The Bauhaus Was a School

What is the opposite of a Wagenfeld lamp? Enrol now for the famous Bauhaus ‘Vorkurs’ in our interactive exhibition in the temporary bauhaus-archiv and exercise your creativity.

The Bauhaus was a school of art and design that did many things differently. An important innovation was the VORKURS  – a preliminary course which all students were required to complete. The experience students gained in exercises was deemed far more important than the material results.
Now it is your turn to learn by doing. For the interactive trail we reinterpreted historic exercises by Johannes Itten, László Moholy-Nagy and Josef Albers and paired them with contemporary tools and notions. Hopefully you will not only take away an impression of what it was like to be a Bauhaus student, but leave something behind as well.

the bauhaus was a school
27.11.2019 – 09.05.2020
the temporary bauhaus-archiv / museum für gestaltung
Knesebeckstraße 1-2 | Berlin-Charlottenburg
Mo–Sat, 10–18 hrs | Free entry
A project by the bauhaus-archiv / museum für gestaltung
Project idea: Friederike Holländer, Nina Wiedemeyer
Concept: Rose Apple, Friederike Holländer
Exhibition design and production: Alex Valder
Exhibition graphics: Rose Apple
Organisation: Juliane Bethge
with students of the Nelson-Mandela-Schule, Berlin  
 

Would You Like It Modern?

The exhibition gern modern? Living concepts for Berlin after 1945 at the Museum der Dinge charted ideas and initiatives of the German Werkbund in the aftermath of WWII.

Continue reading “Would You Like It Modern?”

We-Traders

They are active in Lisbon, Madrid, Toulouse, Turin, Berlin and Brussels: Citizens across Europe are currently taking the initiative to re-appropriate urban space. We call them “We-Traders” in the sense that they redefine the relation between value, profit and public good and are able to motivate fellow citizens to follow suit. The We-Traders platform initiated by the Goethe-Institut, and developed with brilliant Vienna based curator/author Angelika Fitz and myself, connects initiatives by artists, designers, activists and many other citizens from six distinct European contexts. 

Collective Exhibition Making

The We-Traders exhibition is, similar to the projects it is showing and connecting, an experiment in co-creating a social situation. The collaborative process that shaped We-Traders took place in Berlin, Brussels, Lisbon, Madrid, Munich, Rome, Toulouse and Turin over a period of two years. Next to us, as artistic directors and the project lead in Brussels, six local Goethe-Instituts, seven co-curators and 30 We-Trader projects were involved. As milestones of this collective effort we count the Co-Curators Lab in Rome July 2013 and four We-Traders Fora in Autumn 2013. During the We-Traders tour that started January 2014 in Madrid and ended March 2015 in Brussels, the exhibition went on being not only a space of presentation, but a space to meet and co-produce with more than 30,000 visitors. The Tool Story presents our collection of tools we used, adapted and invented in the process and is published in full in the We-Traders E-Book.

The Working Exhibition – A Tool Story in 11 Images: Angelika Fitz, Rose Epple
We-Traders Platform:
Project direction Goethe-Institut Brussels: Susanne Höhn
Project coordination: Julia Förster
Co-Production: Goethe-Institute Lisbon, Madrid, Toulouse, Turin, Brussels
Concept und artistic direction: Angelika Fitz, Rose Epple
Co-Curators: Julia Albani (Lisabon), Javier Duero (Madrid), Stéphane Gruet (Toulouse), Lisa Parola & Luisa Perlo (Turin), Charlotte Bonduel & Julia Förster (Brussels)
Exhibition Design: Studio Alex Valder
Exhibition Graphics: Carsten Giese
Visual Identity: Rose Epple
Participating initiatives: A Linha (Lissabon), AERA Habitat (Toulouse), Agulha Num Palheiro (Lissabon), Allmende-Kontor (Berlin), betahaus/Open Design City (Berlin), BIP/ZIP (Lisbon), Bois & Cie (Toulouse), Buena Vista Social Housing (Turin), Campo de Cebada (Madrid), Casa del Quartiere (Turin), Carrefour Culturel Arnaud Bernard (Toulouse), Cozinha Popular da Mouraria (Lissabon), Elii/Crisis Cabinet of Political Fictions (Madrid), Il Piccolo Cinema (Turin), Initiative Möckernkiez (Berlin), Le potager de Camille (Toulouse), O Espelho (Lissabon), Miraorti (Turin), Mix’Art Myrys (Toulouse), RÜTLI-WEAR (Berlin), Todo por la praxis (Madrid), Toolbox Coworking/FabLab (Turin), [VIC] Citizen Initiatives Incubator (Madrid), Teamlabs/Walkinn Coop (Madrid)
Diagnoses by: Sonja Beeck, Paul Blanquart, Rolf Novy-Huy, Leonie Baumann, Santiago Eraso Beloki, Claus Leggewie, Jorge da Silva Macaísta Malheiros, Carlo Salone, Florian Schmidt, Marco Revelli
The We-Traders exhibition travelled to:
BOZAR, Brussels 2015
CMAV – Centre Méridional de l’Architecture et de la Ville, Toulouse 2014
LX Factory, Lisbon 2014
Toolbox, Turin 2014
Kunstraum Kreuzberg Bethanien, Berlin 2014
Matadero, Madrid 2014

Showing Wilhelm Meister

How to exhibit literature or more specifically Goethe’s famous coming-of-age novel ‘Wilhelm Meister’ ? That was the question put to seven renowned exhibition makers at a conference in Frankfurt in 2009. Being one of the few designers in an illustrous group of mainly literature experts,  I suggested to show the book as an object. The form of the text obviously being something different than the text itself, I was curious what a comparable study of different editions of the books would reveal not only in terms of design and cultural history, but possibly also about the interpretation and literary status of the novel at different times. Feeling slightly guilty for still not having read the book, I was nonetheless delighted to be invited to test and present this approach in the ensuing group exhibiton at the Frankfurt Goethe-House.

The Anna Amalia library in Weimar collects every new edition of Goethe’s works and posesses some of the original and very early editions and so was the ideal starting point for my research. I spent three delightful days in the very fine and welcoming library and examined 50 different editions of the novel, starting with the first edition from 1795 right up to a contemporary one of 2007. I weighed and measured, analyzed page layouts, identified lettertypes, compared title pages and endpapers. The findings were then organized in chronological order in nine exhibition books: The book of book covers, the book of typography, the book of layouts e.t.c..

Photo: Wolfgang Günzel

Curatorial concept, research and book design: Rose Epple
Installation: chezweitz & roseapple
Book photos: Isabel Prugger and  Edgar Khandzratyan