a different nowhere

September 2019-February 2022

As I walked through the subway, drawing commuters and thinking about what was around me,

I realized that the subway (in german U-bahn) is an “U-topia” (Utopia etymologiacally means “nowhere”, in Greek ou “not” + topos “place”) is a”no-place”. On the other hand, if you take the subway, you are not at a certain place, but in a “transition space”. Michel Foucault would call it also ” hétérotopie“. A place of diversity in which things that usually do not belong to each other are suddenly bond together for a certain period of time.
The subway is a public vehicle in which confrontation with different people is inevitable:

You can either meet or clash, or you can ignore
each other and isolate yourself (even isolation means confrontation,
because you are isolating yourself from someone else).
The subway is an opportunity to get to know each other or to meet without
ever meeting again. Many Artists use it as a stage for busking and act
spontaneously, because as “strangers” they have carte blanche and feel more confident in being anonymous (another reason why I would call it Utopia). Others feel observed instead and prefer not to be noticed. The subway is pure contingency, it’s a theatre of the absurd, where God rolls the dice.
It is a space in motion, in a single direction to which everyone is subordinate; a
metaphor of life and the passing of time.

Digital Photo

2019

In the most extreme cases, it becomes a social portrait in which the crowd suddenly
become an individual, or rather, the individual, instead of becoming part of the mass, emerges from it and at the same time is part of it.
When I see the masses in a demonstration, I notice that the people
are marching in the same direction, because of the same ideology, and not by accident
(as in the subway).

Strikes or protests are used to fight for a better world. The original idea of Utopia, as Thomas More conceived it, becomes in this context a model to be inspired from, instead of just a place that doesn’t exist yet.
I have noticed that for me is difficult to take pictures of individuals, because they are
“swallowed” by the multitude… the crowd becomes a whole organism. The Individual acts differently when is in a group of people, he or she feels safer and is less intimidated ( Gustav Le Bon developed this concept in his book ” Psychology of Crowds” ).
If instead, I try to photograph the masses in the subway, I find it impossible. In a way, the individual always shows up, emerges from it, in his full diversity and Intimacy.

“Fridays for future during black Friday”

Mixed media on Canvas

130×80 cm

2021

Unfortunately the Individual is often superficial or just too busy with his life, that is not able to see what is happening around, as if he or she would be blind. However, in my opinion, we should believe in the individual: I am referring to an individual, who is not understood as an individualist, but as an existential being who is able to see itself from the outside and feels responsible for his actions. A human aware of his environment, acting for itself and at the same time for a common good
(Utopia?) .

In 2019 as I first came to Berlin , after seeing a homeless bleeding fainted in the Subway and people not caring about it, I was shocked.

I dedicated to this stranger a series of Drawings and Paintings ending to this Sculpture which is made of a Bird cage that I found in the street, covered with Pflaster and Textile.

“Re-birth”

Iron,Plaster, textiles and Wood

160x50x50 cm

2020

“U-Bahn”

Engraving (Acquaforte and Acquatinta)

42×29 cm

2022

Serie “U-bahn drawings”

2020-2022

ink on Paper

A3 and A4

“U-Bahn”

Permanent site-specific Installation at Kultur Volk, Ruhrstraße 6, 10709 Berlin

2022

This is a short film I did together with my cousin Giosué Ausonio. It´s a brief documentation of the Subway during the pandemic but also is a Meta-film, a film which experimentally and spontaneously reflects about the filming process itself . the video has been shown inside of Kultur Volk during my solo exhbition “Traum und Tragödie” in 2021-2022.

All rights reserved to Araiké Severino Da Silva