focusing on the process of othering and labeling Jews, Roma and Sinti in Third Reich Hamburg. Within the installation, this process would be visualized by an artistic representation of historic Hamburg street life based on unidentifiable silhouettes on the sidewalks. These silhouettes would then increasingly be visually labeled and classified as “Jews” or “Gypsy”. Every labeled individual would disappear eventually, marking the void the deportations would leave in the city’s society. This installation would include a smart screen able to serve as a screen and a mirror at the same time, making it possible to include visual representations of the visitors at any time during the screening of the street life situation. Thus, the installations would build a bridge between the historic and the contemporary society of Hamburg, intriguing the visitors to question what their role within the historic setting might have been and how they want to interact with their communities today.

A short report of the workshop in German can also be found on the Neuengamme Memorial site:
https://www.kz-gedenkstaette-neuengamme.de/nachrichten/news/wie-stellen-sich-studierende-eine-gelungene-ausstellung-vor/