Speaking Germany

Sharone Lifschitz

Speaking Germany

Sharone Lifschitz

In 2004, Sharone Lifschitz won a competition organized by the municipality to create a work of public art to accompany the opening of the Jewish Museum Munich. Lifschitz began the project by placing the following advertisement in several German newspapers: “Young Jewish woman visiting Germany would like to have a conversation about nothing in particular with anyone reading this.”

She subsequently traveled throughout Germany to meet forty-five out of the nearly 200 people who had responded, documenting the various encounters with photographs of the tables where they shared a drink or a meal, and with transcriptions of their conversations.…

In 2004, Sharone Lifschitz won a competition organized by the municipality to create a work of public art to accompany the opening of the Jewish Museum Munich. Lifschitz began the project by placing the following advertisement in several German newspapers: “Young Jewish woman visiting Germany would like to have a conversation about nothing in particular with anyone reading this.”

She subsequently traveled throughout Germany to meet forty-five out of the nearly 200 people who had responded, documenting the various encounters with photographs of the tables where they shared a drink or a meal, and with transcriptions of their conversations. These conversations provided the raw material for posters and billboards that Lifschitz produced and that were placed like advertisements within the public transportation network and in prominent locations throughout Munich during the months preceding the new Museum’s opening in March 2007.

This citywide intervention culminated in extracts from the conversations being placed on the glass facades of the Jewish Museum’s exterior. A dedicated website, a photographic series, and a video (in collaboration with Graham Westfield) documenting the stages of the project and the reactions it engendered completed the work.

The text installation on the glass façade of the museum, which was originally planned to be temporary for one year, developed into a kind of trademark of the museum.

 

 

Sharone Lifschitz, Speaking Germany, Two Beers and Two Salads. 2005–14
Speaking Germany, large poster at Munich Central Station, 2007
Speaking Germany, lettering on a tram. 2006-2007. photo: Wilfried Petzi
Speaking Germany, façade Jewish Museum Munich, 2007. Photo: Wilfried Petzi

PUBLICATION

 

The accompanying brochure to "Speaking Germany" as a free download (in German only)

PDF PROJEKTBROSCHÜRE

Ein Museum der Landeshauptstadt München