GELD MACHT SICHT BAR
2013 - GELD MACHT SICHT BAR was a European art project by Josef Danner and Georg Lebzelter in cooperation with International Print Network and EPAMEDIA (europäische Plakat- und
Außenmedien) GmbH.
Twelve international artists or artist teams each designed a poster with the goal of producing a new code of formal language for public space. A central theme was the relationship between money,
power, and visibility.
In the context of the European Union’s program, Culture 2007–13, the project was sponsored by the department of Art and Culture Lower Austria, by the Institute for Public Art Styria and Land
Burgenland.
Participating artists, in alphabetical order:
Team Ammar Abo Bakr / Aya Tarek (EG)
Team Iris Andraschek / Hubert Lobnig (AT)
Team Josef Danner / Huseyin Isik (AT/TR)
Team Lucia Dellefant / Anton Petz (DE/AT)
Julius Deutschbauer (AT)
Team Georg Lebzelter / Nikolaus Link (AT)
Dan Perjovschi (RO)
Endi Poskovic (US)
Werner Reiterer (AT)
Klaus Staeck (DE)
Ingeborg Strobl (AT)
Erwin Wurm (AT)
click to enlarge
ES WERDE SCHULD: poster by Josef Danner, co-designed with Hüseyin Isik, 2013
On the poster one could read “ABRAKADABRA / ES WERDE SCHULD” (abracadabra / let there be guilt) and “universal reserve—global observe” in combination with many arrows, repeatedly driven by little pictogram people within a closed system. Some stumbled, others cheered; still others were disappointed or enraged. Yet no one could escape the circulus vitiosus. This picture puzzle was easy to decipher. Explicit references are made to the Federal Reserve and its role in the fictive setting of the value of money. On a meta-level, the artists’ project represented the public space as a space of power, which has long been the economy’s domain through the omnipresence of advertising and mass media.