Debt Mountain

Debt is heavy. It weighs on those who have taken it on: states, regions, communities, households and individuals. It affects minds, bodies, and environments. Debt may be an abstraction, both as an economic and political technology, but most of us experience it as an embodied condition of burden, like a rock we must carry. “Debt mountain” or “Schuldenlawine” are the most dramatic terms to express the exploitative weight of financial or social obligation and the latent violence of collapse.

In their spatial activation, the Temporary Spaces Class moves a debt mountain of stones —actually props from papier-mâché as debt itself is a paradoxical form—, layered with textures that include exposed stock market newsprint.

Through gestural and participatory modes —the stones are lifted, carried, passed from one to another, and placed around seated bodies— the work explores the process of exchange at the heart of debt and forms of collective agency to question what we owe or what we are owed by others as members of a social community and capitalist market.

Temporary Spaces (Klasse Asli Serbest): Jisu Kim, Keumjung Roh, Johanna Hiege, Yunda Suh, Lea Jung, Vladislava Arzamastseva, Yoona Song, Vera Tolmatsova, Belenika Eichhorn, Sara Ahmed Neyazy Khayry Elbarkouki, Zeynep Yesilmaden

With support and contributions from Robert Coellen, Elizaveta Boucke, Shatw Gurji, Seulwoo Choi, Sebastian Grundmüller.

Thank you to Annette Hans, Susanne Huber, and Mona Mahall for the collaboration and input.

You can find more information on the website of GAK.

Annette Hans

Current courses

You Breathe Differently Under the Weight. Debt and Credit