2015
Trilogy of site-specific public performative video interventions.
Through the performative acts series for the camera, Urban Relationship I retrieve the historical memory of gentrified places in Berlin.
Exhibited at OPEN/OCCUPY Flutgraben, Flutgraben e V. Berlin, 2021
The trilogy “Ruins” (2015, Stralauer Str.), “R_AUS” (2015, Persiusstrasse), “The Mother” (2016, Kynaststrasse) is a video documentation consisting of undeclared site-specific actions within gentrified locations in Berlin.
Eviction, gentrification and de-territorialization are the main topics constantly affecting every human being’s life. Due to social, political and economical challenges we are daily forced to change our own life approach, and for this reason I’ve temporarily occupied certain locations in order to live them before they disappear forever. All those locations are not there anymore, replaced by new buildings and urban reassessment.
Ruins, Video HD, sound, colours, duration 13:07 min.
After finding a structure made of urban debris, I felt connected to this metropolitan sculpture found by accident. The objet trouvé became the subject related to my action. How can a human being feel connected to an artificial structure? Which debris were those? Who left them there? Walking on the structure, I started interacting with different structure parts, then I hung on a bar and let myself swing and slowly build trust in it. I barely improvised a dance with it, embracing this non-human encounter. The entire action is a continuous exploration of the possibility of movement. The structure and my action coexist, creating a deep dialogue between a person and the ruins of the city.
R_AUS, Video HD, sound, colors, duration 11:36 min.
The urban action R_AUS was born spontaneously as an investigation on the effects of our human bodies on the urban space. The word AUS (“out” but also “from”) recalls a greater concept (AUSLAND “foreign”). As foreigner in a foreign country I often felt outside of the system, living all the difficulties of what “integration” means. At the same time my action is an attempt to approach the urban daily life like an evanescent entity walking through the rush hour traffic.
The work R_AUS (out) is a study of the dynamics created around a human body that influences the context but still remain extraneous to it. It’s an experiment to temporarily regain possession of the space in order to change its function. Being “out”, but at the same time “inside” the social dynamics where the indifference of the action oscillates between its maximum effectiveness and its annulment, remains suspended between the opinions and the noise.
The Mother, Video HD, sound, colours, 23:50 min
The location is a construction site filled with several temporary mountains made of soil and marked by workers with spray colours in order to distinguish them. I dig a hole in the soil, as if it was a lair. I lay down into it, looking for a feeling of belonging. That soil is probably giving shape to new building’s foundations, but at the same time recalls Mother Earth’s absence.
still from video