Artist Talk
Art und Weise: Alice Creischer & Andreas Siekmann with Alex Alberro

Artists in Conversation

Tue, 10/24/2023
18:30 - 20:30 Goethe-Institut New York

Working in collaboration since the early 1990s, the multihyphenate artists-theorists-curators Alice Creischer and Andreas Siekmann have been outspoken leaders in subversive exhibition practices within Germany and internationally. In this episode of Art und Weise: Artists in Conversation, Creischer and Siekmann will discuss three of their exhibitions spanning from 1995 to 2010, Messe 2ok (1995), ExArgentina (2001), and The Potosí Principle (2010), alongside art historian Alex Alberro. This retrospective glance provides the artists and Alberro an opportunity to think through the state of large-scale research exhibitions, art fairs, and the biennale system today. Together, the speakers will elaborate a trajectory in Creischer and Siekmann’s shared practice over time, responding to the development of the increasingly standardized forms of exhibiting contemporary art. The conversation will also include a discussion of the staging and reception of the controversial Documenta 15, last year in Kassel, Germany.

Messe 2ok was conceived as an antithesis to the 29th installment of Art Cologne—Germany’s leading commercial art fair. Taking the form of a congress, Messe 2ok hosted a competing exhibition featuring over 30 artists and collectives, and platformed discussions exposing and criticizing the capitalist structure undergirding the art market.

ExArgentina was a four-year project initiated in 2001 following the economic crisis and social unrest in Argentina. Manifesting in local and international exhibitions and conferences, ExArgentina investigated the failures of the Argentinean government to prevent the depression and placed it in the larger context of deeply seated economic instability in modern neoliberal states.

The Potosí Principle is Creisher and Seikmann’s most well-known exhibition, co-curated with Max Jorge Hinderer. The exhibition identified the origins of global capitalism in the once-wealthy silver-mining city of Potosí, present-day Bolivia, which greatly contributed to Spain’s economic power during its colonial rule. In 2021, the afterlife of this exhibition was presented as The Potosí Principle Archive at the HKW in Berlin, a version of which will be exhibited again in New York City in October 2023 (see details below).

This event inaugurates our new ongoing series, Art und Weise: Artists in Conversation, which features artists working in the interdisciplinary visual field to share their processes, methodologies, and approaches to artmaking. Follow our social media and subscribe to our newsletter for more Art und Weise discussions in the upcoming months.



Revisiting The Potosí Principle Archive: Histories of Art and Extraction examines the legacies of colonization through the intertwined histories of art, labor, and resource extraction in South America. The exhibition presents Alice Creischer and Andreas Siekmann's series of publications The Potosí Principle Archive alongside films and artworks. It will be on view at the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA), located at 142 Franklin Street in Tribeca, from October 28, 2023 through February 10, 2024.



Alice Creischer studied Philosophy, German literature and Visual Arts in Düsseldorf. As one of the key figures of German political art movements in the 1990s, Creischer contributed to a great amount of collective projects, publications, and exhibitions. Along with Andreas Siekmann, Creischer has been co-curator of exhibitions such as Messe 2ok (1995), ExArgentina (2001) and The Potosi Principle (2010), in which she has developed a specific curatorial practice that correlates with her work as an artist and theorist. Alice Creischer lives and works in Berlin.

Andreas Siekmann studied History and History of Art at the University of Munich, and was awarded his doctorate in Art at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Since 1987 he has taken part in many exhibitions as both an artist and curator. He has worked in close collaboration since the 1990s with the German artist Alice Creischer, with whom he co-curated Messe 2ok (1995), ExArgentina (2001) and The Potosi Principle (2010). Andreas Siekmann lives and works in Berlin.

Alexander Alberro is the Virginia Wright Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at Barnard College and Columbia University where he teaches modern and contemporary European, U.S., and Latin American art, as well as the history of photography. He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including fellowships from the Howard Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, and is currently completing a book-length study of the newly-formed transnational web of individuals and institutions that has in the past three decades fundamentally changed the nature of contemporary art.