bauhaus imaginista

The Bauhaus was founded in 1919, the year after WWI ended. It was one manifestation of a wider ambition shared by artists and intellectuals throughout Europe, Asia, Latin America and the United States to transform society. Its radical premise: to understand design as a social project, and to undertake a reform of art and design education as a step towards imagining this new society.

How can we understand its impact today? Given that in the course of the 20th century, Bauhaus ideas have spread internationally, how do we reflect on this diverse legacy in the light of changing geopolitics? How can we, in the spirit of the Bauhaus, re-imagine culture as a social project—and what kinds of institutions would this project need to invent?

bauhaus imaginista presumes modernism to be inherently cosmopolitan, as something that emerged from transcultural exchange. Through exhibitions, publications, symposia, workshops and long-term research projects, bauhaus imaginista tracks the way Bauhaus ideas were transformed by local struggles, independence movements, as well as by rural development projects and urbanization. It explores correspondences between various reform movements worldwide that believed in art as an agent of social change. It traces how each of these movements redefined art and design education through the eclectic study of sources from the avant-garde to the pre-modern. It also examines how, in the post-war West, the Bauhaus legacy echoed and resonated far beyond its given canon—to influence popular culture, digital media and art and technology in surprising and often unacknowledged ways.

bauhaus imaginista invites reflections on prescient questions for cultural production today: how do we shift from “thinking globally” to being relevant in a particular setting? What is gained by working between art and design or between culture and society? How do we use insights gained to change our current institutions, or imagine new ones?

Realized by the Bauhaus Cooperation, the Goethe-Institut and Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) together with partners in China, Japan, Russia, Brazil and other countries, separately developed exhibitions will be shown throughout the year. These exhibitions will be accompanied by a diverse program of workshops, seminars, and symposia with international curators, academics, and cultural professionals in Morocco, the US, India and Nigeria. In March 2019, on the occasion of the 100th Bauhaus anniversary, an exhibition of bauhaus imaginista will be shown at HKW in Berlin.

The exhibitions/events include newly commissioned works by Kader Attia, Luca Frei, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, the Otolith Group, Alice Creischer, Doreen Mende, Adrian Rifkin and Zvi Efrat.

bauhaus imaginista is curated by Marion von Osten (Berlin) and Grant Watson (London), who are developing the project in cooperation with a team of international researchers, artists and designers.

bauhaus-imaginista.org is the online journal of the project.

Upcoming Shows

bauhaus imaginista: Moving Away
April 8–July 8, 2018
Exhibition and symposium
China Design Museum / China Academy of Art, Hangzhou and Goethe-Institut China

bauhaus imaginista is a collaboration between the Bauhaus Cooperation Berlin Dessau Weimar, the Goethe-Institut and Haus der Kulturen der Welt. The research project with its different exhibitions, workshops and symposia is taking place for the centenary of the founding of the Bauhaus. It will be enhanced with international perspectives of the Goethe-Institutes and tied together as part of 100 Years of Now in Berlin at Haus der Kulturen der Welt.
bauhaus imaginista is made possible by funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the German Foreign Office. Partners abroad are the Goethe-Institutes in China, New Delhi, Lagos, Moscow, New York, Rabat, São Paulo, and Tokyo as well as Le Cube – independent art room (Rabat) and other institutions. bauhaus imaginista is realized in collaboration with the China Design Museum / China Academy of Art (Hangzhou), the Independent Administrative Institution of National Museum of Art / The National Museum of Modern Art Kyoto, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art (Moscow) and SESC São Paulo.