On May 4 2013, Stephen comments on tourism and the reification of the economy through a guerrilla performance work MIKROÖKONOMIE (microeconomics) in front of the Frankfurt stock exchange.

 

Stephen imitates the tourist penchant of documenting their presence in front of a monument, a symbolic gesture of consumption that originated from the “grand view” prevalent in colonialism. However instead of a typical “tourist” pose, Stephen improvises a new vocabulary of stock poses reacting to the bull/bear that manifest the “micro” in microeconomics – how the economy is defined be an elite few who decide what the numbers mean and what they are with no personal repercussion, while every man on the street bears the brunt of those decisions in their everyday lives.

 

The use of false-color infrared photography creates a lurid effect between the otherworldly and the surreal.