Yesterday at the Alte Saline Hallein Alice Creischer and Andreas Siekmann were not talking about their artistic work or special artistic techniques, but about their work as curators. They reported about their experiences and working processes while constituting their exhibition "Principio Potosì" which is actually shown in Madrid. For this exhibition history and colonialism played an important role so it was unavoidable to tell the audience about the history of Potosì. This little city in Bolivia became very famous in the 16th century because of its huge mineral resources. Of chourse the quarrying was pushed by the spanish conquistadors in this time and people were forced to work in the mines. So the paintings from this time were characterized by colonialism and also by the christianisation the conquistadors brought with them. On a research trip to Bolivia Creischer and Siekmann found a lot of those paintings in churches and galleries and they really wanted to bring them to Europe (which was not always easy - or sometimes even impossible - as they told).

So what they did after selecting the paintings and researching about their background was asking several artists from all over the world to create an "answer" to the original. The reason why they didn't choose only bolivian artists but international ones was explained in a very clear way.

"Principio Potosì" stands not only for the city itself but also for the industrial working processes happening there. People were brought from the Philippines to work in the mines and the coins which were produced and embossed in Potosì were probably spread worldwide - as they were found on nearly every coast in the world. So Creischer and Siekmann define Potosì as one of the first capitalistic- and global-economic system we know about.

In the end Alice Creischer and Andreas Siekmann gave a very clear insight into to work as a curator and as they themselfs seemed so enthusiastic about Principio Potosì that a travel to Berlin in October (thats where the exhibition is going next) seems really worth it.

For more information visit: http://www.luzart.ch/ausstellungen/dem-principio-potosi-auf-der-spur.html