Action in the Underground. U1 Ubahn. Berlin, 2014
The action playfully questions tensions between intimacy and alienation, and the unspoken boundaries/rules that govern how people share and occupy common space. Over a period of 4.5 hours, a collaborative energy developed between the performers and public, which shifted between different extremes as passengers came and went.
The intervention unfolded very subtly in one car as the train ran back and forth along the U1 line. Beginning at the first stop on the west end - Uhlandstrasse, the car was almost empty with only a few passengers. One performer arrived, her face covered with a pink bag. Though there were many empty spaces, she sat close beside a lone passenger, leaning very intimately toward him. At the next station another performer arrived, also wearing a pink bag, repeating a similar action. At the 3rd stop, a third performer arrived, and so on. Documented with a hidden camera and 2 hidden sound recorders, the experiment went on for the entire journey of the U1 - 12 stops up to Warschauerstraße, 12 performers, 12 pink heads. The process reversed itself on the return trip back, and continued as such, back and forth, for several hours.
Sound and video documentation available upon request at archive@euna-kim.com
Concept and Artistic Direction: Grace Euna Kim
Hidden video and audio documentation: Sebastian Bordirsky, Aga Tamiola
Performers: Summer Banks, Jenn Edwards, Karina Suarez Bosche, Christine Cheung, Cecilia Erismann, Nathalie Fari, Irene Cortina Gonzalez, Edvard Lammervo, Minna Partenan, Irene Pascual, Troels Primdahl, Hanae Utamura