Paula Diogo, Agata Maszkiewicz, Superamas: Liquid grounds. A journey through past, present & infinity

It was raining during the day, but as I make my way to Wedding in the bustling evening, the sky begins to clear up gradually. When I arrive on Pulitzer Brücke, the clouds have completely dispersed, offering a wide view towards the west. In the evening sun, Westhafen unfolds before me, an industrial beauty adorned with historic warehouses and brick buildings. 

Down by the harbour basin, the participants of the audio walk Terra Nullius created by Portuguese artist Paula Diogo, receive headphones and begin their walk across the Föhrer Bridge, along the riverbank of Berlin-Spandau Ship Canal.  

In the evening sun, I notice the canal’s gentle flow interrupted by choppy waves caused by small container ships.  On the audio track heard through the headphones, Diogo’s voice begins to be heard. She speaks about her time in Reykjavik, where she had been part of an artist residency in 2020; she speaks about her encounter with the water there; and her exploration of Ökjökull – the Icelandic volcano that lost its status as a glacier in 2019 due to global warming. She shares further about her encounter with María, Irís, Elsa, Ellen, Nora, and Zofia – women she met in Iceland – who deeply informed her sojourn there. She talks about smaller personal crises, times of retreat, feeling lost, and finding herself again. Diogo talks about the Self as fluid territory that alters its borders and its permeability. As if to embrace the search for the self, she says: “Hey, myself, can I invite you for a dance?” 

Her descriptions revolve around water, the text trickles on, releases associations, creates connections and counterpoints between itself and the actual surroundings. Occasionally, the words carry me away so that I suddenly find myself no longer at the Berlin-Spandau Ship Canal, but walking along the rugged Atlantic coast of Iceland, hearing the waves of the ocean in the background. “Geography is liquid”, I hear Diogo say. 

But abruptly, the narration brings the listeners back to the geographically specific ground they are walking on right now: Diogo addresses the Berlin Conference of 1884/1885 – where European colonial powers regulated trade laws in the Congo and Niger regions and signed the concluding General Act – which went on to define numerous European colonies on the African continent. Accordingly, ‘terra nullius’ as a historical-legal term, refers to the idea of a stateless piece of land that can be occupied and annexed. While the title of the performance plays with this naïve and megalomaniacal notion of a “no man’s land”, the specific ground we are walking on, is historically highly charged and informed by obsessions of ownership. 

Diogo’s composition of text and walking route reminds us of the matrix of the colonial mindset that has shaped the history of this continent, of this city. The beautiful industrial buildings from the Wilhelminian era at Westhafen, loom behind us like witnesses to the fact that coloniality formed a stable basis for the industrial wealth in the late 19^th century.  

As we walk along the canal in the late summer evening, the surroundings bathed in warm orange light, the trees on the shore still green from summer, the water glittering, one could almost fall prey to a romantic or idealised idea of a’ no man’s land’, a wild, natural piece of earth. However, the ground on which we walk is obviously not stateless, not at all a ‘terra nullius’, but a highly charged state territory. As if to emphasize this once more, a facade appears on the other side of the canal, partly hidden behind the lush tree canopies but still visible, bearing the large letters ‘Landesamt für Einwanderung’ (State Office for Migration). Before one could sink in to the seemingly jolly relaxed atmosphere by the river, we are reminded of the state territory we are in and that the question of who is allowed to move freely here – who can walk, stay, and work, who enjoys protection and who does not, is subject to strict bureaucratic regulations. 

Conscious of my privilege to be able to reside here, to be able to walk without constant proof and justification, I consciously put foot before foot, placing my feet gently on the ground. At Fenn Bridge, we leave the canal bank and now follow the broad Fennstraße towards the northeast. Traffic lights glow in the twilight, tall construction cranes loom ahead of us, their huge arms marked by red lights high up in the now darkened sky. 

“For a certain period of time I was in love with a construction site downtown,” says Diogo’s voice as I stare at the reflection of the red lights on the canal under the bridge, diffracted with the waves. 

The images of the urban space overlay the memories and stories we hear from Diogo, the layers of time interweave, and even the chronology seems to liquefy. The levels complement each other, sometimes congruent, sometimes contrapuntal: As we walk along Fennstraße, under the corridor of the huge Bayer complex and across the four-lane Müllerstraße, it is loud. Cars honk and the police rushes past us with sirens. Into the din, Paula’s voice resounds: “We are in the middle of nothing.” 

We turn from Pankstraße into a small footpath and Diogo talks about her encounters with demonstrators singing peace songs in front of the Reykjavik City Hall in 2019, in solidarity with local refugees. The recording of these songs sounds joyous and hopeful, but beneath it lies the reality of crises and displacement, refugee movements, migration journeys made often via dangerous waterways. 

When we return to the Uferstudios courtyard, each guest receives a chair, freshly brewed tea and a book with further material on Diogo’s artistic research. While I sit down and leaf through the book, I listen to the sound of the water boiling and bubbling in the kettles not far from me. 

** 

The following evening, the map of the Feminist Future Weekend expands southwards as I make my way to Dammweg in Neukölln. There, in a former garden school, currently operated as Campus Dammweg by Berlin Mondiale, the second artistic work within the ‘Feminist Futures Weekend’ is being presented: Zero to Infinity by Agata Maszkiewicz & the Superamas. 

It was a bright day, and the beginning of the piece is timed precisely to the sunset. Accordingly, I take a seat in a deck chair in the fading light of late summer, under a ginkgo tree, whose lush green leaves gleam in the evening light. 

The chairs are arranged in a semicircle around a lawn, which now serves as the stage for the piece. The moment of sunset arrives, and the four performers begin to introduce the microcosm of the piece as they raise questions about the terrestrial atmosphere and what place a (human) body occupies in this world.  Zero to Infinity is designed for both, children and adults, and aims to captivate audiences with facts about physical principles as well as a poetic approach to the infinity of the universe. 

While lighting a small campfire on the lawn, the performers talk about the universe, stars and other celestial bodies. They share some fascinating information about the minuteness of molecules and about the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation. Throughout the performance they conduct playful experiments that pop, puff, steam, burn, and glow. 

Almost unnoticed, it gets dark, and the first stars are visible in the twilight, so that the connection to outer space seems a bit more graspable. The dancers Agata Maszkiewicz and Teresa Acevedo put on headlamps, moving through the surrounding bushes, casting their spotlight on trees, branches, and small plants. In this way, details in the space emerge that were previously hidden. One catches a glimpse of the tiny things – almost as if at anatomic level – before the narration shifts back to planet Earth, the stars, and the vastness of outer space. Thus, this piece moves from the smallest to the largest, from zero to infinity. Even as the performers dance, their movement language seems to grow from minimal physical strain to larger sweeping arm movements, marking the immense expansiveness. 

While Terra Nullius referred to its specific historic-geographic location and from there created poetic connections to other places, watercourses and ecosystems of planet Earth, Zero to Infinity alludes to the physical functions of this world, generating associative connections to outer space. Towards the end of the performance, Maszkiewicz and Acevedo stand on the lawn, facing the audience, arms and legs slightly extended, tilting their heads forward and then backward, almost resignedly. They have finished dancing, are tired, and it seems that muscle strength can no longer contend with gravity. 

**