Used office desks, construction netting and vinyl lettering, MediaLab Eigen+Art, in Deutsche Vereinsbank, Leipzig, Germany.
This site-specific installation looks at the political, economic and social shifts the city is undergoing. Promoting itself in the mid-90s as a boomtown after reunification with West Germany, Leipzig attempted to capture the inflow of West German capital in order to reclaim its former glory as a major trade and transportation centre. The red netting, found throughout the city wrapping the exterior of buildings under construction or renovation clings instead to interior architectural elements, hanging like drapery. The 2 metre high “Boom!” text uses the same font as that of the “Leipzig Kommt!” promotional campaign logo (translation: “Leipzig is up and coming!”) and is flanked by drawn red “curtains”. The obsolete GDR desks, symbols of the former power structure, form an elevated floor/ stage onto which the viewer climbs, as if in entering the work one participates in the re-positioning of Leipzig as a player on the world stage.
