_ _ _ STADT

With _ _ _STADT, Kunstverein Siegen opens a place never intended as an art venue: the vacant Karstadt department store. Where shoppers and goods once moved along escalators, shop windows seduced passers-by, and consumption set the rhythm, a temporary space for artistic and architectural engagement now emerges. A former department store—like in many other cities a symbol of inner-urban structural change—becomes a site of experimentation. Located on “Germany’s steepest shopping street,” at the threshold between lower and upper town, questions of future, identity, and urban public space converge. What does vacancy mean in a city in transition? Which stories are stored within these spaces—and which new ones can begin here? In collaboration with Kunstverein Siegen and the Neue Architekturschule (N_AS) of the University of Siegen (Prof. Tobias Hönig, Prof. Tobias Becker), a section of the building transforms into an open laboratory. Artistic works, student designs, and participatory formats interweave. An accompanying program of salons, lectures, film screenings, guided tours, and performative contributions connects the exhibition to current debates on urban development and turns vacancy itself into a subject of public discourse. Vacancy is not understood as a deficit, but as a space of possibility—a stage for alternative models of publicness. The exhibition brings together artistic and architectural positions that explore how spaces gain new meanings through appropriation, reuse, and design. It addresses urban transformation—disappearance and persistence, buildings as repositories of past promises and as projection surfaces for future development. The participating artists examine material cycles and production processes, reflect on notions of dwelling and private space, and engage with transitions between interior and exterior as well as forms of presentation and staging. At its core lies the question of how artistic and architectural modes of thinking respond to urban transformation—and how they themselves can act transformatively, making change not only visible but sensorially tangible. ___STADT extends beyond the former department store. The surrounding urban space and Haus Seel, the Kunstverein’s established exhibition venue, also become part of the project. A network of places, perspectives, and actors unfolds.