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Walking into the Nova Music Festival exhibition, mounted at 35 Wall Street through May 23, feels like a celebration.
In an introductory video that lasts just a few minutes, visitors get to see images of the young festival goers dancing or describing the power of trance music and the beauty involved in the annual festivities.
“When you come in, it doesn’t matter where you come from or what god you believe in,” Josh Kadden, one of the program’s organizers, says to Time Out New York. “You see yourself at that musical.”
Stepping into the rest of the production, though, feels like the exact opposite of a party: the show is more of a punch in the gut—which should come as no surprise given the subject at hand.
Dedicated to the harrowing accounts of the survivors of the October 7 massacre by Palestinian militant group Hamas at last year’s Nova Music Festival on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, the exhibit is set up like the festival campgrounds: tents, blankets and personal objects belonging to those who actually attended the event pepper the space.
A bunch of iPhones are also plugged in and laid out on the floor. Visitors are encouraged to pick them up and watch the videos that were recorded on the devices. Fair warning, though: each one will break your heart, showing would-be victims hiding while terrorists indiscriminately shoot their kalashnikov rifles in the background.
On a recent weekday, a sense of helplessness almost defined the experience across the rooms, each one outfitted with TV screens playing horrific videos on a loop: some recorded by the 250 civilians that were taken hostage to Gaza by Hamas on that day and might still be there, others by the 1,200 people that were killed at the festival or in nearby villages.
Most shocking, although less graphic, are the clips taken by the actual terrorists who carried out the attacks. Each one shows the militants urging each other to kill the police officers and soldiers called to rescue civilians that were trapped inside the festival grounds.
In addition to the recordings, ticket holders can look through different tables, each one filled with possessions that were left behind by the victims: backpacks, shoes, clothes—displays eerily reminiscent of the ones that have come to define exhibits about the Holocaust.
Also on premise are a number of the charred cars that were burned by terrorists on October 7 as they tried killing those attempting to flee the deadly scene and more than a couple of Porta-Potties filled with bullet holes.
What’s particularly unique given the weight of the subject at hand is the fact that the show heavily relies on visual proof: although there are some posters explaining what happened on October 7, the vast majority of the testimonies are the ones that were recorded by both the perpetrators and the perpetrated, leaving no room for doubt when it comes to humans' potential for evil.
In a way, the Nova Music Festival Exhibition seems to urge viewers to focus on what happened on October 7 and not muse over the events that preceded or came after the terrorist attack—which is likely why the show has resonated with New Yorkers of all types.
“Non-Jewish people are coming in also,” says Kadden. “The audience has been more diverse than I had anticipated. I think that for a lot of people music is a universal language that resonates.”
That global perspective is what pushed Kadden and his co-organizers, including music entrepreneur Scooter Braun, to bring the show, which debuted in Tel Aviv as a sort of lost-and-found for the families of the victims, to New York while working on plans to take it to other major metropolitan cities.
When asked about the goal of the exhibit and the message that he hopes attendees will leave with, Kadden is quick to answer.
“It’s not a hope,” he says. “I know people are walking out saying ‘wow, I didn't realize these kids were so beautiful. I didn’t realize these were just kids.’”
The Nova Music Festival exhibit is free to attend but tickets are required. You can secure passes here.