On Collecting:
Theatre Machines.
Mechanical Stage Designs by Joost Schmidt and Stefan Sebök
15 Apr – 13 June 2021
Bauhaus Museum Dessau, Black Box
This Intermezzo spotlights the mechanical stage concepts of Joost Schmidt and Stefan Sebök. They show an attempt to use the technical infrastructure of the stage not only to support human performers, but to make the stage technology itself perform. Schmidt’s mechanical stage studies, which he developed in 1925/1926 for the new Bauhaus Building in Dessau, offer a vivid example of this idea. Conversely, the designs of Hungarian artist and architect Stefan Sebök attest to attempts at using mechanical and machine movement concepts in order to reinvent the entire structure of the theatre transforming it into something like a large-scale theatre machine. A cooperation with the Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg and the Stefan Sebök Estate by Daniel Dubowitz (Manchester School of Architecture).
