The Circulation of Labour, Capital and Life as a Supply Chain

Alice Creischer and Andreas Siekmann’s three-room installation at Hildesheim Cathedral Museum addresses aspects of the historical and contemporary economy, including the mining of silver and rare earths and the exploitation of user data from contemporary communications technology, as well as colonialism and missionary activity. Creischer and Siekmann make use of the ‘Potosí Principle’ to recontextualize and reinterpret historical objects from the collection of Hildesheim Cathedral Museum.

In the 16th century, so much silver was mined from the mine near the city of Potosí in Bolivia that people said it could have made a silver bridge across the Atlantic to Spain. As capital, this silver set a global dynamic in motion, one which continues to this day. Elements of this dynamic include industrialization, banking, and trade, as well as the displacement and exploitability of people in Europe and the colonial world. As Creischer and Siekmann put it: ‘The term “Potosí Principle” refers to the ongoing existence of a logic of exploitation of resources and people. This began with the conquest of South America and continues to this day.’ The Potosí Principle was also the title of a 2010 exhibition dedicated to colonial Baroque painting in Bolivia. Ten years later, an archive was created from the project's numerous documents and sources. Both the project and the archive are conceived as a collective practice of continuous exchange between European and South American artists and writers.

In developing this exhibition, Creischer and Siekmann took as their starting point a 12th-century candlestick from the Maas region, part of the Museum's collection. At the base of the candlestick sit three female figures, allegories of Asia, Africa, and Europe, the three continents known in Europe at the time of the candlestick’s making. The artists’ own works comment on Europe and Africa, supplemented thematically with America, the fourth continent. Thus, for example, Africa is linked with the exploitation of coltan mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo. With the installation ‘Printing company’, Creischer and Siekmann take us to South America. The installation is positioned opposite the Wrisberg Epitaph, a 16th-century painting depicting a rare iconography of the Catholic sacraments. ‘Printing company’ is a visual narrative. Reproductions of historical images include borrowings of the mystical wine press motif, illustrations of the mining industry, Potosí’s communion and coin presses, as well as indigenous witnessing of missionary work in 16th century Bolivia.

Creischer and Siekmann’s work makes reference to the formal language developed in the Vienna Method of Pictorial Statistics and Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas. The two artists work with simple materials; their installation incorporates artworks from very different sites of production: video works, paintings, drawings, sculpted animal fur, graphic works, conceptual texts, ceramic figures, textiles, and audio tracks. The works associated with the different continents are connected across the three rooms by the motif of the ‘chain’, borrowed from the Wrisberg Epitaph. ‘Our research into supply chains at first appears to be mainly concerned with extractivism and resource wars. But additionally, the images tell us that these wars are connected to the commodification of free will, which is converted into units—turned into demons and into statements—transported via rare earth semiconductors, looted and plundered in new wars and via the diplomacy of the “business which thrives on ruins”,’ suggest Creischer and Siekmann.

For decades, the artists Alice Creischer (b. 1960, Gerolstein, Germany) and Andreas Siekmann (b. 1961, Hamm, Germany) have worked together on artistic projects which address economic, political and social questions. The duo has been invited to stage solo exhibitions since the early 1990s, while also regularly participating in prestigious group shows, including Documenta 11 (2002), Documenta 12 (2007), the Skulptur Projekte Münster 07 (2007) and the 13th Istanbul Bienniale (2013). Their works are held in the collections of the best-known museums of contemporary art, including the Museum Ludwig, Cologne, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York.

The major exhibition The Potosi Principle: How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? Colonial Image Production in the Global Economy (2010–11) was fundamental to the creation of the installation presented here.

Sonia Abián (b. 1966, Posadas, Argentina) was a participant in the Potosí Principle project. Abían’s work brings together postcolonialism and feminism.

Dr. Max Jorge Hinderer Cruz (b. 1980, Heidelberg, Germany), the co-curator of the Potosí Principle exhibition, is an author, art critic, curator and artist.

Tshibumba Kanda Matulu (b. 1947, Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo; disappeared in Zaire in 1981) worked as a painter. He is best known for a cycle of 101 paintings depicting the history of the Congo.

Opening hours

Tuesday to Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Hildesheim Cathedral Museum will remain closed on December 24 and December 31.