Performance by: Evdoxia Stafylaraki and Jiachen Xu
Locations: S-Bahn stations Prenzlauer Allee and Ostkreuz, Berlin, January 23, 2018.
Text by: Evdoxia Stafylaraki
During my stay in Berlin, I had the opportunity to participate in the “Misplaced Women?” project by Tanja Ostojić. So, I made a performance with Alice (Jiachen Xu), posing questions about the rules set by society, and the women’s position in it in the course of time. Thus, the core concept of that performance was the diachronic nature of social inequalities, and the marginalisation of women in every aspect of life.
That lack of women’s freedom that exists by tradition and the tight boundaries of a woman’s existence were presented through a ‘self- confinement’ act, by letting myself being tied up to a public clock pole with a tape measure, a strict metric system wrapping me ritualistically.
Alice’s proposal to develope this performance together with me, within the Ostojić’s Misplaced project context was the complement of the paradox I wanted to express. It should be noted that kitchen space is a space traditionally intended for the women as nurturers, housekeepers, and housewives; and Alice selected a placemat from that space to be the chess board that would bear some half-dead tangerines. Laying the tablecloth on the external social space, we set up the chess board, and the game started or rather kept evolving. A game, which none of us understands, a game with no justice, a game that is simply still being played beyond all reason.
Suddenly, a security guard interrupted the performance and demended that we leave the place. We tried to understand the reason for that in vain though; some passers-by translated the guard’s words for us, explaining that we should have been able to speak German since we were in Germany. Was it that we were both coming from a foreign country? Or was it that we were merely women? Or was it the combination of both that made him react so rudely? That’s a rhetorical question. His interference actually confirmed the term ‘misplaced women’ not only in words, but also in practice…
“Body Measuring and Dying Oranges Chess Play” Performance by Evdoxia Stafylaraki and Jiachen, “Misplaced Women?” Workshop by Tanja Ostojić, Berlin, Ostkreuz, 2018. Photo: Hoang Tran Hieu Hanh
Evdoxia Stafylaraki is a mathematician, sculptor and performance artist from Chania, Greece.
Jiachen completed a joint master degree in women’s and gender studies in Central European University in Budapest, Hungary and University of Oviedo, Spain. She is now based in Beijing, China.
Our Lady of Auguststraße: A Misplaced Women? May Day 2020 Photo-Story from Berlin
Our Lady of Auguststraße: A Misplaced Women? May Day 2020, Photo-Story from Berlin by Tanja OstojićOur Lady of Auguststraße: A Misplaced Women? May Day 2020, Photo-Story from Berlin by Tanja OstojićOur Lady of Auguststraße: A Misplaced Women? May Day 2020, Photo-Story from Berlin by Tanja OstojićOur Lady of Auguststraße: A Misplaced Women? May Day 2020, Photo-Story from Berlin by Tanja OstojićOur Lady of Auguststraße: A Misplaced Women? May Day 2020, Photo-Story from Berlin by Tanja OstojićOur Lady of Auguststraße: A Misplaced Women? May Day 2020, Photo-Story from Berlin by Tanja OstojićOur Lady of Auguststraße: A Misplaced Women? May Day 2020, Photo-Story from Berlin by Tanja OstojićOur Lady of Auguststraße: A Misplaced Women? May Day 2020, Photo-Story from Berlin by Tanja OstojićOur Lady of Auguststraße: A Misplaced Women? May Day 2020, Photo-Story from Berlin by Tanja OstojićOur Lady of Auguststraße: A Misplaced Women? May Day 2020, Photo-Story from Berlin by Tanja Ostojić
Documented and first published by Tanja Ostojić on the Misplaced Women? Blog, May 1, 2020
The Safe Circle, a 30 minute performance by Luciana Damiani, Park am Nordbahnhof, Berlin, Misplaced Women? workshop, 13.09.2019.
A few months ago I contacted Tanja Ostojic because after getting to know her work and her project Misplaced Woman? I considered significant and necessary for me to try to get an opportunity to share my experiences and generate bonds with other people who have experienced similar situations. So I came to Berlin with the travel grant from MEC (Ministry of Education and Culture in Uruguay) in order to collaborate with her on the project.
Luciana Damiani: “The Safe Circle”, Misplaced Women? Workshop, Park am Nordbahnhof, Berlin, 2019. Photo: Tanja Ostojic
I am a visual artist who lives in Montevideo, Uruguay, but 3 years ago I was based in Spain. I left Uruguay because I wanted to continue my studies and had the chance to do so University of Barcelona. I am a privileged migrant as I left Uruguay because I wanted to, not because I had to.
My years in Barcelona were hard as at the course of my stay, it was impossible for me to find a legal job that would allow me to study. I had to pay tuitions twice as high as European students for my master’s degree. I borrowed money on several occasions and even falsified documents and lied in immigration office in order to renew my student visa. I lived itinerantly, moving from one house to another, more than 10 times. I carried my bags all over the city, assembling and disassembling my luggage, generating new homes and leaving them behind.
When I arrived to Barcelona I had the expectation of staying for a long period of time but, after just a few years, I wanted to return to Uruguay as I was exhausted and felt lonely.
Luciana Damiani: The Safe Circle, Misplaced Women? Workshop, Park am Nordbahnhof, Berlin, 2019. Photo: Cecilia Capurro
I realised that some places tend to expel the individual, generating a dehumanised metaphoric void that denies the presence. Places full of people but stripped of identity, where one inhabits adversity, where we travel but never leave a mark, where relations of power and vulnerability become increasingly visible and enduring.
After discussing possible performance locations with Tanja, we decided that Park am Nordbanhof could serve as a good site to perform at, next to the Berlin Wall. The choice of this place was not random. I remember watching the fall of the Wall on TV at home with my father. At that time I did not understood the shock as I was seven years old and my mother died just few months earlier. I was born in Uruguay in 1982, at the end of the dictatorship and I am part of a hinge generation, a generation encapsulated between what was said and what was not said, with the history veiled and reconfigured from silence.
Luciana Damiani: “The Safe Circle”, Misplaced Women? workshop, Park am Nordbahnhof, Berlin, 2019. Photo: Cecilia Capurro
When I started traveling and crossing frontiers I began to understand the Eurocentric cultural heritage and Uruguayan wounds, regarding the patriarchal and Judeo-Christian tradition and norms of white people. From this perspective I started to explore and reveal unequal power situations, in an attempt to dismantle historical truth as an unalterable legacy.
When we arrived to the Nordbahnhof park I drew a yellow circle on the floor and asked everyone to join me within the circle, as a micro-political action to deconstruct the individual and establish collective connections and constellations. This circle is outlined as a metaphorical place, a new territory where we were all safe, where those outside were now inside. A space where we could share and heal.
Luciana Damiani: “The Safe Circle”, Misplaced Women? Workshop, Park am Nordbahnhof, Berlin, 2019. Photo: Tanja Ostojic
I started with taking everything out of my suitcase: books, clothes, shoes, papers, documents. I turned all my clothes inside out. After my suitcase was empty and all my belongings were on the floor, scattered, I began to read my manifesto.
“I am body and I am statement.
I am witness and I am evidence of manipulation.
I don’t want to ask permission to be.
I don’t have to ask permission to be.
I don’t want to be defined by you, or anybody, or anywhere, or anything.
I don’t want to be from here or there.
If my existence threatens you, that is because you’re afraid of losing your privileges.
If your walls will surround me, my words will be the weapon to make them fall.
If you hurt me, I will heal.
And I will repeat this all over again.
Because I have a pact with all of my kind.
Because that’s my duty and my only way to resist.”
After the reading, I tried to get inside the suitcase but of course, it was very small, I would never fit inside it. At some point this action was immediately connected with my experience in Barcelona, trying to be in a place where there was no room for me. It was like bringing everything back.
Luciana Damiani: “The Safe Circle”, Misplaced Women? Workshop, Park am Nordbahnhof, Berlin, 2019. Photo: Cecilia Capurro
I lit a cigarette, smoked it and waited a few minutes. Then I got up and held my yellow sign declaring myself a Misplaced Human?.
Luciana Damiani is a visual artist and independent researcher born in 1982 in Montevideo, Uruguay. She graduated with a degree in at Fine Arts School (UDELAR – Uruguay) and Magister in Artistic Production and Research at UB- Barcelona. Since 2009 she is member of FAC Collective (Fundación de Arte Contemporáneo, Uruguay). She participates in individual and collective shows since 2007. Her work has been exhibited in Uruguay, Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Mexico, USA, Spain and France.
In 2018 she won FEFCA scholarship granted by MEC (Uruguay) to perform “Misplaced Woman?” with Tanja Ostojic in Berlin.
Text by: Luciana Damiani
Translation from Spanish: Jessica Moreira
Edited and first published by: Tanja Ostojic
Photo credits: Tanja Ostojic, Maya Hristova and Cecilia Capurro
Luciana Damiani: “The Safe Circle”, Misplaced Women? Workshop, Park am Nordbahnhof, Berlin, 2019. Photo: Maya Hristova
Contribución de: Luciana Damiani
“El circulo Seguro”
Misplaced Women? Workshop
Park am Nordbahnhof, Berlin – 13.09.2019
Hace unos meses contacté a Tanja porque luego de conocer su trabajo y su proyecto Misplaced Woman? consideré importante y necesario para mi tener la oportunidad de compartir mis experiencias y generar vínculos con otras personas que han vivido situaciones similares. Entonces viajé a Berlín con una beca del MEC (Ministerio de Educación y Cultura Uruguay) para colaborar en el proyecto.
Soy una artista visual que vive en Montevideo (Uruguay) pero hace 3 años estaba radicada en España. Dejé Uruguay porque quería continuar con mis estudios y tuve la oportunidad de hacerlo. Soy una migrante privilegiada. Me fui de Uruguay porque quise, no porque tuve que hacerlo.
Mis años en Barcelona fueron duros. Durante mi estadía me fue imposible encontrar un trabajo legal que me permitiera estudiar. Pagué el doble que cualquier estudiante europeo por mi maestría. Pedí dinero prestado en varias ocaciones. Falsifiqué documentos y mentí en oficinas de imigración para renovar mi visa de estudios. Viví de forma itinerante, mudandome de casa en casa más de 10 veces. Cargué con mis maletas por toda la ciudad. Iba armando y desarmando mi equipaje, generando hogares nuevos y dejándolos atrás.
Cuando llegue a Barcelona tenía expectativas de quedarme mucho tiempo, pero al cabo de unos años solo quería volver a Uruguay. Estaba exhausta y me sentía sola.
Entendí que los lugares muchas veces expulsan al individuo, generando un vacio metafórico, deshumanizado, que niega la prescencia. Lugares respletos de gente pero despojados de identidad, donde las personas habitamos la adversidad, por donde transitamos pero nunca dejamos huella, donde las relaciones de poder y vulnerabilidad se hacen cada vez más visibles y perdurables.
Luego discutir posibles lugares para la performance con Tanja, elegimos hacerla en el Park am Nordbanhof al lado del muro. La elección del lugar no fue aleatoria. Recuerdo estar mirando la caída del muro en la tv de mi casa con mi padre. En ese momento no entendía la conmoción de la gente. Tenia 7 años y mi madre había muerto hace unos meses. Nací en Uruguay en 1982 al final de una dictadura. Soy parte de una generación visagra. Una generación encapsulada entre lo dicho y lo no dicho, con la historia velada y reconfigurada a partir del silencio.
Cuando comencé a viajar y a cruzar fronteras empecé a entender la herencia y la herida cultural eurocéntrica de mi país, sobre la tradición y normas de lo blanco, patriarcal y judeo- cristiano y partir de esto comencé a trabajar develando situaciones de poder desiguales, en un intento de desarticular la verdad histórica como un legado inalterable
Cuando llegamos al parque Nordbahnhof dibujé un circulo amarillo en el piso y le pedí a todxs que se unieran a mi dentro del circulo, como una acción micropolítica para reconstruir lo individual y establecer conexiones y constelaciones colectivas. Este circulo se esboza como un lugar metafórico, un nuevo territorio donde todxs estábamos salvo, donde lxs de afuera estamos dentro. Donde podemos compartir y sanar.
Empecé a sacar todo de mi maleta. Libros, ropa, zapatos, papeles, documentos. Di vuelta toda mi ropa, de adentro para afuera. Luego de que mi maleta estaba vacía y todas mis pertenecías en el piso, desparramadas, empecé a leer mi manifiesto.
“Soy cuerpo y manifiesto.
Soy testigo y evidencia de la manipulación.
No quiero pedir permiso para ser.
No tengo que pedir permiso para ser.
No quiero se definidx por ti, por nada nip or nadie.
No quiero se de aquí ni ni de allà.
Si mi existencia te amenaza es porque tienes miedo a perder tus privilegios.
Si tus mueros quieren rodearme, mis palabras seran el arma que los hara caer.
Si me hieres, sanaré.
I repetiré todo esto de nuevo.
Porque tengo un pacto con todos los míxs, con todos los de mi clase.
Porque es mi deber y mi única forma de resistir”
Luego de la lectura traté de meterme dentro de la maleta pero claro, era muy pequeña, nunca iba a caber dentro. En algún punto esta acción se conectó de inmediato con mi experiencia en Barcelona, tratar de estar en un lugar donde no había espacio para mi. Fue como traer todo de nuevo.
Encendí un cigarrillo, lo fumé y esperé unos minutos. Luego me levanté y sostuve mi cartel amarillo declarandome unx Misplaced Human?
Luciana Damiani es una artista visual e investigadora independiente nacida en 1982 en Montevideo, Uruguay. Graduada de la Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes por la UDELAR en Uruguay y Magister en Producción e Investigación Artística por la UB en Barcelona. Participa en exhibiciones individuales y colectivas desde el 2007. Sus trabajos han sido mostrados en Uruguay, Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Méjico, EEUU, España y Francia. En 2018 gana los FEFCA (Fondos de incentivo a la formación y creación artística) otorgados por el MEC en Uruguay para realizar la performace “Misplaced Woman?” con Tanja Ostojic en Berlín.
Texto de Luciana Damiani
Editado y publicado por Tanja Ostojic
Fotos: Tanja Ostojic, Maya Hristova and Cecilia Capurro
“Misplaced in Europe?”, on precarity, intimidation and illegality
Luciana Damiani came from Uruguay in order to contribute to the “Misplaced Women?” Project in Berlin. We are calling spontaneously for Berlin Misplaced Women? international community, and beyond to join us for exchange & performance(es) this Friday, September 13, at noon at the Park am Nordbahnhof. We are meeting at 12h at the main entrance of the Park, from Julie-Wolfthorn-Straße, 10115 Berlin.
I would like to use this opportunity to share Luciana’s performance announcement:
My name is Luciana Damiani, I am a visual artist and I come from Uruguay. As a Latin American migrant woman I know the fear of borders, fear of rejection and expulsion. Walking across that border is already part of my life and my artistic work. Why should I ask for a permission to exist? Being a migrant is a human condition that places us in a place of great vulnerability, so we must share it, to resist and to know that we are not alone. I am grateful for this opportunity to collaborate on the “Misplaced Woman?” project with Tanja Ostojić.
You are welcome to find out more about my work on my website.
Mi nombre es Luciana Damiani, soy artista visual y vengo desde Uruguay para colaborar en el proyecto “Misplaced Woman?” de Tanja Ostojić. Como mujer migrante latinamericana conozco el miedo a las fronteras, miedo al rechazo y a la expulsón. Caminar a través de esa frontera ya es parte de mi vida y de mi trabajo artístico. Por qué debo pedir permiso para ser? Ser migrante es una condición humanda que nos coloca en un lugar de mucha vulnerabilidad, por eso debemos compartirlo, para resistir y para saber que no estamos solxs.
Están invitadxs a conocer más sobre mi trabajo en mi sitio web
“Misplaced Women?, A Translation of a Travel Diary in British Sign Language”, 30 minute performance by Susan Merrick
23.05.2019 Berlin-Gesundbrunnen Train Station (Berlin, Germany)
Tanja invited me to consider presenting a performance for the Misplaced Women? project whilst I was working with her for a few days in Berlin. I’d asked Tanja if I could work with her on my own project ‘Practicing to Share’ and it seemed appropriate to actually work within each others projects during this time, to understand one another and to consider each others theme of work.
“Misplaced Women?, A Translation of a Travel Diary in British Sign Language”, a 30 minute performance by Susan Merrick, 2019. Video recording: Tanja Ostojić. Video editing: Susan Merrick
I spent some time thinking about what would feel appropriate, and where. How it would fit to my own idea of misplaced, my feeling of ‘place’ while in Berlin, a city I’d only visited once before as a young woman. Also my feelings of my ‘[mis]placement’ within my work as a Sign Language Interpreter, working between two cultures, between two languages, being at times ‘invisible’, yet very visible.
Rather than cultivating a performance in any way Tanja simply gave me the performance score to look over and using the rucksack I already had with me, we chose to explore Berlin train station, Gesundbrunnen that was near to where we were working.
I chose a position at the end of a platform. It felt quiet, intimate, and sat at a junction of two tracks. I have an affinity with train stations and much of my work has taken place in or around them. I have worked within busier positions but for this day I wanted some space and to see the location of Berlin behind me.
I began by removing my shoes and jumper. I wanted to be comfortable and to sit while I disclosed my belongings. I slowly removed each item from my bag, surprising myself by how much was in the bag that I had only emptied earlier that day (or so I thought!). Items of everyday use, but also items of specificity to the trip I was on, a camera, some shaving foam and razor – ready for some other work we were to do later – and a travel journal that I had written 17 years previously whilst on my only other visit to Berlin.
Susan Merrick: “Misplaced Women?, A Translation of a Travel Diary in British Sign Language”, Berlin-Gesundbrunnen Train Station, 2019. Photo: Tanja Ostojić
Often I allow my surroundings to influence my actions in my work, responding to the stimuli around me. I allowed these items to do the same to me, not planning but following what the items suggested to me. I was really interested in my position between the train tracks so I decided to perform the creation of a track, placing shaving foam on my leg in a line and shaving the hair from my leg in a strip, straight like a track. I wiped it clean with a red head scarf.
I then opened up my travel journal from 2002. I read and translated into British Sign Language (BSL), some of the pages that spoke of my previous visit to Berlin. The journey into the city on the train and a visit to the zoo where we couldn’t afford the photographs that were taken of us. The language miscommunications and the laughter of the train guard who found our worries over a door not closing hilarious. Our lack of money and our exhaustion at travelling around. Our decision to sit and wait 7 hours in a hostel reception waiting for a room and our reliance on the kindness of others.
Susan Merrick: “Misplaced Women?, A Translation of a Travel Diary in British Sign Language”, Berlin-Gesundbrunnen Train Station, 2019. Photo: Tanja Ostojić
Using BSL in this way felt an appropriate challenge to the work, on a quiet platform, in a train station in Berlin, speaking only to the camera and to Tanja behind it, with no-one understanding me, using a language not native to the country, or even to me. A language that has become my profession, and that I have adopted now for over half my life, that works its way into my Art, and that I can never truly feel I belong.
Susan Merrick: “Misplaced Women?, A Translation of a Travel Diary in British Sign Language”, Berlin-Gesundbrunnen Train Station, 2019. Photo: Tanja Ostojić
Finally I took up my polaroid camera, taking a photograph of the semi circle of belongings surrounding my feet. Of Tanja watching me. Of the Train tracks reaching towards and away from me.
Mis placed. Placed mistakenly. [Mis]placed
Lost. Unfound. In-between. Where am I?
As Artists where are we? Where do we belong? Who decides? Who finds us? Who loses us?
Susan Merrick is an Artist from the UK. She is also a Sign Language Interpreter and this profession greatly influences her performance practice.
Photos from performance on May 23, 2019 at Berlin-Gesundbrunnen Train Station were captured by Tanja Ostojić
Video recording: Tanja Ostojić.
Video editing: Susan Merrick
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Please visit as well other contributions and posts from Berlin, from different workshops and individual or group performances:
It was important to me to begin our interventions by understanding some answers to the question: “Where am I?” (politically, socially, economically)
Since I have lived in Berlin for 14 years, I am familiar with many neighborhoods, but never with this neighborhood in detail. I have performed at the Delphi Theater down the road, but this is my only interaction with the neighborhood. The Delphi is a very old “peoples theater” in Berlin and so I knew that this neighborhood had a history of an art scene, but at the same time is not a very busy or gentrified area. I know simply by being inside the Kunsthalle that this kind of large space for experimental workshops such as these one — “Misplaced Women?” By Tanja Ostojić — is increasingly rare. Many recent events at Kunsthalle have been committed to postcolonial discourse and bringing attention to the works of nonwhite artists—the kind of work that is not typically given spaces in more commercial areas of Berlin or at larger galleries. This already gives me a clue that the neighborhood is still affordable enough for a place like this to exist, while at the same time hints that the art scene may again be growing around here.
Mad Kate: Mapping around Kunsthalle am Hamburger Platz, “Misplaced Women?” Workshop, Berlin 2018. Photo: Gaby Bila-Günther, Tatiana Bogacheva, Sajan Mani
As a general practice before performing, I have been trying to get into the habit of understanding my sociopolitical context. This means “mapping” the area, using the “stage” (the venue) as my centering point, and working my way directionally around the center space, taking in sights, subtle changes, reading clues about the demographics of businesses and people on the streets. I also try to talk to people as much as possible to find out a bit more about the neighborhood and who is living there.
Mad Kate: Mapping around Kunsthalle am Hamburger Platz, “Misplaced Women?” Workshop, Berlin 2018. Photo: Tatiana Bogacheva, Sajan Mani, Mad Kate
Gaby, Tanya, Sajan, and myself all decided to go about mapping the area. I took along my sound recorder and gave it to Tanya for most of our journey so she could experience being immersed in the sounds around us. She told me that it was an extremely psychedelic experience to her! Gaby and I took photos, made sounds, made “found instruments” and marked different areas with string. We also sometimes mirrored physical shapes with our bodies.
Mad Kate: Mapping around Kunsthalle am Hamburger Platz, Berlin, “Misplaced Women?” Workshop, 2018.
I noted down a “map” of our walk and noticed places of new development, abandoned buildings, the types of businesses, and a conversation I had with one artisan who had recently moved there. She was a paper maker who had also found a place to rent in the neighborhood. She has a small handmade paper business on a quiet side street. There were other “new artists” living in the area who had opened up a DIY gallery, an artist performance space, and other businesses that I saw as related, ie a yoga studio and a mobile burrito van. The residences appeared to be either very old buildings, presumably with residents on old contracts, and very new loft-style developments, and one van, that appeared to be someones home.
Mad Kate: Mapping around Kunsthalle am Hamburger Platz, “Misplaced Women?” Workshop, Berlin 2018. Photos: Gaby Bila-Günther, Sajan Mani, Mad Kate
We walked over towards Caligara Platz, which had a historical marker noting that this used to be called “Little Hollywood”. So the area has historically had the mark of artists, theater and film navigating and weaving in with the rest of the residents. It made me wonder a lot about how the art school students integrate or do not integrate with the rest of the neighborhood, as one student who was part of the said they felt some antagonism or “difference” from the people around who sometimes resented their presence doing public art. Given the fact that artists and others are being pushed out of the central neighborhoods of Berlin, however, I suspect that Weißensee will see an increasing amount of new and diverse communities moving in and I’m curious to see how these changes will take shape in the next five to 10 years.
It was encouraging and supportive to be in a group of artists who were committed to doing these kinds of public work. In this group context it was wonderful to explore the surrounding area of our workshop.
Mad Kate: Mapping around Kunsthalle am Hamburger Platz, “Misplaced Women?” Workshop, Berlin 2018. Photos: Gaby Bila-Günther, Tatiana Bogacheva, Sajan Mani, Mad KateMad Kate: Mapping around Kunsthalle am Hamburger Platz, “Misplaced Women?” Workshop, Berlin 2018. Photos: Gaby Bila-Günther, Tatiana Bogacheva, Sajan Mani, Mad Kate
Kathryn Fischer aka Mad Kateis a polyhomefull US-American sound and performance artist based in Berlin, interested in interrogating the politics of borders within and between bodies.
Mad Kate: Mapping around Kunsthalle am Hamburger Platz, “Misplaced Women?” Workshop, Berlin 2018. Photos: Gaby Bila-Günther, Tatiana Bogacheva, Sajan Mani, Mad Kate
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Please visit as well other contributions and posts from the same workshops:
A Poetry Intervention by Nati Canto: One Art by Elizabeth Bishop, 2018
For the Misplaced Women? Workshop lead by Tanja Ostojić in Berlin in January 2018, I thought it was interesting to have something feminine to show in my performance and that I could identify with because being someone from Brazil in Berlin and having traveled and lived in other countries, I believe as a woman in my mid-30s I came to the conclusion that life is about learning how to deal with losses and knowing how to size them up and to transform our everyday life no matter where we are.
I decided to recite in the Berlin Overground, U-Bahn line U1 from Kottbusser Tor to Schlesisches Tor, the well-known poem called One Art, written by Elizabeth Bishop in the 1970s. I wanted to do that because reciting a poem in the realm of poem reading evenings or special moments where people would expect to listen to a poem would not give me the response I was looking for. Reciting by heart in public transportation was the chance of challenging people out of their comfort zone and at the same time confusing them on what I actually expected from them since there are many street artists around Berlin who wander with paper coffee cups asking for monetary contributions. Was I another one of them? That was definitely not my case. I just wanted to shake people’s state of mind for a short amount of time and leave.
Nati Canto: A Poetry Intervention (One Art by Elizabeth Bishop), “Misplaced Women?” Workshop, Berlin 2018. Photo documentation: Alice Minervini, Sajan Mani, Jiachen Xu, Evdoxia Stafylaraki.
The poem is precious to me because Elizabeth Bishop lived for years in Brazil with a famous Brazilian architect called Lota de Macedo Soares and she wrote a lot of her poems there. After many years, Bishop decided to go back to the United States, so she left Lota who had never accepted it and ended up committing suicide.
The poem is written in the first person and it underlines the value of learning from loosing things throughout life. And it starts from very simple and small things such losing door keys and it escalates to losing houses, two rivers, a continent and losing the person you love, at last. This is when Bishop tries to convince herself that it’s not that hard to lose someone, but deep inside she knows it really is.
Nati Canto: A Poetry Intervention (One Art by Elizabeth Bishop), “Misplaced Women?” Workshop, Berlin 2018. Photo documentation: Alice Minervini, Sajan Mani, Jiachen Xu, Evdoxia Stafylaraki.
Perforative intervention by Nati Canto, duration: approximately 40 minutes.
Video and photo documentation: Alice Minervini, Sajan Mani, Jiachen Xu, Evdoxia Stafylaraki.
Nati Canto: A Poetry Intervention (One Art by Elizabeth Bishop),“Misplaced Women?” Workshop, Berlin 2018. Photo documentation: Alice Minervini, Sajan Mani, Jiachen Xu, Evdoxia Stafylaraki.
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
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Nati Canto: A Poetry Intervention (One Art by Elizabeth Bishop), “Misplaced Women?” Workshop, Berlin 2018. Video-still: Alice Minervini
Nati Canto is Berlin based artist of Brazilian origin. Her work unfolds itself where history and personal space meet, often alternating facts and fiction. Her artistic practice combines heterogeneous materials, from the combination of digital and analog equipment, the use of photography, video performance, and more recently the use of text in order to explore how images assume different meanings depending on the ideologies that shape them.
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Please visit as well other contributions and posts from the same workshops:
Location: landing stripe, Templehofer Feld, Berlin
Duration: 15 minutes
January 2018
Misplaced Roots is a solo performance that was created in the framework of Tanja Ostojić’s MISPLACED WOMEN? workshop unfolding in the range of public spaces in January 2018 in Berlin. I have found the discussions during Tanja Ostojić’s workshop especially interesting. Despite none of the participants were born and raised in Berlin, those discussions uncovered moving details of the city’s social fabric, from its history on both side of the wall to actual issues. It has surely brought the city closer.
I will start with a short description how this performance came about and add a few words of reflection about it.
On the second day of the workshop, a group of us (Tanja Ostojić, Rhea Ramjohn, Alice Minervini, Sara Kramer, Ola Kozioł and myself) headed from the institution hosting the workshop, the Kunsthalle am Hamburger Platz, to our chosen performance site, Berlin Tempelhofer Feld. Berlin Tempelhof airport opened in 1927 and was one of the oldest functioning airports before its closure in 2008. Considered a highly influential place by many people in Berlin, it has now been repurposed into an unusual park, Tempelhofer Feld and recently also housed an emergency camp for refugees. In the surreal landscape offered by the landing stripes, people jog and walk dog, grill and play.
Group Interventions on the Way
Our performance started though with little interventions on the S-Bahn (train) to Tempelhofer Feld. In the first, four of us (Ola Kozioł, Tanja Ostojić, Rhea Ramjohn and myself) decided to ‘reclaim our space’ by sitting with our suitcases between our legs in reaction to that little nagging voice preaching how good socialized women should occupy a small space. This was followed my claiming even more space while searching my bag for my phone. We wanted to know where a particular spot of the airport was and I was looking to phone a friend. So, I deliberately choose to take the most absurd or voluminous things out of my bag, thus pilling books, gloves, a scarf and bright orange mandarins on the top of my suitcase in my hunt for my phone. This partial performance of Tanja’s set score did not impress the person seated next to me who continued reading his book, or the others in the carriage. I might have appeared a little eccentric but being Berlin, I was quite in the norm. Knowing your context is key. Still the situation highlighted another element, how we are always in a liminal space, always potentially on the verge of a performance. Each act is a potential subversive act depending on the place, extent and length of its performance.
Katja Vaghi: Misplaced Roots, “Misplaced Women? Workshop, Berlin 2018. Video-still: Sara Kramer
Group Intervention on the Tempelhof airport
At Tempelhof airport (with Tanja and Rhea) the three of us with suitcases produced a choreography of rolling suitcases. Three misplaced women, with their suitcases, walking on the landing strip to get on a flight that is no longer there.
Katja Vaghi: Misplaced Roots, “Misplaced Women? Workshop, Berlin 2018. Video-still: Sara Kramer
Misplaced Roots
I chose to perform Misplaced Roots in the middle of a landing stripe. I drag my suitcase away from the audience, heading nowhere and looking forlorn. This suitcase has accompanied me for seven years going back and forth from were I have been studying and then working and the place of where my emotions were, my family and my partner. I have rolled it for so long that one of the wheels is worn out. I then stop, take my coat off and open the suitcase. I try to squeeze myself in it. I am too big. My legs are out of it, as I clap myself together as a Swiss knife. I open the lid, try to put my legs in the suitcase as well, fail and fall with it backwards. I am now sitting with my back and the lid on the concrete and my legs on the suitcase. The temperature is far below zero. It is very cold. I try to use it as a cover to get some warmth from it. But it is not happening. There is no way that I am going to fit in it.
I feel restless, a body without a voice. I step out of the suitcase and take a white long skirt. I wear it, and sit back in the suitcase. I take an old broken shirt, turn it inside out and try to fit in one of these plastic bags for the security check commenting as I go: “You always have to squeeze your whole life inside these little bags”. It is funny how one grows attached to objects. Especially, when travelling a lot, one has certain rituals involving particular objects that make one feel at home. A friend of mine had a special cup. I have a suitcase. Many times I have lived out of this suitcase. It was literally my home. I then read aloud a definition of migration taken from wikipedia and the comments on how to approach and survive the procedure at the German Immigration Authorities (Ausländerbehörde Berlin). Finally, I read testimonies of people who had migrated from my region a century ago. I am a voluntary migrant but this does not mean I am less lonely when settling in a new place. I am still misplaced. I am still visited with feelings of loss and nostalgia. Each time one packs a suitcase to move, one brings one’s roots with it, hoping to find nurturing soil for them. I read the definition of ‘Spolia’ or the building stones that are repurposed for new constructions. These ‘homely’ objects, these spolia, are fragments of a previous life helping one grow roots in a new country. Finally, I close my performance as I started. I pack everything in the suitcase, put my coat on and continue walking towards nowhere.
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Katja Vaghi alternates theoretical reflections in written form to practical musing in the performing space. A dancer, choreographer, somatic practitioner and dance researcher, she holds a PhD in dance philosophy (University of Roehampton) and is an enthusiast improviser and site-specific performer. She is based in Berlin
This performance has been developed and performed for the first time in the frame of Misplaced Women? workshop led by Tanja Ostojić, in public spaces in Berlin, January 2018.
HD video-recording: Sara Kramer
Still from video: Sara Kramer
Photography: Tanja Ostojić
Misplaced Women? Berlin January 2018 was organised by: Kunsthalle am Hamburger Platz, Berlin Weißensee.
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Please visit as well other contributions and posts from the same workshops:
Performance by: Jiachen Xu and Evdoxia Stafylaraki
Location: S-Bahn train stations Prenzlauer Allee and Ostkreuz, Berlin, January 23, 2018.
Text by:Jiachen
The performance consists of three parts: body measuring, dying oranges chess play, and the in-between or misplaced spaces. It is a result of spontaneous entanglement of ideas from Evdoxia (body measuring) and Jiachen (orange chess play) developed during Berlin itinerary of the “Misplaced Women?” workshop by Tanja Ostojić. Though the performance as an entity is inseparable from any of it’s parts, I will mainly look at the latter part and the surrounding forces in this writing piece.
Within the workshop “Misplaced Women?” facilitated by Tanja Ostojić, words such as: misplaced, women, and the question mark, became the structuring forces of this performance. “Women” in its plural form, I ask, identified as a queer feminist woman of colour, who are included in its reference? Misplaced, as the adjective suggests, on one hand, a finished state, temporally or not, in comparison to the wording “displacing”; on the other, what is the defining state of “placement”, and I wander, defined by whom?My thought thus arrives at the question mark.
Jiachen and Evdoxia Stafylaraki: “Body Measuring and Dying Oranges Chess Play”, “Misplaced Women? Workshop, Berlin, 2018. Photo: Hoang Tran Hieu Hanh and Nati Canto
Trinh T. Minh-ha is one of those feminist theorists who inspires me lastingly. She says, “Woman can never be defined. Bat, dog, chick, mutton, tart. Queen, madam, lady of pleasure. MISTRESS. Belle-de-nuit, woman of the street, fruit woman, fallen woman. Cow, vixen, bitch. Call girl, joy girl, working girl” (1986). This vivid and visual description of the ontological instability of women, especially for third world women in Minh-ha’s account, speaks for me. I gain my strength from reading works by black feminists and feminists of colour to survive joyfully, bravely and ambiguously in a seemingly constant misplaced/misplacing state, physically, psychologically, and beyond.
I went to the workshop with an expectation to actualise certain struggling thoughts through body performances. The result, one week after the workshop, is way more than that. It is already very therapeutic for me to be surrounded by women bravely and creatively in the face of different forms of displacement struggles. And to share and do something collectively through an honest and caring sharing of our vulnerabilities. How wonderful is that!
Jiachen and Evdoxia Stafylaraki: “Body Measuring and Dying Oranges Chess Play”, “Misplaced Women? Workshop, Berlin, 2018. Photo: Nati Canto and Hoang Tran Hieu Hanh
In terms of the specific performance collaborated with Eva (Evdoxia Stafylaraki), I am a bit resistant to translate the process into languages. I would like to share some details that might be interesting to know. I come across those seven dying oranges at two friend’s kitchen. They were forgotten in the corner, waiting to be thrown away into trash. I noticed them and initially arranged them on the back placemat on the kitchen table. This was the birth of the idea “dying oranges chess play”. Number seven bears different meanings in different cultural contexts. In my memory it signifies a return in I-Ching. I guess there is always a piece of me strives for a return, even though the “original” place is non-existent anymore. To mobilise the nostalgia feeling evoked by “return” to the on-going chess play in public transportation stations seems to be one of the articulations during the chess play part of the performance. No one is setting the rules in the present, but there are waves of ghosts surrounding the gameplay. These waves of ghosts in my retrospective reading were displaced by the first part of the performance: the body measuring. Constant decision: making or un-making, and the questions of the aesthetics of misplaced existence are brought to the very surface, and will hopefully get revolved and transformed, step by step.
Text by:Jiachen Xu
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Video and photos: Nati Canto, Hoang Tran Hieu Hanh
Edited and first published by Tanja Ostojić, 2018-19 on the Misplaced Women? project blog
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Jiachen recently finished a joint master degree in women’s and gender studies in Central European University in Budapest, Hungary and University of Oviedo, Spain.
Evdoxia Stafylaraki is mathematician, sculptor and performance artist from Chania, Greece.
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Please visit as well other contributions and posts from the same workshops:
Wymyn who travel with me even when they are not here
Contribution by Mad Kate
Locations: Görlitzer Park, Berlin on 24.01.2018., andin transit from Görlitzer Park, Berlin, Germany to den Haag, Netherlands on 25.01.2018.
Regarding my participation in the Berlin iteration of “Misplaced Women?” workshop in the Public Space by Tanja Ostojić (January 2018) — hosted by Kunsthalle am Hamburger Platz, Berlin Weißensee — it was encouraging and supportive to be in a group of artists who were committed to doing these kinds of public works and gave me the confidence and framework to further explore an idea I have been interested in pursuing.
“Wymyn* who travel with me even when they are not here” I performed alone and made my own documentation using a timer on my camera.
Mad Kate: “Wymyn who travel with me even when they are not here”, “Misplaced Women? Workshop, Berlin, 2018. Photo: Mad Kate
I live across the street from Görlitzer Park and often speak with the numerous men who are hanging out in the park, many of them from Senegal and Gambia. I notice always the lack of presence of women and other non-binary persons in this particular demographic of migrants (the park is otherwise full of women and non-binary persons). This lead to my thinking about how some migrant flows are heavily male and why this is. I thought about the “freedom” of mobility of younger men, especially Muslim men, and the reasons why and how this affects women—sometimes related to these men’s physical ability to move and cross physical borders, to move as a single person without children, to encounter dangerous situations, related to their understanding of identity in relation to their community, their place, their religion, their view of autonomy as a moving migrating body, their community’s expectations of why and how and when they should migrate, their assumed responsibility to make money and send it home, etcetera.
Mad Kate: “Wymyn who travel with me even when they are not here”, “Misplaced Women? Workshop, Berlin, 2018. Photo: Mad Kate
It made me think a lot about how my gender is already “queered” as an independent, migrating body, whether or not I consider myself queer (which I do, in any case) and makes me stand out from other cunt-bearing bodies–“wymyn”–even within my own US-American culture, who face relatively more strict gender expectations of their femininity and of heteronormativity. The female* migrating body already has a relative independence to women who are required or expected to stay at home and are limited by their own communities to freedom of movement. The migrating body already has access to the privilege of “the adventure of” movement, even when and if they encounter borders who would otherwise attempt to limit their mobility, i.e., even when that movement is illegal.
As a response or way of thinking about this question I decided to dress up all in purple (in part as a ritual marker, in part as a symbol of the womb) and take the large purple suitcase my mother had given me, and I walked into the park. I decorated a large purple hat with photographs of the women who used to live within close proximity to me, whom I moved far away from 14 years ago when I left the United States. I know that some of the women on that hat have never had the privilege of leaving the country. I have thought of many of them as the women I write to in “letters back home”, telling them of my challenges and adventures moving away on my own.
Mad Kate: “Wymyn who travel with me even when they are not here”, “Misplaced Women? Workshop, Berlin, 2018. Photo: Mad Kate
Walking into the park, holding a sound recorder visibly, I told the people I encountered (most of them the men that gather around the entrances), that I was doing a project about the women we miss from home, those that travel with us in our hearts but couldn’t come with us. I asked them if they would like to contribute a name, an anecdote, or a memory of someone to my sound recording. One of the men shouted at me that I was doing some of kind of “therapy” and sort of made fun of me. Other men spoke to me politely but refused to contribute. Another person said he wasn’t drunk enough to participate but invited me to a jam session of migrant musicians. Finally one woman contributed, sound artist Anne Historical, but she did not fit this same demographic, she was a visitor to Berlin from South Africa. This was our brief exchange.
I found it disappointing that so few people wanted to share, but at the same time I felt like it was positive action even to ask and to try to make a connection that was atypical of the normal exchanges that happen in that particular situation of entering the park, being offered the chance to buy marijuana and either refusing or accepting. It’s not that I felt like I was “helping” anyone, but rather that I faced my own invisible boundary to break the mode of the expected relationship of consumption; I think this relationship of consumption alienates and segregates.
Mad Kate: “Wymyn who travel with me even when they are not here”, “Misplaced Women? Workshop, Berlin, 2018. Photo: Mad Kate
On the other hand, I found it alienating to ask people to share stories and face rejection, and wondered if this was too pushy or too invasive of an approach. So I decided after some time to simply wait and see if anyone asked me about what I was doing. I sat in the park for a while and unpacked my suitcase and stayed there and let it be. No one came to ask what I was doing.
The next day, since I was traveling to another country, I decided to put the entire outfit on again and travel to the Netherlands with the same costume and suitcase and the sound recorder. A lot of people noticed me and gave me positive non verbal feedback, but no one asked me about what my hat meant or whether or not my costume and suitcase had significance. However the performative act of carrying the photographs of the women with me near my head helped me feel their absence and appreciate their gift in my life.
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Footnote: *the word wymyn is purposely “genderf*cked” to disentangle the word
“man” from the word “woman”, and with the intention of being inclusive
to transwomen, nonbinary, intersex and other genderqueer persons.
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Kathryn Fischer aka Mad Kate is a polyhomefull US-American sound and performance artist based in Berlin, interested in interrogating the politics of borders within and between bodies.
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Text and Photos by Mad Kate
Edited and first published by Tanja Ostojić, 2018-19 on the Misplaced Women? project blog
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Please visit as well other contributions and posts from the same workshops:
Mis(s)placed Women? (2009-2022) is an ongoing art project by Tanja Ostojić, Berlin based internationally renowned performance and interdisciplinary artist of Yugoslav origin. Mis(s)placed Women?, is a collaborative art project, ongoing since 2009, consisting of performances, performance series, performance art workshops and delegated performances, including contributions by over 170 individuals from six continents. ... Continue reading →
Misplaced Women? 