The Exhibition

Introduction

How does AI know what Jews look like? How do you? And can there ever be an image of Jewish people capable of doing justice to the plurality of Jewish lives and the contradictions of Jewish history and the present? Attempts to produce such an image have long existed - in art history, cinema, and, more recently, on social media platforms such as TikTok. Filmmaker Nico Beyer’s work also makes this attempt. His short films, shown here, are portraits in miniature, vignettes of contemporary Jewish life in Europe, sketches, which do not claim to provide a complete picture. Rather than seeking a singular image, they insist on the irreducible multiplicity of Jewish experience: identities performed before the camera with pride, doubt, and the normalcy of the everyday. The films’ credo: many images instead of the one image of Jews.

Yet these many images are themselves contested. They must navigate, on the one hand, the external gaze - the attributions imposed by a non-Jewish majority - and, on the other, ongoing debates within Jewish communities over the politics of representation. Who, then, is showing whom here, and how? These tensions become audible in the audio installation surrounding Nico Beyer’s films. It gives voice to the many challenges that shape contemporary perceptions of Jews and Jewish (self-)representation today: distorting stereotypes, antisemitic hate speech on social media, AI fakes, anti-Israeli visual propaganda in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 massacres, and the fundamental question of whether self-determined, truthful images of Jews can exist independently of this overwhelming flood of antisemitic imagery.

The Curatorial Concept

Concept
The starting point of the exhibition are around 15 to 20 short films by Nico Beyer, miniatures and portraits that open up different geographical, social and personal perspectives on Jewish life in Europe today. In the exhibition they are surrounded by a spatial and auditory course that places the films in the history of media, in politics and in film culture, in order to ask about the possibilities and problems of visual representation of Jews today. The problems of Jewish (self-)representation are not only addressed but made perceptible to the senses. Rather than treating tensions, projections and stereotypical attributions solely as an obstacle to becoming visible, the exhibition attempts to make them part of a critical form of representation: in the form of broken images that show their own distortions, shortcomings or manipulations.

Spatial layout
On entering the exhibition space, the films are what first catches the eye. They are shown on large screens set between the striking metal columns of the synagogue’s former women’s gallery; the films can be heard only through headphones. Before reaching the screens, visitors are already surrounded by the audio installation. Depending on where they stand, the voices they hear change: conversations, documents read aloud, recorded accounts of personal experience, and choral singing. A many-layered vault of voices emerges that contextualises the films and enters into an unexpected dialogue with them.

The vault of voices
The voices circulating through open, controlled loudspeakers fall into four areas: history, the present, the future and the participatory Speaker’s Corner. The historical chapter centres on the film project Below the Surface, initiated between 1945 and 1947 by members of the exiled Frankfurt School, the American Jewish Committee and major Hollywood producers, and never realised. The chapter on the present is devoted above all to image production after 7 October. The chapter on the future asks about the effects of generative AI on truth, visibility and self-representation. Finally, visitors can listen in full on tablets to the conversations that are audible only as fragments in the audio installation.

A pan-European perspective
Conceived as a touring exhibition, the project is to be extended at every venue by local interlocutors, historical references and site-specific audio contributions. In Berlin, an audio area will draw local community life into the exhibition alongside the particular historical traces of the former synagogue space.

Speaker’s Corner
The Speaker’s Corner adds an open, participatory level to the exhibition. Visitors do not remain silent recipients but become, temporarily, voices within the exhibition space themselves. Their own audio contributions can become part of the sound landscape and add to the exhibition’s context.

Objective
Pride and Prejudice – Jews in Focus does not look for a final or “correct” depiction of Jewish life. Instead, the exhibition makes visible the breaks, uncertainties and contradictions that accompany every form of representation. It treats disturbance not as a defect but as a form of insight, using irritation, polyphony and contradiction to provoke questions that resist a simple answer, or a simple image.

Fact Sheet

Duration
28 August – 17 November 2026

Opening
Thursday, 27 August 2026, 6 pm

Venue
New Synagogue Berlin – Centrum Judaicum, former women’s gallery, Oranienburger Straße 28–30, 10117 Berlin

Opening hours
Summer: Mon–Fri 10 am–6 pm, Sun 10 am–7 pm. Winter: Sun–Thu 10 am–6 pm, Fri 10 am–3 pm. Closed on Saturdays

Admission
regular 7.00 €, reduced 4.50 € and family ticket 20.00 €

Accessibility
Wheelchair accessible

Area
approx. 269 m²

Curation
Jonathan Guggenberger

Production
KLING KLANG KLONG (production, conception, artistic and technical realisation)

Architecture
BÜROBERLIN (exhibition architecture and graphics)

Films
Nico Beyer, short film series 60sec.mentsh

Technology
6 dialogue stations (screen, chair, headphones), 32 microphone stands (14 carrying sound)

Organisers
Jüdisches Leben in Europa e. V. (JEWLIF), New Synagogue Berlin – Centrum Judaicum Foundation

From 2027
Touring exhibition in other European cities

Funding and partners
Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI), on the basis of a resolution of the German Bundestag; Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion; Jewish Community of Berlin

Getting there
S-Bahn Oranienburger Straße, U-Bahn Oranienburger Tor

Exhibition Imprint

Title
Stolz und Vorurteil – Juden im Blick (Pride and Prejudice – Jews in Focus), 28 August – 17 November 2026

An exhibition by
Jüdisches Leben in Europa e.V. (JEWLIF) & New Synagogue Berlin – Centrum Judaicum Foundation

Exhibition Concept and Curation
Jonathan Guggenberger

Production
KLING KLANG KLONG (production, conception, artistic and technical realisation)

Design
BÜROBERLIN (exhibition architecture and graphics)

Film team
Production and Concept of the Films: Nico Beyer / Silent Revolver Shot. Camera: Michael Mieke, Christoph Wißing, Rodolphe Seraphine. Music: Christian Meyer. Editing: Michael Mieke, Peer Arne Sveistrup, Joel Marcus, Emil Schwarz. Assistance: Emil Schwarz, Jude Dulake, Karisma Eteh, Gandhalii Tillu. Casting: Eva Vollmer. Project management: Maria Claudia Hacker, Julian Rademacher. Curator: Andrei Aaron Kovacs

Foundation team
Exhibition team: Monika Keenan & Anja Siegemund. Public relations: Jana Blechschmidt. Press: Simon Behringer. On-site technology: Florian Endel, Henry Lucke

Portrayed
Daphna Awadish, Sarah Basic, Martyn Berg, Laurence B. Bernard, Zeevi Chaimovitch, Udi Cohen, Luna Cohen Solal, Philippe Cohen Solal, Tatia Gruenbaum, Polina Ivanova, Perry Joseph, Julia Kovacs, Dani Levy, Mikki Levy Strasser, Anja Lundholm, Martin Moszkowicz, Erez Ofer, Noga Shtainer, Andreas Tölke

Funding note
Jüdisches Leben in Europa e.V. (JEWLIF) is funded by the Federal Ministry of the Interior on the basis of a resolution of the German Bundestag.