Andreas Siekmann’s column on Griesplatz is a contemporary interpretation of Albrecht Dürer’s unrealized Monument to the Vanquished Peasants(1525). With this sketch and description Dürer was reacting to the so-called German Peasant War, during the course of which the rural population of what is now southern Germany and Austria revolted against feudal rule after the first waves of industrialization and globalization had robbed them of their means of subsistence. Today, fully industrialized agriculture devours the resources of an exhausted planet and the sheaths of wheat, scythes, and chicken cages from Dürer’s monument are more familiar from advertising than real life. The defeated peasant himself is an ambivalent figure, the sword in his back painfully reminiscent of the widespread right-wing legend of core populations being stabbed in the back by cosmopolitan traitors. 

Off-site production: Carlota Gómez, Benjamin Koziol
Column produced by Setfreddy (Freddy Gizas, Christos Vasilopoulos, Alexander Vikhrov, and Maria Vythoulka)

Link

https://2019.steirischerherbst.at/en/program/artists/438/andreas-siekmann