UB Underground
The lives you do not see, or nobody wants to see, do not exist. Mutes like the snow and dark as the path of the night rats, they slide along the peripheral streets, they lower in the underground tunnels looking for protection, a shelter. Also in Ulaan Baatar, as anywhere in the
world, those who cannot find their place in the consumption society is
forced to follow, to run after a space for existing, a portion of land
where to live. The capitalist idea is a guillotine that leaves no way
out: “I have money, therefore I am” would say Descartes observing the contemporary society. For those whose living is not legitimated by a sufficient amount of money, the only opportunity left is o occupy abandoned
and refused by the rich society, the places where nobody would even
think about living. The Mongolian winters reach 30°C below zero and wintertime is a sand storm that cuts the skin and blocks breathing. This, the narrow underground spaces of the town where the large city heating ducts are located (the only “public” heating source during the freezing winters) transform in shelters, in alcoves, for the “street people” of UB. The only revenue source for these persons is reselling plastic bottles and cans found in the city waste dumps. Forgotten like somebody wants to remind, with their white bags full of bottles, they wander
like ghosts in the dusty streets of Ulaan Baatar. Then, as if they
belonged to an underground word, they go back to their “holes”, in
their dark tunnels, sheltering in the shadow of a society that prefers
not to look, a society thatprefers turning the sight away to avoid making questions to itself and giving answers.