To survive a flood, you need an ark.
That’s the theme of this year’s Jerusalem Design Week (JDW), which explores the endeavors we make to preserve life and allow us to rebuild after a catastrophe precipitated by human evil.
The biblical story of Noah is all the more poignant in the wake of the Hamas atrocities, as Dana Benshalom and Sonia Ulitsky, chief curators of the event, are only too aware.
They were already planning this 13th annual edition of JDW – which showcases exhibitions, installations, events, and projects by designers from Israel and beyond – before October 7 changed everything.
They had, somewhat prophetically, chosen “The Flood” as their theme, ahead of the massacre that Hamas refers to as Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.
“We were thinking about climate change and about political and social issues,” Benshalom tells ISRAEL21C. “And we were thinking about aspects of technology – floods of information and multiple opinions. It felt like we were flooded with everything.”
After October 7, they switched their focus from the flood to the ark, which was a timeless symbol of refuge and resilience.
“It was July 2023 when we gathered to choose the theme for this year, and we chose The Flood,” says Benshalom.
“It came from a general notion we had that it felt like we were about to hit a boiling point. We changed the name after October 7, and we also change the perspective.”
JDW 2024, which runs from September 19 to 26, is a free event that gives space to around 80 designers to explore a theme through creative work – in this case how we can begin to heal and redesign our future after a flood.
JDW has attracted 40,000 visitors in previous years and takes place at a Hansen House. This is a former leper asylum dating back to 1887, in Talbiya, central Jerusalem, which now functions as a center for design, media and technology.
The unique venue has an historic laundry building, toilet towers, doctor’s room, walled gardens and isolation rooms (it still treated patients with leprosy until 2002) as well as its attics, galleries and other quirky exhibition spaces.
Visitors to JDW 2024 will be greeted by an outdoor display, The Forecast, in which local artists and designers, working with professionals from the Israel Meteorological Service, explore how we collect and interpret data in the hope of predicting nature’s next, powerful surprise.
Inside the house is Lifeboat – a temporary home with an emergency slide that connects a disaster area to a safe haven, and Echoing into the Future – Sound Capsules from Jerusalem, which honors the memory of kibbutznik Yagev Buchstab, 35, a sound technician who was murdered while being held captive by Hamas. It explores ways in which music can create alternate realities, even if just for a mere fleeting moment.
The old hospice at Hansen House is transformed into an uncharted land as architect Bina Baitel laments the fact that there is so little left to discover, now that virtually every corner of the world has been photographed, cataloged and satellite-navigated.
The Hostel examines the transformation of hotels in Israel into ark-like refuges for the many tens of thousands of people uprooted from their homes by relentless missile attacks.
There are posters dealing with despair and hope, displays of the physical products people need to survive a disaster, collections of the flora, fauna and much more besides that we’d seek to preserve in a flood for future generations.
The curators acknowledge that Jerusalem Design Week 2024 is a different exhibition than what might have been without October7.
The “open call” inviting proposals from designers hadn’t yet gone out, so Benshalom and Ulitsky were able to refine their brief.
They then had to sift through more than 500 applications to shape a coherent event, fitting the various jigsaw pieces together to tell a story with impact.
“After October 7 it was clear to us that the story of the ark was much more relevant, because it has so many doors through which you can enter this story form a design point of view,” says Ulitsky.
“It’s one of the most pragmatic design stories we have in the Bible, because it suggests you build an object that might save you. And this is what designers do. We have a disaster and now we need to react. What should we do?”
Benshalom says they “got a lot of feedback that the theme was very relatable. It was easy for people to find ways to react to it.”
All the works were commissioned and paid for by Jerusalem Design Week.
“We choose 70 to 80 works, from very small objects to big installations that take over the whole façade of Hansen House,” Benshalom says.
“We’re not only looking at quality, we’re also trying to tell a story. There needs to be a relationship between the works we choose.”
This year’s JDW will be as inspiring as previous editions, but will shift some of the emphasis from fun to utility. Previous events have featured clowns, fortune tellers and theater groups.
“It was clear to us that this year it will be very hard to include performance in the curatorial program,” says Ulitsky. “In previous years it’s been very colorful and very entertaining.
“This year it’s more about basics of the visitor experience and more about the discipline of design itself. This why, for instance, we were having an exhibition that deals with designs for emergencies.”
Benshalom says: “In times of crisis everything that isn’t an emergency loses its meaning. Something that the Jerusalem Design Week managed to do this year is to create a hub or an ark or a shelter where design and creation and doing good come together in different ways.”
Jerusalem Design Week is an initiative of the Ministry of Jerusalem and Heritage and the Jerusalem Development Authority. It is organized and managed by Hansen House and urban development company Ran Wolf Ltd.
Produced in association with ISRAEL21c
