Point, Line, Space and Sound

Weimar, Germany & Ankara, Turkey 2009

We had two performances in Ankara and one performance in Weimar as a part of Bauhaus Impact proj. The video is the documentation of the first performance in Ankara.

Project Info

The influence of the Bauhaus in Europe and beyond is obvious. The project Bauhaus Impact wants to highlight the less obvious traces of the cultural impacts bequeathed by the Bauhaus and its protagonists. After being banned from Nazi-Germany, the Bauhaus masters and their students emigrated globally. Most history books highlight the continuation of the Bauhaus in the U.S., where most of its outstanding protagonists found a new life. Less present is, but of high interest for us, are the biographies of architects, artists and teacher, who had to leave Nazi-Germany, but instead of heading towards the New World, they went to Turkey, the Middle East or former communist countries. The fact is that from 1923 on about 1000 architects and artists immigrated to Turkey and helped with their artistic, technical and educational expertise to shape the modern Turkey.

“Bauhaus Impact “wants to revisit these modern roots of today’s Turkey. Young video artists, musicians, photographers, graphical designers, architects, ceramic artists and theorists from Germany and Turkey will conduct an interdisciplinary research on this historic time and its devises. The results will be presented in a group exhibition. Point of departure will be a common workshop at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara to plan the group exhibition, which is situated in the frame of the festivities of the 90th anniversary of the beginning of the Bauhaus in Germany.

The working focus is laid in particular on the impacts, those emigrants had in the area of architecture, pedagogy and philosophy in Turkey. E.g. the Gazi University of Ankara, as we know it today, was the first Turkish school, which refers clearly in its founding vision to the work and teaching of the Bauhaus. In those days the influence of the Bauhaus even reached out to the education centers at the far off villages. In 1940, two years after the death of Atatürk, a political turn-around took place out of fear of the communist tendencies in Turkey, a fear that is particularly seen from the perspective of the foreign policy of the U.S.A.

Today the art faculty of the Marmara University in Istanbul is still organizing its teaching in a Bauhaus-like way and it was by the way the first Turkish art academy founded by former Bauhaus students. In the frame of our project, we revisited these incidents and if they were still holding true today.
The working results were documented and presented in a group exhibition. The exhibition was on display in Ankara and Weimar in frame of the Bauhaus Year 2009. In Weimar it was presented in the context of the Bauhaus lab Weimar, a project funded by the EU Commission. The working media were video, photography, interactive installations, prints, light sculptures, performances in the public space and literature.

Nine students and graduates from Bauhaus-University Weimar traveled to Ankara in order to participate in various workshops with Turkish students of Middle East Technical University.

Workshop Leaders

Thomas Balkenhol (GİSAM) Music and Video
Mehmet Ali Uysal and Ödül Işitman (FAM) Fine Arts, Design, Architecture

Participants

* Christian Hellman
* Zoe Kreye
* Jeanette Gosslau
* Nora Stroebel
* Constantin Popp

* Henryk Pawel
* Johannes Heinke
* Susi Pietsch
* Alper Özbek
* Michael Geisse

* Kıvanç Tatar
* Ceyda Sungur
* Canay Doğulu
* Petek Kizilelma
* Selen Usanmaz

* Güneş Şahin
* Zoe Baraton
* Fisun Güven
* Işıl Tanriverdi
* Yelda Bakar