Three Doors. Forensic Architecture / Forensis, Initiative 19. Februar Hanau, Initiative in Gedenken an Oury Jalloh

March 16 - September 1, 2024

The project Three Doors was developed in 2022 by the multidisciplinary research group Forensic Architecture (FA) and its Berlin-based sister organization Forensis, together with the affected families, survivors, and their supporters, the Initiative 19. Februar Hanau and the Initiative in Gedenken an Oury Jalloh. The exhibition is dedicated to two cases of fatal racist violence in Germany: the 2020 attack in Hanau, in which nine people were killed by a right-wing extremist, and the murder of Oury Jalloh in 2005 in a prison cell in Dessau. Despite overwhelming evidence, the fight for judicial recognition of this murder goes on.

Using the latest technologies in spatial and architectural analysis as well as innovative visual science and journalistic methods, FA/Forensis reconstructed and examined the crime scenes and events in Hanau and Dessau in detail. The testimonies of the victims’ relatives and the survivors play a central role. Based on civil-society, scientific, and artistic research, Three Doors creates space for a counter-narrative to the state’s official portrayal of the events.

The project focuses on three doors that were locked when they should have been open, and vice versa. Specifically, these are the locked emergency exit in the Arena Bar, one of the crime scenes in Hanau; the door of the perpetrator’s house, which was left unguarded for a long time during the night of the Hanau crime; and the door of the prison cell in Dessau where Jalloh was burned to death.

The results of FA/Forensis’s research have been presented not only in exhibitions, but also in court and as part of investigative committees. In the exhibition, they can be experienced in the form of videos, podcasts, wall graphics, 3D animations, and architectural reconstructions. New findings and aspects that have emerged in the course of recent research and developments have been integrated into the existing exhibition.

The terror attack in Hanau and the murder of Oury Jalloh in Dessau are treated in the exhibition as specific and at the same time exemplary incidents of structural racist and right-wing extremist violence in Germany and are thus also addressed, for example, in connection with the neo-Nazi terrorist organization NSU, especially the murder of Halit Yozgat in Kassel.

The exhibition was conceived as a place of remembrance, education, and resistance as well as a platform for a multifaceted program of events, which is being developed with the close involvement of the relatives of those murdered and their supporters as well as other groups and initiatives. The aim is to create an open place of learning that opposes racist and right-wing extremist forces in Germany and promotes solidarity with those affected by them.

Following the successful launch of the exhibition at the Frankfurter Kunstverein (2022), the project has so far been shown at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin (2022) and, in part, at the Neustädter Rathaus in Hanau (2023). In 2024, in addition to the Württembergischer Kunstverein, it will also be shown at the Museum im Kulturspeicher Würzburg.

Note: The material in this exhibition deals with subject matter of a racist and violent nature. Viewer discretion is advised.

Initiative 19. Februar Hanau
https://19feb-hanau.org

Initiative im Gedenken an Oury Jalloh
https://initiativeouryjalloh.wordpress.com

Forensic Architecture
https://forensic-architecture.org