In his long-termed drawing series, films and architectural models, Berlin-based artist Andreas Siekmann addresses the privatization of public space and the restructuring of labor conditions under the conditions of globalization. Partially with reference to historical projects such as Gerd Arntz’s and Otto Neurath’s pictorial pedagogy of the 1930s or even Botticelli’s Dante illustrations, Siekmann – who will participate both in this year’s documenta 12 and Skulptur Projekte Münster – in his works confronts the question of how economic and political processes can be rendered visible and has thus become an astute commentator of the relationship between city sponsoring and public art projects.

As his artists’ edition for “Texte zur Kunst”, Siekmann has created two digital prints, that, much as earlier pieces, have been produced using the popular application “Microsoft Word”. On the one hand Siekmann has designed the poster for a fictitious government campaign contrasting references to the implementation of so called “1-Euro jobs” and to the polemical debates about public welfare as a “social hammock” with the old post-Operaistic call “Nie wieder Arbeit! [Never work again!]”. On the other hand one can see a figure reminiscent of Arntz’s and Neurath’s Atlas which, as a cameraman, captures surveillance images of a red elephant representing those animal sculptures that by now have seemingly become an indispensable element not only of Germany’s city marketing.