*** Apologies for cross-posting ***

You are cordially invited to attend the below event, organised as part of OurHaus: a week-long festival, celebrating the centenary of Bauhaus, across Camberwell College of Arts and Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London.

Full festival programme can be accessed here: http://bit.ly/UALOurHaus

OurHaus Keynote: Queer Bauhaus by Dr Elizabeth Otto and performance by Alexis Teplin
6-9PM, TUESDAY, 22 OCTOBER 2019
CAMBERWELL COLLEGE OF ARTS

The Bauhaus (1919-1933) is widely regarded as the twentieth century's most influential art, architecture, and design school, celebrated as the archetypal movement of rational modernism and famous for bringing functional and elegant design to the masses. In this talk, art historian Elizabeth Otto delves into the previously unexplored question of sexuality and gender fluidity at the Bauhaus by focusing on Bauhäusler who queered the school’s aesthetics in order to disrupt gender conventions, represent gay and lesbian subjectivities, and picture same-sex desire, moves that were not without risk during the Weimar Republic, a regime that criminalized homosexuality. By looking broadly at what Jack Halberstam dubs a queer way of life—one that encompasses “subcultural practices, alternative methods of alliance, forms of transgender embodiment, and those forms of representation dedicated to capturing these wilfully eccentric modes of being”—this talk disrupts the narrative of a normative Bauhaus to yield a richer history that only emerges when we look at a new range of Bauhaus works and artists, and reconsider the questions that we ask of them. 

Elizabeth Otto is an art historian and the author of ‘Haunted Bauhaus: Occult Spirituality, Gender Fluidity, Queer Identities, and Radical Politics,’ ‘Tempo, Tempo! The Bauhaus Photomontages of Marianne Brandt,’ the co-author of ‘Bauhaus Women: A Global Perspective,’ and the co-editor of five books including ‘Bauhaus Bodies: Gender, Sexuality, and Body Culture in Modernism's Legendary Art School.’ She is Associate Professor at the University at Buffalo (SUNY), where she has also served as the Executive Director of the Humanities Institute. Her work has been supported by numerous organizations including the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Centre for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, the National Humanities Centre, and the University at Pittsburgh's Humanities Centre. 


Rehearsal for B - Alexis Teplin

Dr Elizabeth Otto’s lecture will be followed by artist, Alexis Teplin’s, presentation of a new performance within the context of the Bauhaus: Utopia in Crisis exhibition, exploring the nature of translation and miscommunication through abstracted language, appropriated text, and a dialogue between the artist and an actor. This work incorporates Teplin’s own writing alongside excerpts from ‘The Great Communication Breakdown’ by The Bash Street Kids (1971), Iris Murdoch’s letters to Raymond Queneau (1946 to 1975), and Ken Russell’s ‘The Debussy Film’ for the BBC (1965). 

Alexis Teplin’s work is engaged in what is frequently described as an expanded painting practice. It begins within the history of two-dimensional painting and expands to include performance, video and sculpture. Teplin uses abstraction to construct performative installations based in seduction, artificiality and cultural signification. Her work draws on a wide range of art historical, literary and film references, which ultimately explore the nature of sensuality, cultural politics and positions of decadence.

Teplin lives and works in London has exhibited widely, including venues such as the Sydney Biennale, the Migros Museum, Zurich, the Whitechapel Gallery, the Hayward Gallery, the Serpentine Gallery for Park Nights in London, Tramway for Glasgow International, The New Art Centre at Roche Court and an upcoming exhibition at the Bluecoat in Liverpool. She teaches at Kingston University and the Royal College of Art.


Also that evening…
 
MATIÈRE Private View
6-9PM, STUDENT-LED GALLERY

The MATIÈRE exhibition by students and staff from Camberwell College of Arts and HGB is a contemporary response to the eponymous course at the Bauhaus. The course was an important element of the Bauhaus Preliminary Course, developed by Josef Albers and László Moholy-Nagy to explore the ‘inner quality’ of materials.

Organised by UAL Lecturer in Painting, Juan Bolivar and Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig’s (HGB) Professor Oliver Kossack.

For more info and to book, visit: https://www.arts.ac.uk/whats-on/ourhaus-queer-bauhaus

To purchase the OurHaus festival pass, visit: http://bit.ly/UALOurHaus 

########################################################################

To unsubscribe from the NEW-MEDIA-CURATING list, click the following link:
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=NEW-MEDIA-CURATING&A=1