​

Strawberries Sweat

Performative Lecture, 2024

This is Andreas, he was one of my German teacher during my first year learning German at the Göttingen University in Germany. He told us he is from Regensburg. At that time, we looked forward to seeing him every day because he only wore strawberry-related clothes. Most of his strawberry-themed clothes were exchanged with different people using his old normal clothes. With each exchange, he would swap a strawberry story with the other person, and, of course, he anonymously shared the stories others told him with the new exchange person. Sometimes, the exchange person even sent him photos related to the stories.

Here are some photos of Andreas, He used to take photos in front of the white walls of his house before modifying the background to a photo of the sky. I was laughing at his Eternally stiff poses. But while laughing at him, it suddenly reminded me of myself, when the camera comes up, and I unconsciously make smiley faces and straighten my spine. Though I forget when I developed this muscular response.

He told me, among many strawberry-themed clothes, there's one that he treasures the most. It's this black one.

It comes from his Moroccan classmate, Nadia. Her family immigrated to Germany in the 1990s. So she grew up in Germany. This dress was a gift from her cousin in Morocco. When her cousin gave her the dress, she felt a little confused because she thought it was supposed to be a gift for her mother.
A year after receiving the dress, Nadia heard that her cousin had gone missing. Because her cousin's husband could not tolerate that she was sexually harassed by her supervisors during her work in Spain in 2015 and 2022. After she disappeared, another female worker who had worked with her together in 2022 mentioned, that her cousin had visited a private clinic near the farm before she went back to Morocco.
She had a strong feeling that the disappearance might be related to strawberries, but she couldn't know more from her mother. Until she stumbled across a news tweet about Morocco female workers suing the local orchard management in Spain for sexual harassment. ​The woman in the pictures wore the same hijab as when they last met, and the star-shaped lace on the hijab reminded her of the tiles in her mom’s bathroom. However, the entire report used pseudonyms, so she couldn't be sure if it was her.
But since then, every time she sees strawberries, she thinks of her cousin.

Andreas is a person created by Juejun with AI. 
This unique individual uses their everyday attire to commemorate the migrant workers
 who have been exploited in strawberry plantations across Europe.