Art Metropole

#11625

Human-Space-Machine: Stage Experiments at the Bauhaus

Date

2015

Publisher

Spector Books

Format

Artists' Books

Genre

Art History,

In 1921, architect Walter Gropius founded a theater workshop at the Bauhaus. It conducted new research and experiments on the relationship between humans and technology. The workshop’s central protagonists—Lothar Schreyer, Oskar Schlemmer and László Moholoy-Nagy—investigated issues of mechanization, machine industrialization and rationalization. They sought a new, meaningful relationship with the dynamized, increasingly technically animated environment. In their stage laboratory, they developed abstract motion studies, designed atmosphere machines and built actual theater apparatuses. They also organized the famous Bauhaus celebrations, where they staged themselves as a collective of “new humans.” For the first time, an exhibition and a catalog from the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation showcase sketches, drawings and photographs as well as films, figurines, costumes, models and apparatus devoted to the experiments and concepts of the legendary Bauhaus stage!