TRANSIT

GLUB (Hearts) is a film about seeds – the eating of them, the shells, the shops and stalls, the people cracking the shells and spitting them out; you see it and you don’t, hidden as it is in ordinariness. It is a phenomenon that embodies the invisibility that comes with both the hyper-visibility of pervasive presence, and the formlessness of what is situated between countability and mass. Utterly material, seeds are countable items but their countability does not matter. Instead, what characterizes seeds or glub is their massive presence. This cultural habit determines the way the street looks, not only because the shells are dropped, but also because eating is a communal activity, which makes the interaction between people look different – less indifferent. Shahram Entekhabi speculated that it is this aspect, a “symptom” of migration that only becomes visible once you notice it, that has made Berlin so much more lively, both as an urban place and, indirectly, as an art world. As soon as Entekhabi mentioned this to Mieke Bal, they had a project; they began to associate on the idea of seeds, and to collect visual memories.