Dissident Paths: Purgatory Society: A Liminal Walk
Part 1
with Jane Hwang
No registration required
Meeting point: nGbK, Mitte
Google Co-ordinates
Accessibility:
- nGbK is approximately 5 minutes from Alexanderplatz (U2, U5, U8, S3, S5, S7, S9), 10 minutes from Jannowitzbrücke (S3, S5, S7, S9, U8), or 3 minutes from the bus stop Memhardstraße (Bus 200). These stations listed have step-free access. https://wheelmap.org/node/11336846004
- On-site support personnel available for people with disabilities.
- The site is wheelchair accessible.
- Accessible bathrooms are available on-site.
- Seating provided on-site.
- For all access questions contact: cruisingcurators@gmail.com
Purgatory Society: A Liminal Walk is a processional performance inspired by Korean funeral rites, reimagined as a public ritual for collective mourning. Through a slow, embodied walk along migratory borderlines, the project mourns personal loss and the shared grief of displaced lives, silenced histories, and distant tragedies. Mourning becomes a form of resistance – a way to make loss visible and grievable in a society that deprives us of time and space to mourn. Purgatory Society proposes grief as a starting point for solidarity and political re-engagement.
The first part of the project takes place on 13.08. in the form of a workshop, where we will gather to prepare ritual objects, share food, and exchange migration stories—reviving traditions often held and passed down by women. The second part unfolds on 15.08. as a collective walk from the North Korean embassy to the graveyard in Tiergarten. The route is shaped organically as we move, and the procession continues until the home-brewed makgeolli—offered to comfort both spirits and the living—has been shared. We walk to grieve, to remember, and to resist obscurity.
Jane Hwang is a multimedia artist based in Berlin. She employs research-based narratives to navigate the intersections of community memory and documentation. Her work examines oral history, rituals, archives, geopolitical dynamics and the sensory impact of historical findings through film, text, and audiovisual installation. She is particularly interested in liminal spaces where boundaries blur, exploring ways to reinterpret and embody collective memories through multisensory experiences.
Hwang holds a B.F.A. from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and an M.A. in Art in Context from the Berlin University of the Arts. Her work has been exhibited on various platforms, including a solo exhibition at Artspace Hyeong, Seoul (2024), as well as screenings and group exhibitions at the 18th River Film Festival, Padua (2024), CCA Berlin (2023), the Icelandic Visual Artists Association, Reykjavik (2020), and the Museum für Fotografie Berlin (2020).
Part of PATH 4: DECELERATE (on alternative temporalities)
August / October 2025
With contributions from Pitchaya Ngamcharoen, Kaspar Schmidt Mumm, Jane Hwang, Lisa Klein, Marlene Oeken & Martha Schwindling, Gabriel Francisco Lemos
To decelerate is not to withdraw, but to attune differently. To call for a slower and more sensorially engaged way of being in the world. This Path explores how we might tune into other temporalities—beyond acceleration or slowness—to sense and shape the city differently. By disrupting ingrained patterns of speed, extractive systems, and social disconnection, alternative ways of moving with and through the city are imagined.
The contributions trace migrant space-making through the language of scent (Pitchaya Ngamcharoen); let children set the tempo of encounter (Kaspar Schmidt Mumm); reimagine a funeral parade with co-created objects to reflect on mortality and gender (Jane Hwang); offer tactile experiences of monuments for blind and visually impaired communities (Marlene Oeken & Martha Schwindling); and listen to forest ecologies through their underground fungal networks (Gabriel Francisco Lemos). Together, they invite us to attune to other rhythms and relations, and to imagine new ways of being in the world.