It’s five thirty in the evening. Armin is on the U-Bahn. The passengers are making their way home or heading out for the evening. An accordion player gets on with a small drum machine on a porter’s trolley. Once the train is in motion, he plays an upbeat country wedding tune. He might be from Ukraine, or maybe Romania, Macedonia – his music evokes remote places with traditional haystacks on stilts, potatoes baking in the fields, and chestnut roasters.
We hear his music over the clacking noise of the train rushing through the tunnels. We hear his drum machine like a heartbeat. A coin drops into a plastic cup which has been cleverly attached to the top of the accordion. The accordion has also been decorated with a series of small cymbals which ring like coins to create the further illusion that people are being exceedingly generous.
The musician times his departure perfectly at each station so he can rush around to the carriage behind and begin the same routine again. Each carriage brings its own luck. The passengers can look through the glass in the connecting doors and see him playing the same country wedding tune without any sound.
At the next stop, a young woman comes into the carriage holding up a street newspaper. In a hoarse voice, she politely apologizes to the passengers for the disturbance, but if they had some spare change she would greatly appreciate it, if not, she wishes them a pleasant evening all the same. Her voice seems detached. The words are like foam in her mouth.
Armin gives her a coin and she thanks him, staring for a moment into the cup in her hand as if the single coin cannot even begin to address her needs in life.
At the next station, with the usual turnover of passengers getting on and off, the homeless woman becomes suddenly desperate. She spots a woman coming in with an attractive brand-name handbag that gleams with prosperity. She is so taken by the sight of the handbag that she cannot help seizing the opportunity of reaching out to pull it off the owner’s shoulder before the doors of the carriage close again. In shock, the owner of the bag tries to hold on. A silent tug-of-war develops in which the homeless woman and the owner of the bag have time to look each other in the eyes. It seems as though the homeless woman wishes not so much to get the contents of the handbag as to step into the life of the handbag owner. For her part, the handbag owner is determined to hold on to her own life and avoid turning into the homeless woman. It would not take much for these lives to be exchanged.
The doors are prevented from closing and the train is held up.
Passengers both on and off the train are simultaneously reporting what is going on as if they are watching a clip on YouTube. For a moment it is no longer clear which of the women is the true owner of the handbag. Bystanders are unable to intervene. For fear of being punched, or sued, or contracting some disease. Everyone stands back. Finally, a man shouts the word – Polizei. This seems to re-establish true ownership. The homeless woman is forced to let go and they are both sent stumbling back in a jolt by this sudden release of forces for and against.
The train doors close and the lives of both parties in the stand-off race apart in such different directions. The owner of the handbag is reassured by kind words from other passengers, while the homeless woman stands on the platform as though in a dream, just waiting to be apprehended.
If Joseph Roth were alive today, he would be writing about what happens next to the homeless woman. How she is taken into custody by the police. They ask for her identity papers and her address, though one of the officers already knows her from a previous incident. They find witnesses on the platform who tell them what happened. Not unlike the barrel organ player, she faces the same rigours of the law, everything is written down in the records. She has now become a danger to passengers on the U-Bahn and needs to be taken away.
In the case of Andreas Pum, our fictional antihero of a century back, his altercation on public transport leads to him being sentenced by default to six weeks in prison. He leaves his home and his marriage. The barrel organ is no good to him now that he has lost his licence. He goes back to stay with his friend the sausage thief. The sausage thief tells him to remain in hiding, the law will never catch up with him. But then there is a knock on the door one morning and the police come to take him away. It turns out that his wife has revealed his hideout.
The homeless woman vehemently struggles to retain her freedom. Appealing to bystanders for help, she screams at the police officers – you’re hurting me. Help. Brutality. They’re breaking my arm.
One of the officers picks up the tattered issue of the Motz off the platform.
As gently as possible, they lead her up the escalator, past the kiosk selling kebabs, into the waiting police vehicle. She is brought to a place of safety and offered medical assistance so she can wear off the effects of the drugs. Instead of being formally charged with attempted robbery, she is cautioned and eventually released, but her life is not unlike the story of the barrel organ player, leading to an accelerated death.
Armin gets off the train. After a short walk, he enters an interior space where a small gathering of people is standing around holding glasses of wine, listening to a woman making a speech. It’s the voice of Lena’s friend Julia Fernreich, the gallery owner.
In my view, Julia is heard saying to the crowd, the work here represents a significant shift in how the artist takes on the world in which we live. Those of you familiar with her previous work will no doubt be aware of how she uses random words taken from literature, such as Kleist and Fontane, transposing them into her art in a way that one reviewer described as – pieces of silver dug up from the earth. In this current show, Julia says, the artist is questioning where we have come to in our time. The most compelling take on our present world is to be found in the piece at the end of the room.
At this point, all the people in the room turn around.
This series of prints, Julia says, contain words taken straight from the web. From Google Maps, she has transposed specific directions to a place called Paradise in California, where many people died as wildfires engulfed the town. The words map out the linear route from Berlin via JFK airport, all the way by road to the site of the fires.
After the applause dies down, Armin reaches into his bag and takes me out like a lost glove. He stretches his hand up in the air and holds me high above the heads of the crowd for everyone to see, with the title facing out – Rebellion. It doesn’t take long before Lena comes rushing towards him through the crowd and speaks with some excitement.
The book, she says.
Armin brings his arm down and passes me over into her hands.
How did you find us?
The flyer, Armin says with a smile. I found the gallery flyer inside. So, I took a chance.