Underground art "Up in Arms", Berlin, 2019
Underground stations Fehrbelliner Platz and Kottbusser Tor (Posters)
Alexanderplatz (Promotion campaign)

Lenticular posters, lenticular postcards, promotion clothing

Photographs: JG, Bild 4 + 5 Nihad Nino Pusija

Germanys leading life insurance company is a major shareholder of the German armaments corporation Rheinmetall AG through its subsidiary Allianz Global Investors.
The company also invests in other armaments groups such as BAE Systems, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman.*

Thus people's (life) insurance on the one hand is connected to people's insecurity on the other.**
Insecurity is not only represented by releasing the safety catch of an expandable hand grenade made by Rheinmetall, as shown on the motif. It also points to the direct destabilisation caused by weapons production and exports.

The piece uses the artistic-activist strategy of adbusting, highlighting connections between everyday life and the armaments industry, with the example of two Berlin-based companies.

Originally, the lenticular posters were intended for the S-Bahn station Brandenburger Tor, in the direct vicinity of Rheinmetall's offices and the Allianz Forum. However, this was prevented by Deutsche Bahn, since it feared it would lose its neutrality if a subsidiary of an insurance company was named directly in this context.

The monument preservation authority prevented the posters from being presented near Pariser Platz.
The BVG (responsible for Berlin's underground stations) was initially concerned due to the depicted hand grenades, since it contravened the company's "no weapons policy", but it eventually approved the poster.

* Source: Morningstar, Date: 31.08.2019 | ICAN/PAX report "Shorting our security" 6/2019 | Dirty Profits 18.07.2018
** Note on the German pun on "versichern | entsichern": In German, only the first three letters of the word "versichern" (= insure) need to be changed to form the word "entsichern" (= to release a weapon's safety catch).