Interiors

Paula Allhorn

Info: I happened to go to Savannah because my boyfriend was working at a film festival there. I spent days taking long and methodical walks around the small city. It is an unusually well-preserved city for American standards. If you are attentive, the whole history of the United States will be laid out visually before your eyes. The city of Savannah flourished during the transition from Mercantile to Industrial Capitalism as men from all kinds of places arrived there and made their fortunes through the production and export of cotton and rice. As a port city, Savannah served as a transloading site in which these goods were produced on the nearby plantations and sent to Europe or the nothern states. Early industrialists built themselves large, magnificent houses, but not necessarily in order to live in them. The houses were only inhabited a quarter of the year to keep buisness under control; they carried a symbolic value which created respect among the working men left behind. For the rest of the year, they resided in places which were more culturally flourishing or less plagued by heat. The profitable plantation economy of the American south was built on the labor of people who were robbed of their homelands and deprived of their rights. This system collapsed after the Civil War was lost. As a result, the South went financially bankrupt and lost its economic relavance. Subsequently the wealthy plantation and mansion owners left the region for more lucrative locations. (…) Location: Caprii by Sies + Höke, Orangeriestr. 6, 40213 Düsseldorf / Parallel eröffnet die Ausstellung Paul Hutchinson. Selected Citizens bei Sies + Höke.