Werkstatt Exilmuseum

Already in the stairwell we meet the theme: Here the "Way of Exile" - the concise narrative of the future museum - is transformed by chezweitz and SCHNELLE BUNTE BILDER into a striking light installation with subtle sound accompaniment. The movement in the house becomes an impressively physical and yet abstract color-space experience. Elements such as the flip dots, known from scoreboards of old railway stations and airports, also create the atmosphere of transit, travel and movement.

In the next few years, however, the house will continue to serve the "making-off" of the new museum as a place of testing and at the same time as a workshop, thinking space and presentation area for the development of the future museum format and its curatorial concept. In an experimental atmosphere, the rooms invite you to workshops and dialogues. The new Werkstatt Exilmuseum with its many participatory offers and formats is the best opportunity to prepare such a future-oriented place as the Exilmuseum and invites everyone to actively shape it! Also here: worth a visit!

On March 25 and 26, 2023, the big opening weekend of the Werkstatt Exilmuseum took place at Fasanenstrasse 24 in Berlin. Together with the team from the Stiftung Exilmuseum and our long-standing media partner SCHNELLE BUNTE BILDER, we have reprogrammed the former Käthe Kollwitz Museum. It will now become a workshop and interim location for the future Exilmuseum. The topic of exile was naturally omnipresent on these two days. The opening event received prominent support from film, theater and literature. The house came to life with theater performances, film screenings, readings, talks, guided tours of the house and short workshops. It invited visitors to enter into an active exchange with the extensive topic of exile and to contribute ideas and personal stories to the creation of the museum's still fictional rooms. As a scenographic guiding principle, we chose the motif of transitory, which runs through all floors, each with its own design language.

Not only for Herta Müller, the most prominent supporter of the project, transit - this place of transition, without beginning or end - represents the fate of the millions of exiles on this planet.