Open Stage in the Bauhaus Museum Dessau
The ground floor of the Bauhaus Museum Dessau offers a new cultural venue in the centre of Dessau. Conceived as an Open Stage, the room is used for a wide variety of events. As a new experimental venue for performance and discussion, it will complement and expand the programme of the Bauhaus stage in the historical Bauhaus Building. From October 2020 to the end of 2021, this space is characterized by the open, modular installation of the Appia Stage.
The program consists of lectures, film screenings and talks, dance, theater, music and performance projects. The aim is to show visitors to the museum and the residents of Dessau-Roßlau how the Bauhaus – understood as an attitude of curiously open learning and experimentation – still provides a wide range of artistic impulses and creative ideas, not only for experts. Furthermore, the Open Stage is a local stage for everyone – for associations, institutions, groups and individuals who implement creative projects in Dessau-Roßlau and the region.
Appia Stage
(Oct 2020 – End of 2021)
In 1912/13, the Swiss stage designer Adolphe Appia, together with light artist Alexander Salzmann, designed and realised the prototype for a new open theatre stage for the Festspielhaus Hellerau. It consists of simple cubic modules that can be arranged in different ways like a building set. The historical Bauhaus considered it a model for scenographic projects. The Europäische Zentrum der Künste reconstructed it in 2017 at Festspielhaus Hellerau. As an installation and event space on the ground floor of the Bauhaus Museum Dessau the Appia Stage will define the Open Stage until the end of 2021 and will be used by the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation as a stage.
Review:
Arena by Rita McBride
(Sept 2019 – Oct 2020)
From the opening of the Bauhaus Museum Dessau in September 2019 to October 2020, the Arena by Rita McBride was the prominent center of the Open Stage. As a sculptural adaptation of a semicircular grandstand, it offered space for artistic programmes and spontaneous encounters. The Arena was produced in 1997 for the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam. Since then it has been used in many museums and theaters. However, the Arena has never been used as a simple seat. Rita McBride's work in various locations explores the ways in which sculpture can be activated and how the exhibition space and the audience communicate and interact with each other.
Past Events Arene Extended
"Lichtspielhaus" by Lucy Raven
(Kunst am Bau)
On the first floor of the Bauhaus Museum Dessau is the Lichtspielhaus by Lucy Raven. With her dynamic installation of different colored, room-high glass panels, the New York artist won the competition "Kunst am Bau" for the Bauhaus Museum Dessau. The panels can be moved on three slides over a distance of 15 meters parallel to the glass facade of the museum building. Depending on the superimpositions, this results in varying compositions of color and light that create a wide variety of atmospheric situations inside and outside the museum.
In her work, Lucy Raven refers to Anni and Joseph Albers' studies of color and perception. At the same time, she sees a reference to László Moholy-Nagy and his approach to design with light – which is demonstrated with the light-space modulator and the photograms in the exhibition Versuchsstätte Bauhaus. The Collection in the Black Box.
