Whenever the Heart Skips a Beat transfers rituals and cultural prac- tices of hospitality into artistic processes. Works by more than twenty international artists, mostly developed specifically for Mehringplatz, in- tervene into the public space in the form of performances, workshops, and an exhibition taking place at the plaza and in neighbouring stores, making the store-owners hosts of the respective pieces.
Mehringplatz, designed by architect Werner Düttmann as an archi- tectural ensemble characteristic of public housing projects of the 1970s, points to a charged relationship due to its position between Friedrichstraße and Bergmannkiez. Whenever the Heart Skips a Beat aims to open up spaces that are frequently overlooked or perceived as inaccessible because of the supposed coherence of the plaza. It thereby encourages changing the perspective, debating the plaza, highlighting conflicts and influencing them by tackling them with rituals of hospitality.
Referring to the piece of the same name by the artists collective Raqs Media Collective, presented on billboards at Mehringplatz, Whenever the Heart Skips a Beat takes the susceptibility of the heartbeat to feelings of joy as well as insecurity as a starting point for analyzing individual conceptions and collective actions from different artistic perspectives—politically as well as sociologically—to the end of devel- oping own propositions.