After the preliminary course “From Bauhaus to Silicon Valley” last year, this summer projekt bauhaus revives the Bauhaus’s workshop structure in order to explore the emancipatory potential of technology, to question the idea of progress, and to formulate a critique of the present through design.
The classical avant-garde believed in progress, a better future, and in improvement through innovation. The new has lost its innocence. These days, “utopias” increasingly pursue ambitions of deceleration (slow food, urban gardening, etc.) and preservation (climate goals and conservation of the environment and culture). Whereas ever-accelerating capitalist processes are often experienced as problematic, a (largely conservative) critique aims to negate or reject them. Is progress still emancipatory and preservation reactionary, or are things in fact fundamentally very different? Accelerationism’s plea for a renewal of the alliance between emancipatory aspirations and technological and scientific advances has given rise to the debate whether this liaison can deliver on its promise, or whether emancipation should rather use the means of criticism and deviance. Moreover, technology and financialization create new geopolitical orders, shift ideological narratives, and transform societal systems. But scientific and technological advancements only lead to limited social improvements within society. Thus, the question must be asked: does the current backward-looking political and ideological trends are taking place in spite of—or due to—advances in information technology? What are the current models of a cultural practice that consider technology and knowledge production in terms of the progress of society as a global whole? How can such a practice be shaped and communicated? And how can it be disseminated to the public?
projekt bauhaus invites international teams of practitioners and theoricians from different disciplines in order to explore the emancipatory potential of technology, the decolonisation of progress and the critique of the present through design. Over four days, the guests and the participants will exchange on the current state of research through workshops, lectures, exhibitions and performances. projekt bauhaus Werkstatt features also artistic interventions specially developed for the occasion by Morehshin Allahyari, Olaf Nicolai and Brave New Alps and that will be performed onsite. projekt bauhaus Werkstatt takes place in the sculptural and performative Floating University, designed and initiated by raumlaborberlin as an experimental and interdisciplinary laboratory for knowledge production.
With Morehshin Allahyari, Alliance of Southern Triangle, Armen Avanessian, Benjamin Bratton, Beatriz Colomina, Brave New Alps, Keller Easterling, Victoria Ivanova, Olaf Nicolai, Öffentliche Gestaltungsberatung, T’ai Smith, Ida Soulard, Georg Vrachliotis, Eyal Weizman, Ines Weizman, Mark Wigley, among others.
Participation in working group& workshop “The Social Media Bauhaus” directed by Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley.