History of the Site:
Video Panorama – Flashbacks

The ground-floor room with its large video panora­ma speaks the clear lan­guage of a con­tem­po­rary shell and depicts the Hum­boldt Forum as a new build­ing and a place of trans­for­ma­tion. chezweitz has stretched a four-meter-high and 27.5‑meter-long screen along the long side of the room. The video instal­la­tion fol­lows the idea of an over­sized light table on which his­tor­i­cal images emerge and are super­im­posed. The video panora­ma was devel­oped artis­ti­cal­ly and con­tent-wise with our long-stand­ing part­ner, the Swiss video artist Dominique Müller, and the cura­to­r­i­al team. Instead of mod­ern info­tain­ment for­mats, it shows a light table shot from above, on which hands place his­tor­i­cal media such as art­works, pho­tographs, film scenes, posters, and news­pa­per arti­cles next to and on top of each oth­er, thus allow­ing a visu­al jour­ney through time through the cen­turies. The vis­i­tor expe­ri­ences the sci­en­tif­ic nar­ra­tive as an open, mate­r­i­al-relat­ed, and muse­um-like process.

Inter­spersed through­out the Hum­boldt Forum are the elab­o­rate dis­play cas­es of flash­backs – 35 sceno­graph­ic inter­ven­tions that offer vis­i­tors a glimpse into the event­ful his­to­ry of this spe­cial place through unex­pect­ed sto­ries and objects from both the old­er and more recent past. Through these objects and their unusu­al pre­sen­ta­tion, his­to­ry is revealed in its absolute form – unvar­nished and with­in reach.