bauhaus
imaginista
●Edition 3: Moving Away
Jan. 28–Apr. 3 2020
Exhibition

bauhaus imaginista: Moving Away. Istanbul

  • SALT Beyoğlu
  • İstiklal Caddesi 136, Beyoğlu 34430 İstanbul, Turkey

One hundred years after its foundation, bauhaus imaginista offers a new interpretation of the Bauhaus as a globally connected institution and as a proposition of modernity, of the kind that drew its impulse from encounters and exchanges with various cultures. Consisting of an exhibition in four chapters along with a series of publications, panel discussions and symposiums, bauhaus imaginista is represented by the chapter Moving Away at SALT Beyoğlu in Istanbul. Moving Away, which details the diverse approaches to Bauhaus in separate sociopolitical contexts, is accompanied by the “Collected Research” on the project’s international explorations and the “Pedagogical Adaptations in Turkey,” an archival display and a workshop program by SALT for further introduction of local cases to this final edition.

Marcel Breuer, Collage ein bauhaus-film. fünf jahre lang, 1926
in: bauhaus. zeitschrift für gestaltung, Nr. 1, 1926
Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin, © Thomas Breuer.

The Bauhaus was founded in Weimar in 1919 after the end of the First World War as a school for a new kind of design. By transforming education and combining art, handicraft, design and architecture, the founders thought existing social conditions could also be reformed. The new creative practices, ways of working and ways of living developed at the Bauhaus were all aimed at liberating people from Germany’s nationalistic and authoritarian past. The Bauhaus was a cosmopolitan project from its inception, forging connections across the globe. The school’s pedagogy and practice were international and heterogeneous, and at different times adopted principles from the movements Arts and Crafts and Neues Bauen [New Building] in addition to socialism, communism, spiritualism, and Soviet Constructivism. In 1933, the school was closed by the national socialists and forcibly dispersed, causing many of its members to flee Germany, and as a consequence the Bauhaus emanated to nations beyond Europe. These histories suggest how Bauhaus ideas were refracted, adapted or rejected through contact with local conditions, Cold War struggles, non-aligned politics and dictatorship, as well as processes of decolonization and development projects.

The four individual chapters of bauhuas imaginista Corresponding With, Learning From, Moving Away, and Still Undead — are based on four Bauhaus objects: the 1919 Bauhaus Manifesto, a 1926 collage by Marcel Breuer, a 1927 drawing by Paul Klee, and Kurt Schwerdtfeger’s Reflektorische Farblichtspiele [Reflecting Color-Light Play] (1922). These focal objects were employed as starting points to cultivate the thematic and conceptual contents, which examine the varied genealogies of the Bauhaus reception around the world. The chapters have been materialized in collaboration with a transnational group of artists, researchers, and institutions, through a number of exhibitions, conferences, and workshops that took place in Hangzhou, Kyoto, Tokyo, São Paulo, Lagos, New Delhi, Rabat, New York, Moscow, Berlin, Nottingham and Bern over the past three years.

Moving Away surveys how Bauhaus debates on design unfolded during the first half of the 20th century and how they subsequently changed in relation to the disparate geopolitical conditions. Featuring the work of Bauhaus migrants in the Soviet Union, India, China, Taiwan, North Korea and Nigeria, the chapter points out the constant pressure faced by the designers to adapt their concepts and modes of working according to social, cultural, and political exigencies.

The “Collected Research” installation of curatorial studies, texts and images—associated with the chapters and the international programs of bauhaus imaginista—provides a space to engage with the many layers of the project. Designed by the artist Luca Frei as part sculpture and part exhibition architecture, the structure is centered around a computer terminal where users can browse the bauhaus imaginista online journal.

The Istanbul presentation of Moving Away will include an investigation on the pioneering approaches and trends in basic art and design education in Turkey. Foundational courses taught at Istanbul Technical University, the State School Of Applied Fine Arts (today Marmara University Fine Arts Faculty), Middle East Technical University and the State Academy of Fine Arts in Istanbul (today Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University) will be scrutinized through archival materials and public workshops in the “Pedagogical Adaptations in Turkey” space on the second floor of SALT Beyoğlu.

Curated by Marion von Osten and Grant Watson, bauhaus imaginista is a major international project that marks the centenary of the Bauhaus by focusing on its global reception. Events and exhibitions in 2018–2019 have been realized in partnership between the Bauhaus Kooperation Berlin Dessau Weimar, the Goethe-Institut and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin and in collaboration with a network of researchers, artists, curators, and art and design institutions across the world. bauhaus imaginista was made possible by funds from the German Federal Government Commission for Culture and Media. The German Federal Cultural Foundation supported the exhibition in Berlin, while the Federal Foreign Office has supported projects staged abroad.

●Event documentation
●Slide Show
Photo Documentation of the Exhibition

Photo documentation of the exhibition bauhaus imaginista: Moving Away. Istanbul at SALT Beyoğlu, Istanbul.

Photos: Mustafa Hazneci, SALT → more

●Artist Work
Scenes from the Most Beautiful Campus in Africa — A Film about the Ife Campus

Zvi Efrat, 2019, film stills from the exhibition video projection, 25 min, color, sound, English.
Courtesy of the artist. → more

●Related Articles
●Article
A Migratory Life—from Dessau to Moscow to Mexico — Hannes Meyer and Lena Bergner and the Arts

In this article Marion von Osten focusses on the curatorial research involved in two of the project’s four chapters: Moving Away and Learning From. She rethinks the importance of the migratory life of the Swiss architect Hannes Meyer and Bauhaus weaver Lena Bergner, starting with Meyer’s two-year directorship of the Bauhaus Dessau, the couple’s time working in the USSR (1931–1936), and, finally, their decade-long period as exiles in Mexico, which lasted from 1939 to 1949, the year they returned to Switzerland. → more

●Article
Selman Selmanagić at the Crossroads of Different Cultures — From Childhood Years in Bosnia to Bauhaus Education and Travels

Selman Selmanagić’s childhood years in Bosnia, on the eve of the First World War, as well as his education in Sarajevo, Ljubljana and at Bauhaus Dessau between the two world wars, together with his work in Palestine and Berlin, shaped his worldview and experience with different cultures and traditions. Throughout his career, he perpetually strove to find contemporary answers for the challenges of the time he was living in. → more

●Article
For the Faculty of Architecture at METU — Bauhaus was a Promise

“ARCH 101 Basic Design” is the title of the introductory course offered to the first-year students in the METU Faculty of Architecture (Middle East Technical University, Ankara). Since the establishment of the school, this course has been conducted with a very strong Bauhaus impact. → more