What's On: Navigating Berlin – Perspectives on Cartography

Copyright: CLB Berlin. Photo by Vietze & Fels.

By Sara Bellini

Tonight at 7pm at CLB Berlin sees the start of the second chapter of Navigating Berlin: Perspectives on Cartography. This is an exhibition in three parts about historical maps in dialogue with contemporary art to narrate how the representations of the city over time mirror the society that made them. Part I closed last week and focused on the maps from the private collection of Michael Müller and featured works by Olaf Kühnemann and DISSS. Lisa Gordon curated the exhibition in collaboration with CLB, an interdisciplinary space for the intersection of urbanism, art and cultural studies. 

Navigating Berlin II: Design and Cognition considers the maps as artefacts and symbol systems. The works by Berlin based artists Elizabeth McTernan and Simon Faithfull explore Berlin orbital journeys and water representation in maps respectively. It will be open until the 2nd of February and will be followed by Representation and Absence, with the participation of artists Birgit Szepanski and Hadas Tapouchi. 

The third part of the exhibition confronts the socio-political background of the maps and how it influenced, and even distorted, the reproduction of the city on paper. Because a map, exactly like a book, a movie or any other art form, is only a partial portrait, filtered by the cultural lens of the author and aimed at manipulating the perception of the viewer.

Navigating Berlin I: 30.11.19 - 05.01.20
Navigating Berlin II: 10.01 - 02.02.20
Navigating Berlin III: 07.02 - 01.03.20

CLB Berlin
Aufbau Haus am Moritzplatz
Website

100 Years Bauhaus: Bauhaus Museum in Weimar

Foto: Andrew Alberts, © heike hanada laboratory of art and architecture 2019

This year marks the centenary of the Bauhaus, and there are celebrations taking place all around the world – anywhere, in fact, that the design school’s influence can be felt. In Weimar, the city where it all began back in 1919, a new museum has opened in a building designed by Heike Hanada and inaugurated earlier this month.

The intention of the Bauhaus Museum in Weimar is to be both a dialogue with the past and an interrogation of the future, and developed around the fundamental question: “How do we want to live together?”* In an echo of the founders of the Bauhaus, questions of how we build a society and where art and technology, architecture and everyday life function together, are key themes of the new space.

As a reflection on the past, present and future, the location of the Bauhaus Museum itself, close to the Nazi Gauform and the Jakobsplan student accommodation from the GDR, is a reminder of how the political-economic landscape, architecture and community life are always intertwined.

Bauhaus Museum, Weimar (Google Maps)
From April 2019
Museum website

*Wie wollen wir zusammenleben?