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After the preliminary course “From Bauhaus to Silicon Valley” last year, this summer projekt bauhaus revives the Bauhaus’s workshop structure in order to explore the emancipatory potential of technology, to question the idea of progress, and to formulate a critique of the present through design. Lead by the most engaging experts from the fields of architecture, urban planning, sociology, philosophy, computer science, media, technology history, and scientific theory, as well as art, projekt bauhaus Werkstatt comprises a series of workshops accompanied by public lectures, exhibitions, artistic performances, and informal gatherings.

projekt bauhaus Werkstatt:
Questioning the contemporary notion of progress

The classical avant-garde believed in progress, a better future, and in improvement through innovation. By now, the new has lost its innocence. These days, “utopias” increasingly pursue ambitions of deceleration (slow food, urban gardening, etc.)
 and preservation (climate goals and conservation of the environment and culture). While ever-accelerating capitalist processes are often experienced as problematic, many (mainly conservative) critics aim to negate or reject those problems. Is progress still emancipatory and preservation reactionary, or are things in fact fundamentally very different? Accelerationism’s plea for a renewal of the alliance between emancipatory aspirations and technological and scientific advances has given rise to the debate about whether this liaison can deliver on its promise or whether emancipation should rather fall back on the means of criticism and deviance. Moreover, technology and financialization create new geopolitical orders, shift ideological narratives, and transform societal systems. But scientific and technological advancements only lead to limited social improvements within society. Thus, the question must be asked: do the current backward-looking political and ideological trends emerge in spite of or due to advances in information technology? What are the current models of a cultural practice that consider technology and knowledge production in terms of the progress of society as a global whole? How can such a practice be shaped and communicated? And how can it be disseminated to the public?

projekt bauhaus has invited international teams of practitioners and theoreticians from different disciplines in order to explore the emancipatory potential of technology, the decolonization of progress, and the critique of the present through design. Over four days, the guests and the participants will exchange their views on the current state of research through workshops, lectures, exhibitions, and performances. projekt bauhaus Werkstatt also features artistic interventions especially developed for the occasion by Morehshin Allahyari, Olaf Nicolai, and Brave New Alps that will be performed onsite. projekt bauhaus Werkstatt takes place in the sculptural and performative Floating University, designed and initiated by raumlaborberlin as an experimental and interdisciplinary laboratory for knowledge production.

Datatopia, a Summer School in cooperation with the Chair for Theory of Architecture at KIT Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

At present, forms of society, ways of thinking, and modes of existence are emerging that cannot be told without the computer. Data-based processes of encoding, transcoding, and recoding spaces, objects, shapes, surfaces, materials—even the human body—are leading to recursive processes of a comprehensive datafication of society, thereby calling into question traditional cultural, political, and economic value systems and systems of production. How, for example, will space for work and production change, as human physical and cognitive actions are increasingly replaced by automation systems, artificial intelligence, and robotics? The emerging technological unrest not only requires new hypothetical thinking in scenarios, but also innovative methods for shaping our future big-data society: “Datatopia.”


As part of projekt bauhaus Werkstatt, the Datatopia Summer School investigates these issues through internationally composed and interdisciplinary studios. Postgraduate students from all over the world are invited to reflect on the contemporary conditions of information and technology and to discuss their ideas and researches. Building on the latest scientific findings from the fields of architecture, urban planning, sociology, philosophy, computer science, politics, media, and technology history, as well as art and scientific theory, they investigate new aesthetic, spatial, social, and political forms of culture that might arise in a data-driven society. The studios will address current artistic and theoretical strategies on visualization and experientialization as well as the discourse surrounding big data technologies so that these strategies can be emancipated, i.e., made available for use by civil society and the public. The aim of the Datatopia Summer School is the interdisciplinary development of innovative design strategies in order to reveal the concrete societal effects of abstract technical processes and render them tangible and comprehensible.

The workshops of the Datatopia Summer School are co-curated by Armen Avanessian & Victoria Ivanova and lead by Beatriz Colomina, Mark Wigley & Iván López-Munuera; Keller Easterling & Alliance of Southern Triangle (Diann Bauer and Patricia Margarita Hernández); T’ai Smith & Ida Soulard; Eyal Weizman & Ines Weizman; Benjamin H. Bratton & Nicolay Boyadjiev.

The results of the Datatopia Summer School as well as of projekt bauhaus Werkstatt will be published in a special issue of ARCH+.

PROGRAM

Thursday, August 30

11 a.m. Main Hall: Welcome and Introduction
Christina Landbrecht (Schering Stiftung); Cora Schaffert-Ziegenbalg (VolkswagenStiftung), Anh-Linh Ngo, Armen Avanessian, Victoria Ivanova (projekt bauhaus Werkstatt); Georg Vrachliotis (Datatopia Summer School); Benjamin Foerster-Baldenius (Floating University)

3 p.m. Main Hall: Public Time
Undoing the Bauhaus: Perversions and Performances
Beatriz Colomina / Mark Wigley with performative interventions by students from from Princeton University and Columbia University

7 p.m. Main Hall: Dialog
Armin Linke in conversation with Georg Vrachliotis

Friday, August 31

3 p.m. Main Hall: Public Time / Lecture
Bauhaus Trends
T'ai Smith

5 p.m. Main Hall: Public Time / Lecture
Medium Design
Keller Easterling

7 p.m. Main Hall: Public Time / Lecture
Forensic Architecture
Eyal Weizman

Saturday, September 1

3 p.m. Main Hall: Public Time / Presentation and Workshop
Parading for Commoning
Brigade Brave New Alps & Öffentliche Gestaltungsberatung with students of the Hfb

5 p.m. Tempelhofer Feld: Public Time / Parade
Parading for Commoning
Brigade Brave New Alps & Öffentliche Gestaltungsberatung with students of the HfbK

7 p.m. Main Hall: Public Time / Lecture
"The Whole Age of Computer Has Made It Where Nobody Knows Exactly What’s Going On"
An Update on The Stack
Benjamin H. Bratton

8:30 p.m. Main Hall: Performance
The Bauhaus Files. Silent Partners
Olaf Nicolai

Sunday, September 2

3 p.m. Main Hall: Talk / Debate
Conclusion of the Datatopia Summer School with all participants and Georg Vrachliotis, head of the Summer School, Chair for Theory of Architecture at KIT Karlsruhe Institute of Technology 

5 p.m. Main Hall
Hot Terms!
Developing the floating university lexicon with Gilly Karjevsky

7 p.m. Platform: Performance
Breaching Towards Other Futures
Morehshin Allahyari with Shirin Fahimi

Permanent Installations

Urban Forest: Installation/Video and Reading Room
Breaching Towards Other Futures
Morehshin Allahyari

Reader and Documentation
Reading Unfinished Processes
Brigade Brave New Alps & Öffentliche Gestaltungsberatung with students of the HfbK

Daily

10 a.m. – 1 p.m. Around the Floating University
Datatopia Summer School

2 p.m. Main Hall: Quick Talks

2 p.m. - 3 p.m. Around the Floating University
Bauhaus on Waves
Ivan L. Munuera & Paula Vilaplana

10 a.m. – 10 p.m. Photo Booth
Students from Princeton University and Columbia University

Drop Bar
Students from Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin

DETAILS

1-day ticket: 5 euros
4-day ticket: 15 euros
Limited number of seating.
By popular demand, we have added the opportunity to book tickets in advance.

The program is held in English.
For further information on the program and the participants, please visit www.projekt-bauhaus.de.

Artistic direction: Jesko Fezer, Christian Hiller, Anh-Linh Ngo, Philipp Oswalt, Joanne Pouzenc, Jan Wenzel; co-curators of projekt bauhaus Werkstatt: Armen Avanessian, Victoria Ivanova; Head of the Datatopia Summer School: Georg Vrachliotis, Chair for Theory of Architecture at KIT; program coordination: Joanne Pouzenc; project management: Katja Szymczak