Urban Biennale / Völklinger Hütte

In 2021, I was invited to the Urban Biennale, which always takes place in the Völklinger Hütte. Its very near to Saarbrücken. The Völklinger Hütte is the world's only fully preserved ironworks from the heyday of industrialization and also the first industrial monument of this era to be included in the UNESCO World Heritage List. There are 7km of paths to explore the Völklinger Hütte. As exhibiting artists, we were free to move around the premises. The exhibition took place in several huge rooms, and I had access to 2 large vertical walls. To respond to the colossal building, I decided to work with the theme of buildings as well. The Völklinger Hütte is a monument of the 20th century. It stands for the labor movement, on the one hand for camaraderie but also for its exploitation. Today, the labor movement hardly exists in our latitudes. Today's proletariat is the "digital proletariat". Instead of community, individualization is paramount, and the homo digitalis exploits themselves by constantly buying some crap and comparing themselves. While reading contemporary philosophical literature that critically examines the digital information age, I collect word formations that describe our era. And I love "concrete poetry". Thus, the idea arose to create building constructions through repetition from the collected words. The buildings constructed from repeated words initially appear confusing to the viewer. Only through focusing does the viewer recognize their respective meanings. However, this ability to focus has been lost to the Homo Digitalis since their dependence on digital devices. The phallically arranged word wallpapers towering over the viewer symbolize the submission of the Homo Digitalis in a society characterized by fake individualism, where one has become incapable of formulating one's own thoughts and is trapped in a stream of equality due to the overload of information and opinions that one can no longer filter. The hypochondriacally self-absorbed Homo Digitalis scrolls endlessly and fails to realize that too much of everything takes away their freedom.