Emmanuel
Witzthum

My work as an artistic director centers on designing scalable artistic platforms that connect people, disciplines, and technologies. Across cultural institutions, cities, and innovation environments, I develop frameworks that allow art to move beyond presentation — toward participation, co-creation, and systemic impact.

At the Israeli–Palestinian culture house FeelBeit in Jerusalem, I co-lead a platform that brings together artists and audiences across deep divides, using the arts to foster dialogue, shared experience, and new forms of collective imagination. This work extends into a broader inquiry: how artistic thinking can prototype alternative social realities in times of polarization.

My interest in scalable artistic thinking extends into creative entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystems. At the ZEISS Innovation Hub, I curate the Creative Resident Program, inviting artists working at the intersection of art, science, and technology to embed within research teams. The program positions artistic practice as a catalyst for exploration and early-stage innovation, bringing new perspectives into fields such as medical robotics and microchip development.

This approach has been shaped over years of leading artistic programs at scale. As Head of Arts at the British Council in Israel, I developed and transformed national arts programming toward impact-driven, digitally oriented initiatives — bridging artistic practice with entrepreneurship and cross-sector collaboration. Later, as Global Arts Digital Project Manager, I initiated and led the creation of large-scale participatory platforms: Mix the City and Mix the Body (created with Wayne McGregor), reaching over 1.5 million users worldwide, working with partners including the UNESCO Creative Cities Network and cities such as Berlin, Glasgow, Delhi, and Belfast. They explore how audiences can become active participants in creating music and dance.

Earlier work such as Dissolving Localities — remixing the daily lives of cities across more than ten global contexts — laid the foundation for this approach: creating modular artistic systems that travel, adapt, and resonate across cultures.

My artistic direction has also focused on building communities through unconventional frameworks. In Shalem – Orchestra of Broken Harmonies, I created and led a 120-member community orchestra in Jerusalem, performing original music on broken instruments — reframing limitation as a source of collective creativity and redefining who gets to participate in orchestral practice.

Alongside independent work, I have held key artistic leadership roles including Artistic Director (Music) of the Israel Festival in Jerusalem. In parallel, I create site-specific technological experiences such as Sonaris, where audiences navigate space through sound — encountering music that evolves in response to their movement through the environment.

Across these contexts, my work focuses on building platforms rather than projects: structures that enable others to create, interact, and imagine together — whether in cities, cultural institutions, or technological systems.