Performance 'Spaß mit Privileg'

This performance was part of a mandatory seminar "Flüchtige Räume" by professor Stefanie Bürkle.

Inspired by Marina Abramović, I sat at a table in Neue Nationalgalerie labeled 'Spaß mit Privileg', and asked those who sat down with me "How do you enjoy your privilege?"
Since documentation was required, I took hand written notes. At the times when no-one sat with me, I wrote down my stream of thoughts.

June 19th I sat in the entrance hall of Neue Nationalgalerie in front of the Andy Warhol exhibition and was frequently asked organisatorial matters like where the toilets are. The museum curator responsible for the seminar took this as feedback that the signage doesn't work, which is in fact an issue.

June 20th I was in the garden, where the guests had already figured out those things. The garden had a special meaning for the project: I had the idea in the garden, where, after several unsuccessful attempts due to wrong weather, I felt very privileged to have access to. The sun provided a time-lapse version of the burden of Abramovićs long sessions: the sunscreen did hold but by the end of the day I had a mild case of sun stroke and could watch myself having difficulties to form cohesive sentences.

Probably the guest I felt most emotional about was an Ukrainian man around age 30 who replied: "Now I am here, this is my privilege. But in two weeks I have to go back to Ukraine again." I wished him to survive.

Having someone listening to them seemed to impress several guests deeply. Some, especially older women, thanked me warmly.

I had two artist guests, and the second gave me an 'The Artist is Present' moment too. Unfortunately I didn't ask her for her name.

Many people replied "Which privilege?", there were the reflected who had "he sun is shining, I can travel and see exhibitions" kinds of answers, and some mentioned material goods, eg "with my silver Lufthansa card I can travel with two bags and don't need to wait in line".
Many older people made the impression that they were just happy to be offered a chair to sit on. Two made little drawings. Unfortunately for the museum curators who hoped for free customer survey data from me, nobody referred to Neue Nationalgalerie in their tales.

In the end, it felt too pedagogical to do such works often. For instance the last two guests were two Chinese female students where it went like this:
me: "How do you enjoy your privilege?",
they: "We are Asian women, we can't be privileged",
me (irritated with approaching sun stroke and needing to call it a day): "But you are in a museum. Volkswagen pays so you can look at famous art, isn't that something?"
They weren't convinced. Fifteen minutes later they came back. They had figured out that they are in fact privileged. Due to studying in Germany, they have more free time and can travel more than if they would study in China.

I'm not up for such interactions. But then, it was a first step at learning to talk with strangers about their social status, which is a interesting and important thing to learn. And the older ladies thankfulness was interesting and rewarding.