Premiere in Halle
In November 2019, Claudia Dölling and Anja Krämer presented TYPO UTOPIA for the first time in Halle on the Saale as part of the 100 years bauhaus anniversary programme. The large-format typo and sound installation was the highlight of the Arts Foundation Saxony-Anhalt at the end of the Bauhaus year.
The premiere took place in the 6m high gallery room of the arts foundation with its challenging architecture. The unique audio-visual installation breathed new life into the pitch-black room and took the audience into the fascinating world of ideas of the Bauhaus, far away from their everyday life. The visitors were able to move around the room completely freely or to view the installation while sitting or lying down and had the opportunity to let the installation have an effect on them several times and also from different perspectives. TYPO UTOPIA was shown for four weeks.
Manon Bursian, Director of the Arts Foundation Saxony-Anhalt, Marco Tullner, Minister of Education of Saxony-Anhalt and Conrad Feininger, grandson of Lyonel Feininger, who came with his wife Kathy especially for this occasion, spoke at the opening.
Tracery and Beauty
by André Schinkel | Source
The history of the Bauhaus is that of a departure and beginning, of a re-exploration of possibilities. The combination of art and craftsmanship, the pronounced sublimity of the new in combination with beauty and practicality in it were and are a pulse generator from classical modernism to the immediate present – they radiated and continue to radiate into all the arts, shaping the architecture of the twentieth century and creating new standards in both art and design.
The artist as an enhancement of the craftsman, as Walter Gropius puts it. And it is therefore no coincidence that today the proverbial guiding fossils of the Bauhaus movement can often be found in the applied métiers: in architecture, which Gropius saw as the ultimate purpose of art, in the creation of functional beauty, in typography. And at the same time a high goal is postulated, no less than the shaping of the future through the work of art: »Dreamers, fantasts, visionaries ... that is what we want in the end: utopia!«
The Bauhaus produced a large number of modernist grandmasters and positions: Moholy-Nagy, Mies van der Rohe, Marguerite Friedlaender, Gunta Stölzl, Kandinsky, the „line“ could be continued for a long time as a »bumped point«. For the Bauhaus anniversary, it is therefore due and appropriate to give the voices of the Bauhaus championship a space. And this is precisely what the Sisters of Design, Claudia Dölling and Anja Krämer, are doing with their installation »Typo Utopia«, which can be seen and heard at Neuwerk 11 until 22 December.
Writing and signs in space – in the work commissioned by the Arts Foundation Saxony-Anhalt, the two graphic artists pursue the utopian moment of the Bauhaus: the cultivation of diversity, the curiosity about the future. Inspired by a wealth of ideas and the principles of the movement, they create a three-dimensional performance of black and white, light, shadow, movement and sound. Ten quotations of great Bauhaus representatives are given a stage, a respective adaptation of the content is created via the form; writing and symbols are charged with sound and pulsation, extinguish to make room for the next sentence.
The multifaceted architecture of the Bauhaus system lights up and flirts, forming a cube in which purpose and glamour overlap. With this work, the Sisters of Design wanted to create »something beautiful« that shows tracery and utopia at the same time, ultimately working with their very own means of typography. It is their explicit intention to enter new design territory. For the Sisters, who have a desire for something new, it should be the prelude to continuing their work in virtual spaces.
