Andreas Siekmann (D) Trickle Down.
The public space in the
age of its privatisation,
Trickle Down. The public space in the age of its privatisation, 2007/2009
Three-part installation:
Spherical sculpture consisting of pressed fibre-glass elements, painted;
skip compactor, metal, sprayed;
glossary and interview – Alice Creischer und Andreas Siekmann with Werner Rügemer (D) – as a handout and download (below).
Landhaushof, Herrengasse 16
In the battle for market shares in the tourism industry, more and more cities are deploying marketing strategies developed and implemented by private firms or regional trade associations. In this process, the urban space and the public sphere are increasingly being transformed into a resource of economic interests and subjected to restrictions and exclusions in the name of these interests. The title of the work makes reference to one of the official rhetorical strategies that accompanies this transfer of public property to private interests: “Trickle Down. The public space in the age of its privatisation” alludes to the theory whereby great wealth in the hands of the few always trickles down to the ‘lower strata’ of society, thus bringing prosperity to all.
In the work created for “Sculpture Projects” in Münster in 2007, presented here for the first time since then in a new constellation, Siekmann spotlights an aspect of these privatisation trends that are not just emerging in Germany: however, in Germany over six hundred cities and municipalities already have a mascot – usually some sort of animal – that they use for advertising purposes, but also for art projects. Siekmann put thirteen such figures into a skip container sprayed with some 270 stencils of figures from these cities, indicating the year, and shaped their sorry remains into a large sphere. Together with the compactor and picture panels using typified images to demonstrate the economic structures with which the cities are privatising their responsibilities and tasks, the result is a monumental representation for the public space in the age of its privatisation and for the power relations that pervade it.
