The installation SALE examines anti-terror barriers in public space. Since the mid-2010s, concrete blocks, bollards, and other vehicle barriers have increasingly been deployed in cities in response to attacks carried out with vehicles. Initially conceived as temporary security measures, these barriers have gradually become normalized over the years.

The barriers embody an ambivalent promise. On the one hand, they are intended to provide protection; on the other, they make a potential threat visible. In this sense, they symbolize the extent to which public space is increasingly planned and designed with potential threats in mind.

SALE takes up this ambivalence. At an informal sales stand, baseball caps featuring motifs of various anti-terror barriers are offered for sale. Functional security objects are thus transformed into iconographic signs, branding, and lifestyle objects.

As a wearable fashion accessory, the baseball cap also raises questions of individual identification: What does it mean to wear a symbol of protection, control, and potential threat on one’s own body? At the intersection of art and fashion design, the work examines how design not only makes social developments visible, but can also contribute to their normalization.

Photo 1: Kai-Hendrik Windeler
Photos 2–5: Sven Bergelt
Installation views, ora Leipzig