Übergänge, 2017
mixed media
All work and photographs © Max Siebenhaar
Max Siebenhaar
About the artist
To learn more about the artist, please click here.
About the work
Precarious employment relationships are on the increase and social advancement is no longer a given.The escalator is a metaphor frequently used in the past for social mobility and for the promises of advancement in a liberal market economy geared to growth and consumption.
But for many, the direction of travel has changed in the meantime; the society of social ascent has become a society of decline, precariousness and polarization.
The two architectural models are references from the inner city of Frankfurt: one is a public subway entrance in a state of construction, the other is the headquarters of the European Central Bank.
One is the hub of a shrinking public service sector, the other the centre of an international financial policy that has escaped democratic control.
The work alludes to the disparate character of the late architectural modernity and its symbolic content -
Utopia of participation and the welfare state on the one hand, concentration of capital and power on the other.
Text in German by Naomi Hennig