video, 29:00 min, color/sound

>to German text

GLUB (hearts)

An installation by mieke bal and Shahram Entekhabi
This project aims to give a positive, joyful image of migration as an aesthetic phenomenon in contemporary Berlin. It integrates academic and artistic work. Conceived as primarily performative, the proposed installation integrates media and sense experiences.
GLUB is the Arabic word for hearts, a word used for edible roasted and salted seeds, a low-cost appetizer. Taking as a starting point the many meanings of the seeds – sunflower, pumpkin, and all kinds of other seeds – traditionally eaten in many non-European societies but mostly associated with the Arabic world, the installation uses video to not only offer such a positive image, but encourage and enable visitors to construct such an image for themselves and immerse themselves in it. Literally, that is: visitors are offered the choice of watching in any sequence they prefer, in their own sequence and at their own pace, a number of videos that each develop one of the many meanings and connotations of seeds, and the implementation of “migratory aesthetics” in the Berlin urban landscape and attendant art scene. Walking and sitting within the world of seeds, enveloped by the smell of seeds being roasted, the installation suggest unedited materials out of which each visitor can shape his or her own, interiorised “film”. Below, we provide the thoughts at the background of this project, a description of the installation, and elements of a (low) budget.
Filling time, shaping the future, and accenting culture
GLUB means “hearts” and is used to name edible “seeds”. We conceive of seeds as the stuff of the future, of growth and change, movement and sustenance. Hearts, for us, connote the beating heart of a live culture, survival, affection, and excitement. It is the excitement, overruling complaints and problems, anxieties and xenophobia, that we wish to stimulate in this installation.
The mixed societies that have emerged as the result of migration have benefited enormously from the arrival of people from many different cultures. Cities have become more heterogeneous ("colourful"), music and cinema have been spectacularly enriched, and philosophy gratefully uses the potential offered by thinking along the lines of – and through metaphors relating to – migrancy. Cinema has finally ceased to be predominantly either Hollywood or elitist avant-garde, and a “third” cinema” or “accented” cinema is now reaching levels of popularity few could have expected ten years ago. On the streets of certain neighbourhoods of Berlin, e.g. Kreuzberg, the shells of sunflower seeds testify to the presence of migrant culture in contemporary European urban centres. Those shells, traces of passing gestures that are now so common they are no longer even perceived as “accented”, are the “low” icons of migratory aesthetics. “Low”, because inexpensive, modest, and thrown away as rubbish; “low” as unspectacular, democratic because available to all, and lying around on the once immaculate pavements. Aesthetic, though, because they mark the look of the city that, as this installation proposes, has donned, through these shells and the sociability of the people who left them after eating outside, in the open, and together, a visible aspect of diversity.
That immigrating foreigners put the stamp of their invaluable contribution on the host culture has been the case for much longer, for example, in psychoanalysis, an entire discipline developed by people in exile, either for study needs or escaping violence and persecution. Theorizing itself opens its creativity up thanks to the need to shed the limitations harboured by local habit. There is an aesthetic to thought as much as to, say, fashion, film, or food.
The area of culture where aesthetic and thought converge to propose new ways of enjoying the mixed state of cultural life is, of course, art. It cannot have escaped anyone that contemporary art is invested not only in absorbing cultural diversity, but also a diversity of sense experience. No longer obsessed with the medium-specific visualism of modernist art, contemporary art has taken on, not only sound as sculptural, or the moving image as enveloping, but also food. Cooking performances are only one expression of the awareness of the cultural importance and specificity of food. From GLUB to food to art, then, is a logical itinerary for an examination of “migratory aesthetics”. In short, this project examines the positive import on the everyday that comes with migration, the now common state of hybridity when speaking of origins becomes almost forced, and often impossible, and the "small" aesthetics. It focuses on the utterly small, yet significant aspects of everyday culture and academic thought, which are "foreign" in origin, but not any longer. In a sense these aspects are "beyond" identity but carry traces of “foreignness”.
GLUB is presented here as a modest, barely visible “icon” of the aesthetic changes in everyday urban culture. Arab youngsters are often seen hanging around eating sunflower seeds. These seeds, glub, plural of galb which means heart, have rather little taste, provide little nourishment, and have no hallucinogenic qualities. One young migrant, when asked, said they eat them to pass the time that stretches out so endlessly for the unemployed. Then it became a habit, then an appreciated tradition, incorporating (literally) a sense of family and community. It so characterizes the visual sight of migrant young men in European cities that it can be considered a case of migratory aesthetics. More so, however, when European youngsters began to imitate the cool-looking habit. Identity dissolves, while contact is being established, not necessarily between persons but surely between the “look” of culture. Glub-eating young men of Arabic and German backgrounds testify to the permeability of cultural boundaries, hence, identities.
On one hand, then, the installation offers images of this eating habit, its spread, longevity, and mixing capacity; on the other hand, discussions containing reflection on migratory aesthetics. Do artists recognize this or other eating habits, other small practices and phenomena of no spectacular appearance, yet noticeable in the urban landscape today? How does their own work reflect (on) the small changes that have transformed Western urban centres into hybrid spaces where culture is not but happens? In-between, shopkeepers turn out to be savvy connoisseurs of a culture they play like a musical instrument. In the blink of an eye, they manage to turn a symptom of the excess of time in a sun-drenched land of unemployment to a commodity that provides them a living, catering to the fast-paced society of commerce in the colder cities of the north. And, as emblems of this “accented” quality of contemporary Berlin, foreigners struggle with the German language, eager to take their place in the culture to which they turned to build their lives. Putting “accents” of sometimes-extraordinary beauty, the key performance of present-day Berliners is the encounter.

we thank for their valuable contributions:
kathrin becker, nikita von rebeck, helen burke, cornelia gräbner, ayshe kücük, rémy markowitsch, sylvia mieszkowski, angelika richter, britta schmitz

and we thank the following institutions:
ASCA, University of Amsterdam
Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities of the Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH
de ateliers, Amsterdam
Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin
Hartnackschule für Fremdsprache, Berlin
Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin
Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (NBK), Berlin
NEXT interkulturelle Projekte, Berlin
PLAY_ gallery for still and motion pictures, Berlin

For equipment lent
Werkleitz Gesellschaft e.V., Halle

additional images contributed by
arne hector, lena michaels, gary ward

camera, editing, concept:
© mieke bal and Shahram Entekhabi
2003- 2004