Underground Art: Mapping the City’s Queer Memory
In the weave of Frank O’Hara’s poetry, emotions pulse through the city’s veins with both ache and exuberant acceptance: “My traffic all night long / and my pride / how shall I parse / every ocean morning…” The poet’s steps, brimming with flirtation, fatigue, and joy, find a new echo this summer in the electric hum of Berlin’s underground.
Under the title Kunst im Untergrund 2024/25: Flexen, Flirren, Fantasieren – Mapping the Queer City, the U2 line transforms three stations’ concrete and steel structures into a vibrant archive of queer history and alternative geographies. Launched on June 28 at U-BHF Bülowstraße, the festival claims platforms and passageways as a canvas for movements that challenge the city’s canon.
Berlin’s U-Bahn, with its elevated viaducts and dark tunnels, has always been a refuge where hidden worlds breathe. In a geography where official maps once split the city into east and west, segregating the marginal from the privileged, underground artistic interventions create cracks for alternative routes to thrive against the rigidity of official systems. As the curators emphasize, the modern metropolis has largely been shaped around the archetype of “the man in the company car heading to work,” excluding women, queer individuals, and ethnic minorities from urban planning’s blind spots. Mapping the Queer City counters this legacy by redrawing Berlin’s transit map in a queer light, tracing dissident practices and embracing the ghosts that transform the city. This gesture is rooted in a tradition of resistance that began in 1958 in East Berlin with Kunst Statt Werbung (Art Instead of Advertising), a movement that persisted after reunification.
At U-BHF Bülowstraße, the artist duo Franziska Pierwoss & Siska summon the ghost of the Turkish Market once held on disused train tracks. Oversized billboards, cassettes carrying the market’s auditory spirit, and a concert on opening night reclaim public space under the shadow of the glass music center above, reigniting the social friction that once defined Bülowstraße. At U-BHF Nollendorfplatz, the historic heart of Berlin’s queer community, Adrian Marie Blount creates a sanctuary dedicated to Black Queer Care. Their billboard collage, Fundamentals of Care, invites viewers to pause and witness Black queer love and compassion amid the reality of urban spaces’ challenges for intersectional identities. Throughout July, Blount will stage performances of the tender, enduring love between Black queer bodies amid the station’s chaotic crowds.
As the season progresses, Nadin Reschke’s Lila Fetzen (Purple Scraps) at U Schönhauser Allee carries forward the echoes of the East German women’s movements that blossomed in Prenzlauer Berg in the late 1980s. Drawing from archival photographs, Reschke uses textile banners, handmade costumes, and a collective performance to bring that era’s unfulfilled demands into the present, asking: what materials can be gathered, worn, and shouted to confront today’s injustices? The festival closes in September with İpek Burçak’s Something New in Berlin. The artist revives anti-fascist texts published by Turkish and migrant communities in 1990s Berlin, using billboards and a photo-novel aesthetic. A reading performance on the station platform will allow this resilient knowledge, buried beneath concrete, to surface.
From queer social networks to fleeting markets, Berlin has always breathed with invisible treasures beyond official maps. Flexen, Flirren, Fantasieren brings these histories under neon lights, offering a queer mapping experience along the U2 line. Each work resists imposed flows, inviting moments of transit to come alive and join the currents of memory. In doing so, it opens new paths to belonging, calling Berlin to flex, flicker, and fantasize anew.
Festival Information
Kunst im Untergrund Exhibition Period: June 28 – September 20, 2025
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 28, 2025; 5:00 PM – 10:00 PM
flexen-flirren-fantasieren-en.ngbk.de
Venues:
U-Bülowstraße, 10783 Berlin [Click for map]
U-Nollendorfplatz, 10787 Berlin [Click for map]
U-Schönhauser Allee, 10439 Berlin [Click for map]
What do you think?
Show comments / Leave a comment