DESIGN DISKURS
With “Schools of Departure”, the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation has launched a digital atlas mapping the international links between Bauhaus teaching and other reform-oriented design schools in the 20th century. In an interview with Gerda Breuer, the initiators Regina Bittner, Katja Klaus and Philipp Sack talk about breaking with previous historiography, the legacy of the Bauhaus’ historically shaped authority and the atlas as an ongoing participatory project.
When you think of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation in the venerable former Bauhaus building designed by Walter Gropius, you might expect it to be more of a museum institution. However, few people realize that the Foundation is also an educational institution, just like the historical Bauhaus itself. It has been running programs such as the Open Studios, the COOP Design Research master’s program and the Bauhaus Lab for many years. The foundation has now launched another program. Under the title “Schools of Departure”, it has edited a series of e-journals and two small paperback editions (published by Spector Books) in 2022/23, which draw attention to the diverse interrelationships in which Bauhaus pedagogy was involved after the closure of the historical school in 1933. Reform projects in Brazil, Albania, Sweden, Great Britain, SFR Yugoslavia and many other countries, including Germany, are described. There is also a digital atlas that can be used interactively on an ongoing basis. In this way, the curators Regina Bittner, Katja Klaus and Philipp Sack want to draw attention to new narratives.
Gerda Breuer: In the examples, you no longer speak of the “influence” of the Bauhaus and of the Bauhaus as a center with movement into the non-European “periphery”, but of interdependencies. Now your project is so extensive and complex and brings up so many historical and current examples that I wonder whether there is a common orientation to the new approaches?
Regina Bittner: The common approach is guided by considerations of decentering: For some time now, other modes of historiography have been taking hold that are less interested in the linearity of historical trajectories and more in linkages, entanglements, conversations or encounters. This has many consequences for the history of design and architecture, for example, it is no longer a matter of a historiography that places certain authors or formal canons or styles at the centre. The focus on schools as learning environments and institutions offers an opportunity to explore other narratives: These schools were often per se networked institutions with a multitude of actors, embedded in different contexts. From here, other perspectives on the complicated reception of the Bauhaus as a school can also emerge. And digital tools are particularly useful for this approach.
Katja Klaus: With the “Schools of Departure” digital atlas, we have moved away from the idea of a linear narrative and are instead trying to depict an extremely broad spectrum of analyzed case studies (chronological, institutional, geographical). The inclusion of the various approaches in the atlas takes place quite organically: in part we are guided by serendipity, in part we invite authors, educators and researchers from our international networks whom we have got to know through our program work in recent years. We are making the platform available as a tool for research and teaching and hope that it invites discovery and also leads to non-linear use.
Philipp Sack: Based on our initial research, we have identified a number of common themes in the structure of the atlas that have a significant influence on the history of certain schools across different time periods and regions. These common issues, known as “Travelling Concepts”, are interpreted and negotiated differently depending on the place and time, but in our opinion, this provides a way of structuring access to the entire collection of schools. We deal with the history of radical design pedagogies, for example, from the point of view of decolonization, the aspect of science and technology, or with regard to the relationship between school experiments and ideas of community. Due to this decidedly open approach, the atlas is always open-ended from the outset; the Travelling Concepts are also constantly being adapted, supplemented and expanded.
Gerda Breuer: The first small book entitled “Decolonising Design Education” has been published in cooperation with the Indonesian education collective Gudskul. But decolonial projects revolve around the fact that the formerly colonized countries want to free themselves from Western hegemony. Yet the historic Bauhaus is one of the greatest representatives of Western design. Isn't that a contradiction?
Regina Bittner: Absolutely. Our project is precisely about making this contradiction visible. On the one hand, we have learnt from research into transcultural modernism that there are alternatives to Western narratives and that talking about the resonances of the Bauhaus, released from the corset of this historiography, can also contribute to cultural empowerment in the form of distancing, criticism or updating. This can be seen in many of the examples presented in the atlas. But on the other hand, the historically formed authority of the Bauhaus and the institutions that convey this heritage is a fact that we also have to come to terms with.
Katja Klaus and Philipp Sack: We are trying to recognize and expose the conditions and entanglements in which we operate today as heirs and administrators of the Bauhaus in order to find new ways to work on these conditions. We must consistently recognize that cooperation between the Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau and other institutions or actors often takes place on a slippery slope, accompanied by a disparity with regards to the presence in today’s attention economy. In our collaborative projects, we want to make use of this disparity to the benefit of all those involved; the Bauhaus’ undoubtedly privileged position should thus be made relevant again for emancipatory projects. Instead of simply setting topics and approaches, we see our role more as facilitators—we provide infrastructures and enter into dialogue with our partners. At the same time, we learn to listen and to question the given (the legacy of the historic Bauhaus, our language, etc.). For us, learning often means unlearning traditional knowledge.
Gerda Breuer: Many of the recent approaches to learning are based on activism. They fundamentally reject academic teaching and schools, including design schools. The Brazilian designer, researcher and curator Nina Paim, for example, describes this very concisely based on her experience as a traveller between European worlds. What about concepts that have emerged from completely different contexts?
Katja Klaus: It is precisely these concepts that we’re interested in: poetic, radical, non-academic ones. In addition to historical case studies, the atlas also includes numerous analyses of more recent initiatives in the field of alternative design education. In the current, third issue of our journal, we focus experimental learning communities. The example of the School of the Alternative (SotA), a free art school on the campus of the historical Black Mountain College, shows us how a new institutional structure, a space for action and an archive for extreme, short-lived experiments can develop at this location. Here, too, the initiators are in search of a new way of thinking, speaking and acting, detached from its historical predecessor. As representatives of an established cultural institution, we see it as our responsibility to provide a platform for this new institutional diversity.
Gerda Breuer: The e-journals feature examples that pursue methodological procedures such as “Travelling Concepts” and “Translation”: learning experiments, ideas, materials, new narratives and media of radical pedagogy, which do not claim universal validity, often emerge situationally and also integrate unconventional formats from other disciplines such as performances, literary examples or even just reports, notes. Their production of meaning is triggered by a change of contexts to which they react. What criteria do you use to select these examples?
Philipp Sack: We are constantly on the lookout for as many case studies, documents, audio tracks and stories as possible. We read, seek advice, rummage through (online) archives and exhibitions. So far, the contents of the atlas have mostly drawn upon the existing networks of the Academy of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation. Together with cooperation partners and program participants, we formulate possible questions and identify relevant case studies. In this way, the atlas is also making a significant contribution to consolidating and expanding the global alliances that have emerged in the course of the Bauhaus anniversary in 2019. In the first two issues of the e-journal, we have received stimulating input by a collaboration with our co-editors Catherine Nichols as well as farid rakun and JJ Adibrata from Gudskul. We’re currently considering to publish an open call for papers for the upcoming issues in order to expand the range of case studies beyond our institutional horizon and thus create a basis for further alliances.
Gerda Breuer: You mentioned that the Schools of Departure digital atlas also has a participatory section that is now used by many people, including universities. Can you tell us something about this?
Katja Klaus: In addition to the other features—the index of school experiments, the e-journal—users can get involved via the so-called Notes area. Here, students, teachers, researchers and practitioners can submit suggestions for future contributions on schools or other research topics, or leave short contributions on specific artefacts, which can then be expanded into a complete case study or essay. We intentionally collect unfinished notes and prioritize ideas and questions over final answers. We also use this space as a digital meeting place to organize joint online courses with international universities as part of the Bauhaus Open Studios.
Philipp Sack: One example of this is our long-standing collaboration with the College of Human Ecology at Cornell University: as part of the Human-Centered Design program offered there, we have held a series of online formats in which students with a focus on fashion and textile design were encouraged to embark on a multi-sensory exploration of the objects from the college's own teaching collection. These kinds of collaboration are also to be further expanded in the future.