with Hand Breast Heart Kollektiv

Meeting Point

Accessibility:
- The meeting point is approximately 5 minutes from Kochstraße U-bahn (U6), 10 minutes from Anhalter Bahnhof (S1, S2, S25, S26) or 3 minutes from bus stop Wilhelmstr./Kochstr (M29). These stations listed have step-free access. https://wheelmap.org/node/4827813424  
- En-route support personnel available for people with disabilities.
- The route is wheelchair accessible via marked sidewalks and park paths.
- Accessible bathrooms are available at the meeting point and end point of the route.
- Rest points available along the way.
- Contact us with your access needs: cruisingcurators@gmail.com

Please register via anmeldung@ngbk.de.

Contributing to Path 1: Spaces as Thresholds of the Dissident Paths program, Hand Breast Heart Kollektiv invites you to a walk, cross and connect through threshold spaces of Mitte, starting from Topography of Terror and ending at the Memorial to the Sinti and Roma of Europe Murdered under National Socialism in Tiergarten. The journey is shaped by readings and reflections, that think through the below proposition together:

The Roman God Janus is a deity of beginnings and endings, the guardian of thresholds, gates, transitions, time, duality. The King of Sacred Rites himself carried out his ceremonies and the gates of a building in Rome, named after him, were opened in time of war and closed to mark the arrival of peace. His Greek equivalent can be found in the archetype of the witch goddess Hekate. Every culture has deities assigned to doors, thresholds, borders, passages. This walk is leaning into the image of a two-faced god, which on first glance suggests polarity, but as this principle symbolizes beginnings and endings at the same time, we understand Janus as a cyclical energy without an ending or starting point. Stacked with memory culture and vibrant erasure at the same time this short walking passage in the political, historical and touristic center of the city will be approached with affection, patience and grief. Centuries of violence condensed in Disneyfication of historical anecdotes and cherry-picked victories. We will connect, walk, pause, read, rethink, recognize and emerge transformed.

Originating in a theater play written by Nicole Angela Pearson, Hand Breast Heart Kollektiv specializes in forming bonds over barriers and acknowledging commonalities and those historical connections which can be found in exclusions and erasure. The collective works interdisciplinary and investigates public space/s through walks, interventions & counter-narratives. hand breast heart collective turns grief into joy. It is formed by Ghasal Falaki, Nicole Angela Pearson and Nina Berfelde.

Ghasal Falaki is a queer sociologist, poet, feminist, and PoC. She centers sensitized, community-building encounters in her artistic work, interwoven with biographical inquiry and both personal and shared histories. A (public) space for collective togetherness that empowers is especially relevant in her process-based practice, whether through writing, reading, or spoken word as a form of expression. Her work reflects on histories of migration, displacement, and trauma, as well as her own identity, examining the reciprocal dynamics of belonging and non-belonging within community through an intersectional lens. These themes are processed and brought into focus through exchange and peaceful coexistence, whether in the context of writing workshops (poetry or comedy) or readings.

Nicole Angela Pearson is a theatre artist, researcher, writer, and activist of African descent. She brings to light silenced and erased histories and supports communities in reconciling with them through imaginative and interactive engagement. Her work addresses the impacts of colonialism and transatlantic enslavement across time and space. Inspired by the Afro-German Enlightenment thinker Anton Wilhelm Amo, she explores the intersections of sensation and knowledge. The body serves as the site of her work. This practice enables the cultivation of awareness, the fostering of empathy, and a more sensitive and intentional way of moving through our surroundings. She draws on African and Afro-diasporic forms of expression—such as dance, song, and food—as practices of connection and healing. As a member of the Amo Collective, she recently curated a three-day counter-mapping event in commemoration of the Berlin Conference.

Nina Berfelde is an artist, mother, documentary filmmaker, researcher, cultural anthropologist, gardener, and flâneuse. Born in the GDR in 1982, this origin informs her perspectives, analyses, approaches, tools, and methods of communication and mediation. She holds a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology (Viadrina University) and an M.A. in Art in Context from the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK), which she completed with the highest distinction. She digs through historical sediment and presses her fingers into the wounds of the perpetrators, while positioning herself as both an heir and a processor of acts and omissions. Accompanied by many others who reject and subvert dichotomous, linear narratives, her practice lays bare the ground for long-overdue discourses.

Part of PATH 1: SPACES AS THRESHOLDS (on crossovers and commons)
With contributions by Saverio Cantoni & Noah Gokul & Lo Moran & Iz Paehr, hand breast heart kollektiv, Mirja Busch, Harun Morrison, House’ it going? (Laura Margarete Bertelt & Uli Kneisl)

Where does a threshold begin, and what does it divide? Bridges, borders, passageways – cities are full of in-between places where people come and go, meet and move apart, where some things are easy to see and others remain hidden. Some thresholds invite and include, others reinforce exclusion. How do we find common ground within sites of multitudes?

This Path is guided by the belief that urban spaces should be understood as public resources and communal goods that are accessible to all members of society, human and non-human. The contributions explore aspects of invisibility and accessibility in a fractured world (Saverio Cantoni & Noah Gokul & Lo Moran & Iz Paehr); climate shifts and puddle-watching as new forms of attention (Mirja Busch); the role of waterways and changing landscapes (Harun Morrison); memory culture and erasure through a mythological lens (hand breast heart kollektiv); and the evolving architecture threatening common land (House’ it going?). Together, they trace how bodies move through thresholds shaped by environmental fragility, layered histories, and urban transformation.