Design yearns to interact with the viewer, but whether that means offering solutions or new perspectives, it is usually there for us as a functional tool. However, Jerusalem Design Week 2024 invites visitors to interact with design in a unique format that transcends form and function. The event allows visitors to interact with design in a way that is collaborative, thoughtful, and, most importantly, impactful.
Curated by Dana Benshalom and Sonja Olitsky, Jerusalem Design Week 2024 will open on September 19 at its flagship location, Hansen House.
Over seven days, visitors can immerse themselves in the festival’s 13th iteration, featuring exhibitions, tours, workshops, and special events at the main site and other venues like the National Library, the Israel Museum, and the Museum for Islamic Art.
At the heart of the event, eight exhibitions and on-site installations showcase the creations of over 200 participants, with over 80 works presented at Hansen House alone. From industrial design and graphic design to furniture design and digital design and everything in between, these displays explore this year’s theme, The Ark, presenting visitors with ideas and tools that delve into this concept.
Benshalom and Olitsky began contemplating the theme for this year’s festival immediately after the conclusion of their 2023 event. Inspired by the political landscape, climate changes, and technological advancements, they recognized a deluge that was flooding society. “We thought and we felt, as we watched everything happening in the political background – with climate changes, technology evolutions – that we were being flooded with information.”
“Flood” became a theme-in-progress for Jerusalem Design Week 2024, leading them to consider the mythological dimensions of this concept. The duo drew parallels to biblical and other mythological narratives that use the flood as a metaphor for rebirth and renewal.
Then Oct. 7 happened, and the world around Benshalom and Olitsky became impacted by war. If Jerusalem Design Week 2024 were to take place, they understood it would be an opportunity to talk about these issues and that they would use design to address the situation.
“We knew if we wanted to stick with the flood topic, the perception would have to change,” says Benshalom. “Especially because we are talking about design and what design does during times of crisis and emergency; design acts.”
What emerged from the flood resulted in this year’s theme: The Ark. A mythical symbol that’s been iterative in many different cultures – perhaps most notably in the epic Bible story of Noah’s Ark – the ark has become symbolic of community, design, material, and refuge. It highlights disasters encountered throughout history at the hands of various entities, while also acting as a powerful representation of shelter, renewal, and hope.
Olitsky says that to the curators, an ark represents “something that is changeable and can be designed in the future. This is something that design takes on itself as a profession; design creates solutions.”
As a bridge between chaos and salvation, the ark represents not only the physical act of survival but preserving ideas and culture as well. “On one hand, we look at the ark as an engineering project; on the other hand, it’s also a curatorial story,” says Benshalom. “Noah has been told to gather living forms inside the ark and save them. He acts as a curator; with all these things, he will rebuild the world from scratch.”
“The Ark” exhibition, curated by Benshalom and Olitsky for this year’s Jerusalem Design Week, is not necessarily optimistic, but it does give visitors the tools and ability to generate hope. With a collective invitation for visitors and participants to act through interaction with the works, the curators hope that some of the exhibitions will communicate a message of hope, rebuilding, and peace.
“This year, Jerusalem Design Week is not happening in order to entertain people. There is no escapism role but a role of opening a discourse on what is the agency of design,” says Olitsky.
The works on display this year are focused on engagement and mobilization, diving into ideas of creation, annihilation, preservation, crisis, and more. Representing a variety of design disciplines, each aspect of “The Ark” invites visitors to collaborate and dialogue about relevant topics.
“We wanted to take a perspective that looks from the ark towards the future. It felt like the right role that we have to take upon ourselves as designers as opposed to other different areas of art,” says Benshalom. “This is, by the way, what God told Noah to do: ‘You need to go out and build an ark, and there are precise instructions to build this.’ And we think that this is one of the most engineering-oriented stories in the ancient myths. The message is: If there is a disaster, do something.”
Overall, Jerusalem Design Week makes creative dialogue accessible and relevant. “When I think of design, I think one of the main touch points is that the audience is very diverse. So, this is an opportunity to connect with audiences. Jerusalem Design Week is a free, open event for a diverse group – many from design disciplines, but not necessarily,” says Benshalom. “It’s not like a museum exhibition that takes years. We work from February, and most of the designers working on these projects work in relation to what happens in the reality around them.”
THIS YEAR’S exhibitions feature more large-scale works when compared to past iterations of the festival. Visitors will encounter new structures being built, big installations, and unique collections based on the subjects the artists are invested in.
“A lot of these are also works in process, so there is the idea of making a real-time, interactive creation process that allows the audience to take part in these works – creating as a way of healing,” says Benshalom.
The event includes eight exhibitions and installations featuring sub-topics within the concept of The Ark. Sub-themes include The Tide – Between Rise and Fall; Time to Embark; Crossbreeds; Vaults of Life; Land Ho; Reference (Mar’eh Makom); The Hostel; The Forecast; and The Matchmaker.
Considering the 40,000 expected visitors to this year’s fair, the curators describe how this audience is always in mind as they curate their own production and event schedules. “This is our chance to tell them a story,” Benshalom explains.
“One of the most unique things about design is that it gives us a lot of tools to bring messages – not only as an experience but also as a user experience. In that way, this is what design is capable of doing. If I see a picture, there’s a sort of mimetic experience; but in design, we also have user experiences: ‘How do I feel as a user?’ ‘How do I feel as someone in interaction with this object?’ In our exhibitions, we can ask these questions to create a dialogue with visitors.” says Benshalom.
“All designers have these questions; if it’s not reachable or understandable for us, it cannot be there. Design has to communicate and interact specifically,” Olitsky adds.
10 Jerusalem Design Week highlights visitors can look forward to:
- The Raft: A large onsite-specific installation that asks questions dealing with faith, fate, and hope. The installation recreates Theodore Gericault’s painting The Raft of the Medusa (1816), using sketches the artist left behind. Here, Yuval Zin, Dolev Harel, and Neta Reches sculpt together local materials to give visitors the experience of standing among shards of the sinking ship.
- Nir-Oz, Flowers of Redemption and Mourning: Alon Boutboul and Eden Fainberg Sabach, students from Bezalel’s Visual Communications program, developed this artistic book, which uses photography to bring an index of Kibbutz Nir Oz’s flora and fauna to life. While the students were on reserve duty, they photographed Nir Oz’s houses and facades for their final project, for which they raised funds to produce themselves.
- Life Raft: Adi Anna Telezhysnki’s large-scale installation in Hansen House’s iconic courtyard transforms into a life raft, which provides a temporary home in times of emergency. The raft is meant to symbolize a future filled with possibilities, yet it necessitates an act of faith from the viewer, which includes crossing an emergency slide.
- Con - Buy Bye: A cheeky Middle Eastern convenience store, Con by Neil Cohen is a one-of-a-kind experience for anyone concerned about consumer culture. Using parody in the form of store items to shed light on the propagandistic aspects inherent in today’s marketing world, the pop-up store targets audiences in need of flood preparation or a quick escape from reality. Limited-edition products that explore tradition and indulgence promise customers “the more, the merrier,” with a touch of Israeli zeitgeist.
- The Forecast: Working in collaboration with professionals from the Israeli Meteorological Service to explore our attempts to comprehend natural forces, The Forecast presents a selection of new work seen through the eyes of local artists and designers. The installations here act as survey apparatus, presenting past data as physical expressions of real-time measurements, alongside works containing artificial weather phenomena.
- Vaults of Life: An exhibition of collections that make us think about our material culture and what it says about our society. “Most of the collections were responses from the open call when we asked, ‘What do we preserve and keep from material culture?’ It’s fascinating to understand which designers are retaining material and why. While some collections remain unchanged, others underwent examination and rework for the exhibition.
- The 2024 Matchmaker Project: This project invites participants to experience Jerusalem as an echo chamber, reacting to its complex reality and the voices of our time. At the heart of the exhibition is a collaboration of Jerusalem-based artists and designers with musicians and sound professionals. The soundtrack is the hybrid offspring of the collaboration among its participants, presented here as an intimate, personal, and collective listening experience.
- The End, Hope: An installation created as an extension of a project by the Broken Fingaz art collective, reflecting on the need to actively search for a source of hope amid ongoing conflict. A pair of postcards illuminates the oscillation between hope and desperation, representing our capacity to contain conflicting emotions in times of crisis. Visitors are invited to pick a side and mail a “postcard of peace” to a loved one, encompassing the artists’ hope for an ending and a new beginning.
- A daily fanzine: Distributed across Jerusalem at the exhibitions’ various locations, a daily fanzine will be published featuring news and happenings at Jerusalem Design Week. The collaborative project encourages visitors to take part by contributing their own content.
- Peace doves everywhere: The peace dove is an icon that will be spread and distributed all over the festival in various formats, including objects, prints, and installations such as a large inflatable dove. For the curators, the goal is to give visibility to the idea of “shalom,” using visitors as agents for spreading the message of hope.■
For more information: 2024.jdw.co.il/en
