Germany celebrates the Bauhaus Centenary

2019 is the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus, and it will be celebrated both in Germany and around the world with exhibitions, festivals, research projects and symposia. The great Centenary will be a celebration in true Bauhaus fashion: experimental, multifarious, transnational and radically contemporary. The Centenary programme, 100 years of Bauhaus, provides the framework. In keeping with its motto 'Rethink the World', the Bauhaus Association 2019 will join regional, national and international partners in facilitating a rediscovery of the Bauhaus heritage and its present and future significance. The international opening festival in Berlin from 16 to 24 January 2019 presented Concerts, installations, puppet and straight theatre, dance and film, workshops and lecture demonstrations, games and festivities: The programme offered numerous different events and formats for Bauhaus experts and novices, which enable the re-discovery of the superb historic testaments of Bauhaus, as well as the legacies and stimuli of this art form for the present and the future. "Seeing the stage as a workshop and research lab, as an international and inter-disciplinary meeting place, knowledge transfer, play and regeneration space and as a socio-political forum, as conceived by Oskar Schlemmer, Kurt Schmidt, Vassily Kandinsky, Lyonel Feininger, Paul Klee, László Moholy-Nagy and others each in their own different ways, is absolutely normal nowadays. Genre boundaries have fallen; digital media, the latest technology, discussion and science have marched into post-dramatic theatre. The festival has set itself the goal of demonstrating how today's artists sound out the potential of interdisciplinary work, how they question the function of the performative act, and aesthetically use the interaction and counterposing of text and language, the interplay of space and light, movement, music, body and architecture (theatre) by way of example at exposed artistic positions. Three reconstructions of outstanding Bauhaus productions set the historical reference point at the conclusion of the festival," states Bettina Wagner-Bergelt, artistic director of Bauhaus 100 Festival. Ms. Wagner-Bergelt has invited many artists from all over the world to Berlin to revive the spirit of Bauhaus in the tradition of Oskar Schlemmer, Wassily Kandinsky, László Moholy-Nagy, Paul Klee and many others. Oriented on Bauhauswoche 1923 (Bauhaus Week 1923) and the legendary Bauhaus Festivals, a creative atmosphere of experimentation and research, learning and teaching, joining in and thinking ahead will be ensured. Art and technology, light, colour, sound and movement and the relationship between humankind and machine play a key role in the programme. Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier was the patron of the festival. Three leading Bauhaus research institutions (the Bauhaus-Archiv/Museum für Gestaltung in Berlin, the Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau and the Klassik Stiftung Weimar), the Federal Government, represented by government officials for culture and media and the Federal Cultural Foundation, as well as representatives of eleven federal states, have joined to form the "Bauhaus Verbund 2019". For more information visit: https://www.bauhaus100.com