The ars viva awards of the Kulturkreis der deutschen Wirtschaft im BDI e.V. have been acknowledging outstanding young artists living in Germany since fifty-nine years. Each year the selection of winners takes place according to a different thematic focus relevant to contemporary art and fundamental social issues. Systems is the subject for the 2013 awards.

Three artists were chosen on account of their international approaches that profoundly showcased this year’s topic in highly divergent ways. Thus we have the New Zealand artist Simon Denny who, in his work, engages with role of digital media images today such as TV, or Melvin Moti, who lives in Rotterdam and Berlin and examines the way information is processed in the human brain. Özlem Günyol & Mustafa Kunt, originally from Turkey, trace the structures of social and political systems and how they form identities.