Architectures of Hereness
11.10.-23.10.2025
La Storta Exhibition Space
Ghetto Vecchio, Venice

The second iteration of the Yiddishland Pavilion gathers five architectural and artistic proposals that explore what architecture becomes when detached from territory—when it is understood through diaspora, improvisation, and solidarity. Presented as video documentation, models, and props from the original performances, as well as audio, video and digital works, the exhibition reimagines architecture as a diasporic and uncontrollable by any government practice: adaptive, collective, and rooted in vernacular resistance.

At the core of the Pavilion's concept this year lies the Bundist principle of doikeyt—an Yiddish word meaning “hereness.” Emerging from the secular Jewish socialist tradition in the late 19th century, doikeyt rejected both nationalism and assimilation, insisting instead on building emancipatory futures where one stands, in alliance with others. Transposed into architectural thought, this concept becomes an ethos of presence and resilience: architecture not as monument or territoriality, but as a process of reuse, extemporaneousness, and collective making.

Set within the Jewish Ghetto, the Pavilion resonates with a history of both confinement and ingenuity—where Jewish communities adapted architecture to scarcity, building synagogues on upper floors and reimagining space under restrictions. This history offers a critical counterpoint to the Biennale itself, where national pavilions affirm statehood and borders. The Yiddishland Pavilion instead invokes a stateless cultural space—Yiddishland—defined by mobility, multilingualism, and shared memory.



Three of the projects in the exhibition (Boym, Hedges & Lester, and Toretsky) first appeared as unsanctioned interventions during the opening days of the 19th Venice Biennale of Architecture in May 2025, staged across the city and on the Biennale grounds. These fleeting acts of assembly and disruption now return to the Venetian Ghetto as traces—videos, fragments, and objects—that carry forward their challenge to the logic of national representation at the Biennale.

The other two works (Sala-Manca and Kamyshan) engage directly with Jewish architectural traditions, reimagining them beyond their original settings. A wooden synagogue and a sukkah—structures deeply tied to ritual, community, and vernacular adaptation—are reframed through digital and audio channels. In this translation, they become diasporic forms: architecture not as fixed heritage, but as something mobile, porous, and continually re-sounded into the present.

Against the backdrop of the Venice Biennale, which often emphasizes nationalism and permanence, Yiddishland proposes a different kind of architecture: dispersed rather than centralized, collaborative rather than individualistic , resistant rather than enduring. Against nationalism, it insists on solidarity. Against permanence, adaptability. Against silence, noise.




Transnational Architectures of Doikeyt: Stateless, Mobile, Vernacular
Symposium
12.10.2025, 12.00-17.00
La Storta Exhibition Space Ghetto Vecchio, Venice

Opening Session – Welcome & Framing
Maria Veits & Yevgeniy Fiks
Architecture as diasporic practice & Bundist doikeyt principle

Session I – Camps & Collectivity: Improvised Institutions & Diasporic Pedagogies
Julia Hedges & G Laster
Reimagining Jewish summer camps as collective, site-specific experiences

Session II – Wandering & Mobility: Architecture in Motion
Constantin Boym
Wandering Pavilion

Session III – Fragile Shelters / Vernacular Resistance
Sala-Manca
Yiddishland Sukkah Pavilion

Session IV Venetian Ghetto
Dovrat Meron
Transforming Venice’s Jewish built environment

Session V Embodied Territories: Gender, Memory, and Diasporic Space
Shoshana Simons
A Window into The Shtetl Multiverse:
An intimate look at meanings of liberation across Jewish women of shtetl descent, including screening of 9-minute poetic documentary

Closing Reflection – Building Here, Together
Open conversation on “architecture without territory”



The exhibition and mini-symposium are open to everyone, and entrance is free.