Trade – Commodities, Communication, and Consciousness in World Trade Today
Since time immemorial, the world has been determined by trade and commerce. Commodities are produced and manufactured in one place, offered for sale, exchanged and bought in another, shipped, dispatched, resold and consumed in many different destinations. This seems to be a never-ending principle that has existed from the first warehouses and reshipment ports to today’s wholesale trade. But the ways, volumes and values have acquired undreamed-of dimensions.
We can observe the concrete transfer of the merchandise on the water, on the roads and in the air, but it has lost much of its visual impact: rationalization and regularization have robbed trade of its charm, and containerization has neutralized its flavor and vitality. In the stock exchanges, we encounter total abstraction – abstraction of money, shares, options and figures. Together, they simulate trade volumes, trade movements and trade worlds. How can the new global trade acquire a visual form and be expressed in pictures? What are its ways? Which values does it engender, and which does it annul? These are the questions asked by the exhibition entitled Trade withworks by 60 international photographers and artists.
With Merry Alpern, Olivo Barbieri, Boris Becker, Valérie Belin, Wout Berger, Blank & Jeron, Frank Breuer, Joachim Brohm, Balthasar Burkhard, Claude Closky, Miles Coolidge, Augusto Alves da Silva, Thomas Demand, Todd Eberle, Pierre Faure / Marie-Francine Le Jalu, Peter Fischli / David Weiss, Karin Geiger, Beate Geissler / Oliver Sann, John Goto, Greenpeace, Isabelle Grosse, Andreas Gursky, Jacqueline Hassink, Romuald Hazoumé, Matthias Hoch, Dan Holdsworth, Uschi Huber, Steeve Iuncker, Annica Karlsson Rixon, Julia Knop, Neal Cummings / Marysia Lewandowska, Bettina Lockemann, Manager Magazin / Jo Jankowski, Boris Mikhailov, John Miller, Fernando Moleres, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Marianne Müller, Cat Tuong Nguyen, Ralf Peters, Nina Pohl, Marc Räder, Timm Rautert, Heiner Schilling, Florian Schwinge, Allan Sekula, Henrik Spohler, Joel Sternfeld, Sturtevant, Gerald van der Kaap, Massimo Vitali, Markus Weisbeck, Kelly Wood, World Vision / Kai Uwe Gundlach, Matthias Ziegler.
The exhibition was curated by Thomas Seelig and Urs Stahel. A cooperation with the Nederlands Foto Instituut, Rotterdam.
Main sponsor: UBS AG