_ _ _ City

With _ _ _STADT, the Kunstverein Siegen is opening a space that was never intended to be an art venue: the vacant Karstadt building. Where shoppers and goods once moved along escalators, shop windows beckoned, and consumption set the pace, a temporary space for artistic and architectural exploration is now emerging: a former department store—which, in Siegen as in many other cities, has become a symbol of inner-city structural change—is being transformed into a testing ground. What does vacancy mean in a city in transition? What stories are stored in these spaces—and what new ones can begin here?

In cooperation with Kunstverein Siegen and the New School of Architecture (N_AS) at the University of Siegen (Prof. Tobias Hönig, Prof. Tobias Becker), a section of the space is being transformed into an open laboratory. Artistic works, student designs, and participatory formats intertwine. The exhibition brings together and connects artistic and architectural perspectives that explore how spaces acquire new meanings through appropriation, repurposing, and design. It is about urban transformation—about disappearance and persistence, about buildings as repositories of past promises and as canvases for future development. The participating artists examine material cycles and production processes, reflect on notions of living and private space, and engage with transitions between interior and exterior as well as with forms of presentation and staging.

At the center is the question of how artistic and architectural models of thought respond to urban transformation processes—and how they themselves have a transformative effect, that is, not only analyzing changes but making them perceptible through the senses.

Location:
Section on the 2nd basement level, former Karstadt building,
Kölner Straße 1, 57072 Siegen
Dicker Turm entrance

Opening: March 14, 2026, 6:30 p.m.