Following a successful 10-week run in Tel Aviv the harrowing “The Nova Music Festival Exhibition: October 7th 06:29 AM” opened in New York City April 21.
The exhibit, which details what happened during the Nova Music Festival massacre, will run until June 16 after which it will travel to Los Angeles.
Supernova Sukkot Gathering was a weekend-long festival in Re’im, Israel, which was one of Hamas’ first targets during its Oct. 7 attack on Israel. The music festival attendees were dancing and singing as the sun rose when terrorists ransacked the site and began their violence on ravers.
More than just documenting the heartbreak and physical evidence of Hamas’ attack on the trance festival on Oct. 7, the exhibition is also a tribute to the 370 people killed and the 44 kidnapped Nova Festival guests.
Unpacked visited the Nova exhibit on Wall Street to detail what the exhibit has and why it’s integral viewing.
What is in the Nova exhibit?
The 35,000 square-foot exhibit recreates the Nova Festival with actual items recovered from the site, testimonies from survivors, and the opportunity to speak with survivors and the family members of victims at the end of the exhibit.
The exhibit opens with a video of Nova attendees dancing and singing at the festival. They explain why they love going to the event each year and the power of being united with their fellow music lovers. The video ends with a harrowing warning of what is to come.
The rest of the Nova exhibit models the ruins of what authorities found following the attacks on Oct. 7. Tents, blankets, shoes and other personal objects of festivalgoers sit throughout the event as they were when found.
Phones, laptops and television screens are throughout the event space playing on loop footage of the massacre shot by victims, survivors, hostages and Hamas terrorists. These videos document festival attendees hurriedly driving away from the scene, hiding in the brush, and terrorists proudly declaring that they’re successfully slaughtering civilians and soldiers.
In later parts of the exhibit, survivors and the families of victims speak to attendees through recorded videos about their experiences on Oct. 7. While watching, exhibit goers are surrounded by burned-out cars and portable restrooms covered in bullet holes — where the majority of people hiding were killed.
One of the final installations is labeled “lost and found” in which attendees can see the hundreds of items recovered from the festival grounds that couldn’t fit in the exhibit.
Initially created for victims’ families to be able to retrieve their loved ones’ items, the “lost and found” is now one of the most meaningful parts of the exhibit. Stuffed animals, makeup bags, and backpacks paint a devastating picture of the peace-loving festival and the horror that occurred — this section resembles a style often associated with Holocaust museums in which items are used to humanize victims that have too often been relegated to a number.
The message of the exhibit
The tagline throughout the exhibit is “We will dance again,” emphasizing the resilience of Israelis.
One of the goals of the exhibit is to focus on the violence that occurred on Oct. 7 and to prompt attendees to question how a festival dedicated to promoting peace and love became the grounds for slaughter and sexual violence.
The utilization of exclusive testimonies and physical evidence of what occurred leaves no doubt for those who believe Oct. 7 either never occurred or was not as severe as depicted by the media.
The opportunity to speak face-to-face with survivors and victims’ families during the exhibit makes the atrocities of Oct. 7 real for those who feel distant from events that occurred halfway around the world.
Organizer and music executive Scooter Braun wanted attendees to understand that the people at Nova were like those at any other music festival.
“This is not a political issue. It’s not an issue of race or religion, it’s a music festival. This is Coachella, this is Stagecoach, this is Governors Ball. This is any festival you, your kids or you, or your brother or sister have attended,” he told Page Six.
Originally Published May 20, 2024 09:52PM EDT
