INDUSTRIAL: Seidenstraßen 3000 12.09.2026 — 10.01.2027

The exhibition INDUSTRIAL: Silk Roads 3000 has a double title. 

Silk Roads 3000 sounds like science fiction — an exotic place in the distant future. The Silk Roads never truly disappeared; they have simply changed in shape, scale and speed. Caravans no longer cross the deserts of Central Asia laden with precious silk; instead, trains, trucks and container ships carry the oil, grain, raw materials, spare parts and manufactured goods that make up our daily lives across the globe. 

The exhibition is called INDUSTRIAL because this contemporary reality is both industrial and geopolitical in its reverberations, taking the form of a massive yet largely invisible logistics network.

The exhibition begins in a region intimately familiar with this history: the Ruhr. In the nineteenth century, the Ruhr was the throbbing heart of the industrial world – a cradle of wealth, poverty and revolutionary thought — before collapsing in the 1970s/1980s due to the decline of coal exploitation and steel production. Today, having been transformed by culture and logistics, the Ruhr has become one of the western endpoints of these new roads on the geopolitical map.

But to follow the flows of goods on these routes is also to follow the people who make them possible. Every commodity we consume has involved gestures, labour and sometimes alienation. Presenting 23 artists from 16 countries, INDUSTRIAL: Silk Roads 3000 asks a simple yet essential question: Who makes and transports what we consume?