Heidi Specker and Dragutin Banic, Lutz Braun, Susanne Bürner, Andrea Büttner, Daniela Burger, Sunah Choi, Tatjana Doll, Kerstin Drechsel, Lina Ehrentraut, Isabelle Fein, Gerd Grüneis, Olivier Guesselé-Garai, Anna Haifisch, Sebastian Hammwöhner, Peter Herrmann, Laura Horelli, Maximilian Kirmse, Ulrike Kuschel, Peter Lütje, Antje Majewski, Florian Merkel, Raaf van der Sman, Martin Städeli, Erik Swars, Beate Terfloth, Wawrzyniec Tokarski, Stefan Vogel, Marcus Weber

Berlin-based artist Heidi Specker lets maize sprout in the exhibition. In colourful diversity, “kissed awake” by 27 artist friends and colleagues, the plants proliferate. Specker issued an invitation to these reworkings of a schematic representation of maize as part of her own project Damme. Damme, the place of her origin, lies in Lower Saxony’s centre of the meat industry and the food industry that focuses on veganism and flexitarianism. The fact that there is a new interest in plant protein sources does not alter the fact that plant crops are grown in highly industrialised agriculture, and maize is a standardised, yet highly specialised crop. So-called hybrid varieties, plants that are infertile and thus oppose a circular economy, ensure dependence on the seed companies. This not only gives these companies enormous market power. It also rapidly reduces the global gene pool. According to the Heinrich Böll Foundation, in contrast to the agricultural markets in North and South America and Europe, 80 per cent of farmers, especially in Asia and Africa, still obtain seeds through propagation and exchange. It is to be hoped that the agricultural giants will be prevented from expanding their market power there as well. The collective project Cornfeld initiated by Specker points to this problem, playfully, lightly, in creative diversity.