Art in the Underground 2022/23: New Urban Publics

In 2023, the neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK) again presents the results of the international art competition “Art in the Underground,” this year under the title New Urban Publics. The six selected artistic positions, which will be on display from June 8 through August 10 in public locations, connect Berlin’s underground system with urban spaces above ground.

Taking its cue from the association of public squares with the common good, as a place to meet and talk, three Berlin locations and their subway stations serve as the settings for artistic interventions: Kottbusser Tor, Strausberger Platz and Rotes Rathaus. All three are architecturally striking, partly cut by streets or spanned by bridges and elevated railways, partly classically symmetrical with a fountain as the central element. This urban and public space is used in various ways and for different means: traffic, consumption, play, communication, or recreation. The selected works seek to amplify and highlight these usages, making each site into a protagonist—as sites, occasions, and objects of alternative political self-organization.

On June 8, 2023, Art in the Underground 2022/23: New Urban Publics opens with a wrestling performance in front of Berlin’s town hall, the Rotes Rathaus. The Liminal Beast of Prey collective uses the format of a wrestling match to portray current political developments around the globe.

At Strausberger Platz, Sunny Pfalzer presents Scores for Fake Authenticity. The scores in question are performed on and around the square by three non-binary performers, exploring the tensions between a normative gaze and divergent identities. In the underground station, the performers appear on three billboards, posing like popstars in formations recalling boy and girl bands of the 1990s and early 2000s.

Chargé brings together six artists from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Germany (Sinzo Aanza, Jasmina Al-Qaisi, Falonne Mambu, Nada Tshibwabwa, Ralf Wendt, and Elsa Westreicher). On two days, two performers move around Strausberger Platz, wearing costumes made of mobile phone parts and electrical wires, embodying the materials extracted from mines in the DRC under catastrophic conditions and essential to our western systems of communication and mobility. The performances are accompanied by a sound work; calling the number printed on one of the billboards in the underground station takes visitors to a telephone loop playing the piece over and over.

Irene Fernandez Arcas’ work Exploring Inner Care in Public Spaces at Kottbusser Tor examines the desire to achieve intimacy and make connections in urban settings. The colorful billboard campaign on the U1 underground platform offers stressed commuters a place of respite in their everyday routine, with a QR code giving access to a 25-minute meditation that can be viewed and listened to in eleven different languages.

In her work Keine Werbung (no advertising), Julieta Ortiz de Latierro transforms official letters into pop-up sculptures. The project has three parts: an intervention on platform billboards at Kottbusser Tor underground station, a video tutorial on in-train info screens, and an open workshop at a neighborhood community center.

Kottbusser Tor and its underground station are also the setting of an intervention by image-shift, a collective consisting of Sandy Kaltenborn, Athena Javanmardi and Paco Camberlin. They counter the oversimplified media image of Kottbusser Tor as a problem zone with a view of its many-layered social fabric.

The project will be accompanied by an extensive event program. Details at ngbk.de.

Artists: Irene Fernández Arcas, Sunny Pfalzer, Julieta Ortiz de Latierro, image-shift, Liminal Beast of Prey, Chargé (Sinzo Aanza, Jasmina Al-Qaisi, Falonne Mambu, Nada Tshibwabwa, Ralf Wendt, and Elsa Westreicher)

nGbK work group: Lorena Juan, Marenka Krasomil, Isabelle Meiffert, Sandra Teitge, and Mirko Winkel
Assistance: Manon Frugier

Supported by Berlin’s Senate Office for Culture and Community—Art in Public Space

Historical development of the “Art in the Underground” competition
Originally called “Art Instead of Advertising,” the competition was first held in East Berlin in 1958, with entrants asked to submit posters for peace. The works were shown on platform billboards at Alexanderplatz subway station. Whereas many East German institutions were dissolved or renamed after 1989, this competition survived in its original form. Since the early 1990s, nGbK has been realizing projects in cooperation with Berlin’s Senate Office for Culture under the title “Art in the Underground” with artworks in or near subway stations.

Duration of billboard campaigns at individual locations
Strausberger Platz
June 9­–29: Sunny Pfalzer, Scores for Fake Authenticity
June 30–July 20: Chargé

Kottbusser Tor
June 9­–29: Irene Fernández Arcas, Exploring Inner Care in Public Spaces
June 30–July 20: Julieta Ortiz de Latierro, Keine Werbung
July 21–August 10: image shift, Learning from Kotti

Press contact
Lutz Breitinger, neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst, Oranienstrasse 25, 10999 Berlin
T 030-616 513 13 / presse@ngbk.de
ngbk.de