Renés Collapse Collection

2025. Hoax Startup Intervention, Munich & Berlin. Collaboration with Zora Hünermann.

CONTEXT: SIGNA Holding, René Benko’s real-estate conglomerate, collapsed in 2023 after years of aggressive speculation. When its structure imploded, the shockwaves spread across Europe: high-profile buildings were abandoned mid-process, leaving empty assets, legal disputes, and a residue of fascination around Benko’s meteoric rise and fall. Munich’s Alte Akademie, gutted, fenced off, and unresolved, became one of the most symbolic remnants of this collapse.

TEXT:
Installed within the ruins of Munich’s Alte Akademie, the Collapse Collection launched in autumn 2025. Disguised as a commercial startup, a small exhibition booth occupied the site for a weekend, offering its key assets: fan NFTs capturing the rise and fall of René Benko and the SIGNA Group.
Presented as a profit-driven venture, the project promoted a simple pitch: invest in the spectacle around Benko and hope for returns. Its credibility came solely from appearances and the creation of a narrative – a polished counter, an official-looking entry, and the staged use of a construction site – drawing in curious visitors, former partners, and rivals.
Original Everyday objects auctioned from Benko’s Villa Ansaldi – ketchup bottles, boxing gloves, caper fruits – became collectible digital tokens, as well as other NFTs in the different collections. Participants invested not in matter, but in a narrative and meaning: fragments of failure that could be owned and traded. Turning leftovers into blockchain assets echoed SIGNA’s logic: value as narrative, ownership as belief.
This trust mechanism extended to the site itself. The Alte Akademie, emptied by speculation, became part of the display, as if building, booth, and fenced-off ruins had always been elements of the spectacle.

After Munich and Berlin – next stop will be Vienna in Summer 2026.

Support by Julian Kreamer, Laura Birdie, Selin Doganer, Mara Fathy, Daki Rolex, Billy Contreras, Vincent Jondeau, Freiraum Kollektiv, Rivera Records, Alexander Zakharov.