Wo alle sind (Where everyone is) is a poetic ritual that explores the practice of (de)scribing and, in the process, the public square in front of Galerie Wedding. From 28 February to 28 March 2025, Adam Man will be sitting on a bench in the gallery from 3-4pm sharing his observations with visitors to the exhibit.
The table is on the edge of the field1. To my left, the sun slowly rises higher in the sky over gentle hills. Straight ahead, around 300 meters in the direction of the horizon, a cluster of trees and bushes, next to them a hunting blind. Birds chirp as if today was their last chance. From farther off, a guttural call, perhaps a crane. It is just past seven, that hour of the day when, except on Sundays, everyone is headed off to work. I hear them whooshing by on the road behind me. I rub my hands together. It’s cold. So cold that my breath forms small clouds as I read the first sentence of this article out loud.
A desire to see what is (Two deer!) That is primarily what Adam Man’s performance, Wo alle sind, triggered in me. It is immediately quiet when you enter the gallery space. Not because the noise from outside does not penetrate. The window is actually open on this warm spring day. It is far more the metaphysical stillness of a monastic cell that has permeated the room. Man sits in this stillness, pencil and pad in hand, on a wooden bench from the Berlin Parks Commission, like those familiar from parks and public spaces. The bench is facing the window towards the busy town hall square in front of the gallery. Next to Man are a number of thin piles of paper, sediments of his drawings of the last few days. He has been coming here since late February, witnessing and describing what he sees, hears, and feels on the square, between the square and himself.
I sit next to him and the stacks of paper and look out the window. A man makes circles in the gravel with the edge of his right shoe while talking on the phone. Behind him to his right are two women on a bench with a young child in between them. A flock of pigeons soars through the air. Man pauses his writing. We now both – I think – follow the birds. Does he see what I see? Behind the flock of pigeons, a plane appears in the blue sky. (A streak of condensation crosses the pale blue sky behind me, from east to west.) So many people, so many lives. Describing one’s observations distances the observed, turns them into scenes spliced together by the exercise of perception, and, yet, it simultaneously brings them closer insofar as this act demands a connection.
One thing is clear: the daily describing and archiving of experienced moments, which is the cornerstone of Adam Man’s performance, transcends the reputedly passive act of witnessing and elevates it the status of – quote from Natasha Marin – “sacred work”2. Because witnessing also means not choosing, not excluding, setting aside our biases about good/bad, banal/meaningful, beautiful/ugly, and thereby celebrating the wonderful uniqueness of each particular existence, be it that of a tree (a wind turbine), a postal worker (the abandoned spider web on my chair), or an advertising poster flapping in the wind.
English translation by Melissa Maldonado
1The place described in the first paragraph is from where the author wrote this text. The cursive parts of this text in parentheses refer to this place. 2Natasha Marin is a Black artist and curator who initiates exhibition projects based on testimonials from Black people and published the book Black Imagination: Black Voices on Black Futures (San Francisco, 2020).
Wo alle sind, by Adam Man, takes place from 28 February to 28 March 2025 at Galerie Wedding – Raum für zeitgenössische Kunst.
