The City and the Bauhaus: Forging Modernity Together · The Architecture RADIKAL festival...

The City and the Bauhaus:

Forging Modernity Together

Centenary programme 2019

3Centenary programme 2019

The City and the Bauhaus: Forging Modernity Together

It was the feeling that a whole new era was beginning that

drew the Bauhaus school from Weimar to the industrial

town of Dessau. The Bauhaus operated here for seven years

and made the town an internationally renowned centre

of the modern avant-garde. Together, the city and the

Bauhaus shared the vision of shaping the industrial modern

age. In the centenary year of 2019, the town invites visitors

to discover the story of the Bauhaus in Dessau and immerse

themselves in the atmosphere of the 1920s.

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Exhibition

Bauhaus Buildings Dessau ¬ Icons of Modernism – Re-curated Opening in January 2019

Dessau is the city with the largest number of Bauhaus

buildings anywhere in the world. The Bauhaus building, the

Masters’ Houses, the historical Employment Office and the

Dessau-Törten Housing Estate – each building is a modern

architectonic prototype. To commemorate the centenary,

they will for the first time be curated together in a joint

exhibition. Visitors will learn how experimental, radical and

utopian Bauhauslers’ thinking was on the question of archi-

tecture as applied design for a new, modern way of life.

Organised by: Bauhaus Dessau Foundation

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Exhibition

Invisible Places ¬ Exhibition in the City‘s Public Spaces March–November 2019

Dessau served as a laboratory for the Bauhaus in the 1920s.

The city financed and promoted and the Bauhaus experi-

mented and produced. During the seven years in which the

Bauhaus operated in Dessau, cafés, apartments and shops

were furbished with furniture and textiles from the work-

shops, building facades and park pavilions were designed,

and its graphic design was manifested in exhibitions,

advertising brochures, newspapers and brand images.

The open-air exhibition Invisible Places takes you back to

the 1920s with more than a dozen stops along the way.

It illustrates the sense of an ambitious industrial town and

shows the numerous places where the Bauhaus masters

lived and worked in Dessau. Events such as “Rebhuh-

ngeschnetzeltes à la Gropius”, recreational activities such

as canoeing or walking through the water meadows by

the Elbe and piano music by Satie and Stuckenschmidt will

bring the atmosphere of the Bauhaus in all its manifestations

vividly to life.

Organised by: Dessau-Roßlau Town Council in cooperation

with the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation

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Installation

Passages Bauhaus – City ¬ Art Installations in Public SpacesMay–October 2019

A dot becomes a line and the line turns into a surface. The

students of the Peter Behrens School of Arts in Düsseldorf

have taken the study of movement by Wassily Kandinsky,

combined it with choreographies by William Forsythe

and realised them three-dimensionally in the city’s public

domain. The project Passages Bauhaus – City invites visitors

to the Bauhaus centenary celebrations to experience the

route from the Bauhaus building to the main station and

the Anhalt Theatre, and from there to the Bauhaus Museum

Dessau, interactively.

The concept: a black ball begins to roll, becomes a con-

trolled line, then a sound space in the main station. Walking

becomes an ever-changing experience – between guiding

lines, sliding doors and trampolines. The project plays with

contrasts. Visually, the installations are in a uniform black and

offer a surprising, diverse array of sensual impressions –

in haptic, kinetic and acoustic ways. The project also plays

on the atmospheres of urban spaces: wide-open spaces

are bordered, round spaces crossed with lines, the horizon-

tal is broken by jumping on a trampoline with high, upward

movements. With this, the walk becomes a dynamic and

sensual amusement for everyone, an invitation to play.

Organised by: Dessau-Roßlau Town Council in cooperation

with the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation

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Event

Dessau Bauhaus Festival Season

Three international theme festivals present contemporary

interpretation of the historical heritage. The core of each

of these festivals is an artistic and scientific debate

translated into programme formats that invites visitors to

discover the Bauhaus as a field of experimentation.

Festival School FUNDAMENTAL 20 – 24 March 2019

Festival Architecture RADIKAL 31 May – 2 June 2019

Festival Stage TOTAL 11 – 15 September 2019

The series begins with School FUNDAMENTAL, a festival

of learning. It enters into a lively dialogue with the iconic

school building, offering a programme of interrelated events

over a five-day period with study situations and learning

experiments, participative public classrooms and fab labs.

The Architecture RADIKAL festival deliberately chose Walter

Gropius’ historical Employment Office as its venue. Taking

the historical Bauhaus buildings as its starting point, it sets out

to explore current issues of the social responsibility of archi-

tecture and radical experimental approaches to it. The Stage

TOTAL theatre festival for the first time includes the Bauhaus

Museum in Dessau as a venue. Over a period of five days,

the festival offers large-scale performances, the multiple-day

Bauhausfest and other amusements.


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Event

Rehsumpf Spring 2019

On the occasion of the Bauhaus anniversary, visitors can

take a refreshing dip in one of the last surviving river

bathing complexes in Europe, just as the Bauhaus teachers

and students used to in the 1920s.

For the occasion, the “Rehsumpf” river bathing complex

at the Jonitzer Mulde has been renovated and given a

new lease of life with the support of the Deutsche Stiftung

Denkmalschutz and the regional programme “Hier macht

das Bauhaus Schule”. The historical bathing house of Hugo

Junkers and the raised bathing huts at the Jonitzer Mulde

have been rebuilt and reopened, together with an exhi-

bition on the historical importance of river bathing in the

River Mulde in Dessau-Roßlau.

Organised by: rehsumpf e. V. – mehr licht, luft, sonne


Event

Violett September 2019

In this anniversary year, the experimental power of the Bau-

haus in Dessau is proving to be alive and well, with a very

special project. On the monumental stage of the Anhalt

Theatre, a special stage has been erected which makes

it possible to involve the audience directly in the dramatic

action, just as Walter Gropius intended to with his Total-

theater concept. Wassily Kandinsky’s posthumously

published stage work, Violett, was begun before World

War One; he continued to work on it during his time

in Dessau but it was never performed during his lifetime.

The premiere of this work in a theatre sums up all the

momentous ideas conceived by the Bauhaus in a single

performance and calls on the spectators to perceive theatre

with all their senses.

Organised by: Anhalt Theatre Dessau

Photo: "Totaltheater" concept by Walter Gropius

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Event

Kurt Weill Festival 1–17 March 2019

Great art and great artists come together at the annual

festival honouring the composer Kurt Weill, which is also

one of the top events in Saxony-Anhalt’s festival landscape.

Whether for the Threepenny Opera or major Broadway

musicals, Kurt Weill was a master of many types of musical

language.

The 27th Kurt Weill Festival, entitled "Courage to Renewal",

will take place from 1–17 March 2019 and places Weill in the

force field of the modern age. For the Bauhaus centenary,

the festival highlights developments in art, politics

and industry in Dessau and around the world from then

until today.

Organised by: Kurt-Weill-Gesellschaft e. V.


Event

Werkleitz Festival 2019 ¬Model and Ruin25 Mai–9 June 2019

In honour of the Bauhaus centenary, the 2019 Werkleitz

Festival will be taking place in Dessau-Roßlau. In the title,

Model represents the template for a future yet to be creat-

ed, and Ruin the witness of a mostly idealised past. The aim

of the festival is to place the Bauhaus in a wider historical

context. For this project, 13 international artists have been

invited to treat the diametrically opposing themes of Model

and Ruin from a contemporary point of view in Dessau.

Organised by: Werkleitz Gesellschaft e. V.

16

Event

Triennial of Modernism ¬Material and Architecture 4– 6 October 2019

The Triennial places modern architecture back in the focus

of public attention every three years. Its starting point is

the UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Berlin, Dessau and

Weimar. Under the title “Material and Architecture”, the

exhibition “Transferumbau white city center” from Tel Aviv,

which tells about the architecture and materials in the

worldfamous White City, will be on show in Dessau.

The new permanent exhibition of the Building Research

Archive of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation on Modernist

architecture will be inaugurated at the same time.

Tours of the Modernist architecture in Dessau will round off

the programme of this weekend in October. After all, the

city has far more to offer by way of modernism than “just”

the Bauhaus buildings.


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Exhibition

Bauhaus Museum Dessau ¬Inauguration with the exhibition

“Versuchsstätte Bauhaus.The Collection.”8 September 2019

With the inauguration of the Bauhaus Museum in Dessau

it is now possible for the first time to see the second-larg-

est collection of Bauhaus objects in its entirety. Entitled

“Versuchsstätte Bauhaus. The Collection.”, the exhibition

recounts how the ideas of the Bauhauslers have become

objects that we take for granted in our everyday

lives today.


Imprint

Published by:

Stadtmarketinggesellschaft Dessau-Roßlau mbHin cooperation with the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation and

Dessau-Roßlau Town Council

Selected text passages are reproduced with the kind

authorisation of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation

Photo credits Cover Bauhaus Museum Dessau, Rendering, architects: addenda architects (González Hinz Zabala), Barcelona, 2015 / Bauhaus Dessau Foundationp. 2 Naftali Rubinstein, Bauhausler on the roof of the Bauhaus building, studio building, Dessau, 1928 / Bauhaus Dessau Foundation (I 1353 F)p. 5 above: Bauhaus building, architect: Walter Gropius (1925–26), view southwest, 2017 / Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, photo: Thomas Meyer / OSTKREUZ center: Masters‘ Houses Dessau, architect: Walter Gropius (1925–26) / Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, photo: Thomas Meyer / OSTKREUZ below: Sven Hertel © Stadtarchiv Dessau-Roßlaup. 7 above: boathouse of the Junkers Paddelbootgemeinschaft e. V. center: storehouse of the Dünnhaupt-printing house before the war © Stadtarchiv Dessau-Roßlau below: Irene Angela Bayer (geb. Hecht), Bauhausler on the beach of the river Elbe, 1925 / Bauhaus Dessau Foundation (I 921 l F)p. 9 project visualization of the Peter Behrens School of Artp. 11 figurine of the „Triadische Ballett“, reconstruction of the Senac university center Sao Paulo / Bauhaus Dessau Foundationp. 12 bathing cabin Hugo Junkers, photo: Peter Staudinger, 2010p. 13 draft of the „Totaltheater“ by Walter Gropiusp. 14 photo: Jens Schlüterp. 15 © Werkleitz 2016p. 17 Houses with Balcony Access in Dessau-Törten, detail staircase, 2017 Bauhaus Dessau Foundation / photo: Meyer, Thomas / OSTKREUZ, 2017p. 18/19 Bauhaus Museum Dessau, Rendering, architects: addenda architects (González Hinz Zabala), Barcelona, 2015 / Bauhaus Dessau Foundation

Last updated: 08/2018, subject to modification

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The City and the Bauhaus: Forging Modernity Together · The Architecture RADIKAL festival...

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