Open Process / Offener Prozess

The exhibition Offener Prozess disentangles the complicated backdrop that paved the way for the serial murders committed by the far-right terror group NSU between 2000 and 2006. Challenging the official and popular narrative that insists on defining the atrocities as isolated cases of ideological fanaticism, the project highlights various layers of the institutional racism that has openly or latently infused into the operation of state apparatuses and daily life. In contrast to the paralysing ascription of victimhood to the ones who lost their lives, several works in the Offener Prozess exhibition give voice to their relatives and communities, who reject being a part of the silencing consensus imposed upon them.

The exhibition will travel to various cities throughout Germany and Europe and will be framed by an educational and accompanying program. Contemporary witnesses will speak, perspectives will be exchanged in discussion formats, impulses will be given through film screenings, people will be brought into conversation with each other in discussion rounds, music by former contract workers will be heard, and the exhibition will be a place of encounter and research. In 2021, the exhibition will be shown in Jena and Chemnitz as well as in Brussels and – in partial excerpts – at thirteen theater locations. In the following years, further stops in cities are planned. From 2025, it will be on view as a permanent exhibition in Chemnitz.

The exhibition includes Forensic Architecture’s work The Murder of Halit Yozgat, examining one of a spree of murders committed in the early 2000s by neo-Nazi group the National Socialist Underground (NSU).