“Connections” is a project about stories being told through objects that travel on the U- Bahn.

The U-Bahn is used by all kinds of people in Berlin and is part of their daily life, such as students, labor workers, teachers, lawyers, artists, refugees, tourists, etc. since there isn’t any controlled or paid gates to get in to the stations, you tend to find all kinds of people inside of the stations, from performers looking for an audience, to homeless people looking for warmth, So it is like a melting pot, where you can find the whole of Berlin Getting together for few minutes. Most of these people are occupied with their everyday lives or too focused on their smart phones, to even consider interacting with the people sharing the journey with them on a regular basis. My art project aims to connect the people who are using the U-Bahn through objects, and storytelling.

​

The idea is to convert the U-Bahn in to a medium or a place of dialect, where the object will work as a cause of interactive storytelling in order to interconnect and share the feelings and ideas of one person on a personal level with the next person, creating a chain reaction of connecting people without knowing or meeting each other, but simply connect through objects.

​

So Basically I start from the beginning of one of the U-Bahn Lines, and ride the train until the end of the line; stopping at every stop and asking a person in every stop to share an object and a short story about this object, which will be shared with a person on the next station. My role in this was to act as a carrier of these objects, and exchange the object & Story with new ones.

​

The people stop at different stations and go to different locations, however the objects never stop until they reach the end of the line. Each person takes an object and a story with them to new places and creates new stories for these objects.

​

5 U-Bahn Lines were finished U1, U2, U3, U4, U55, and 73 people participated in this project, and hopefully when I come back to Berlin I will be able finish all of the U-Bahn lines.

​

These pictures were printed and arranged using the leporello technique. Each station and object is connected in a chain that can be seen in a playful manner.

​

These pictures are from the U1 Line, going from Uhlandstraße to Warschauer straße.

​

This Project was conceived and realized during my residency and internship with the Berlin Art Institute, and is published on the website of the institute:

http://berlinartinstitute.com/connections-by-istabraq-kinda-hussain/