The title Verkehr refers to the multifaceted German word that encompasses movement, flow and interaction. The work was filmed in Berlin, a city with a strong culture of bicycle mobility, where environmentally friendly transport forms part of everyday urban dynamics. Within this context, the artist transposes behavioural patterns typically associated with car traffic onto a group of cyclists.
This shift makes the pattern itself visible: gestures shaped by the logic of a car traffic jam are reproduced even on a completely “harmless” mode of transport. An ecological medium begins to echo the structure of a non-ecological one. The work highlights a paradox of contemporary urbanisation, in which traffic behaviour often proves more persistent than the vehicles that originally produced it.
In Verkehr, Tatarintsev suggests that the toxicity of the modern city lies not only in cars as sources of pollution, but also in the behavioural models they have generated. Even within a “green” infrastructure, people continue to compete for space and act according to ingrained rhythms of urban density. The work invites the viewer to see these forms of movement as cultural traces that persist regardless of how environmentally friendly the means of transportation become.