• Fri 08 04 – Sun 17 07 2022 •
Potosí Principle – Archive

a project by ALICE CREISCHER and ANDREAS SIEKMANN

with MONIKA BAER, JOHN BARKER, STEPHAN DILLEMUTH, INES DOUJAK, ELVIRA ESPEJO AYCA, MARIA GALINDO, DIMITRY GUTOV, HARUN FAROCKI, MIGUEL HILARI, ZHIBIN LIN, DANITZA LUNA, MALVINA (FREUNDE DER TULPE IM DREIECK), EDUARDO MOLINARI, STEPHAN MÖRSCH, MUJERES CREANDO, TOBIAS MORAWSKI, PSYLLOS, DAVID RIFF, ROTER PLATZ (FUSION), KONSTANZE SCHMITT, XAVIERA VILAMITJANA DE LA CRUZ, KARIN DE MIGUEL WESSENDORF a.o.

Installation view: Potosí Principle – Archive, Akademie der Künste der Welt (Academy of the Arts of the World), 2022 | Photos: Katja Illner

The city of Potosí in today's Bolivia was, based on forced labor, one of the most important silver mining areas in the world from the 16th to the 18th century. The history of this Latin American mining town illustrates that European capitalism is inconceivable without the colonial exploitation of people and nature.

12 years ago, the exhibition The Potosí Principle examined the decisive influence that silver exploitation had on the global economic power of the time and how the development of industry and banking was conditioned by colonialism and its crimes. The exhibition was shown in 2010/11 at the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin and the Museo nacional de Arte and MUSEF in La Paz.

The exhibition Potosí Principle – Archive now presents the archive of this project, with which the artists Alice Creischer and Andreas Siekmann want to explore its blind spots and reconnect to the question of where the 'Potosí Principle' - the principle of global exploitation - can be found today.

This re-questioning is done through contemporary works - images and artistic objects - linked to 36 artist-designed booklets. In doing so, the archive is rethinking the artistic practice of the original exhibition, which contrasted baroque imagery from Potosí and the La Paz region with contemporary new productions. The booklets are interwoven through their numerous references and, as in a reading room, invite visitors to engage with the themes of decolonization, extractivism, inquisition, and capitalism.

Photos: Katja Illner

Fri 08 04 2022 – Sun 17 07 2022
Academyspace, Herwarthstraße 3, 50672 Cologne
Fri–Sun | 2–7 pm
Holidays included
Free admission

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