berlin drawings 20-22 > people

There is a paradoxical intimacy between strangers in a crowded city. While they rush along busy streets, stand in crowded trains and busses, or go shopping, their clothing brushes against each other’s. Although their thoughts are hidden, their bodies are on display. Cotton, plastic, leather, sequins, chains, studs, hair, makeup, ink, and flesh manifest where and what they are—spectator and spectacle. Though they commonly don’t speak with each other or make eye contact, consciously or otherwise, each is profoundly moved by the presence of the other—strangers captured in fleeting moments that make up their own lives. In Jenny Erpenbeck’s 2015 novel Go Went Gone, the retired Professor Richard coins the phrase, the joy of the parallel universe, to describe the satisfaction he felt knowing his wife was in the other room, though they barely spoke.