POWER HOUSE

Mirsini Artakianou, Detel Aurand, Margrét H. Blöndal, Felix Deiters, Anna Miklavcic, Ioannis Oriwol, Leon Purtscher, Till Röttjer, Masami Saito, Martha Steinmetz, Rio Usui, Khashayar Zandyavari nova space @ Schiller-Museum Weimar EPISODE 01 - where do we grow from here is the first chapter of the exhibition POWER HOUSE, with which nova space, the university gallery of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, is a guest at the Schiller Museum on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the first-ever Bauhaus exhibition. The starting point for this inaugural presentation is to briefly pause and reflect on the questions of where we stand and where we want to go. Never before have there been more people on our planet than now. Resources have never been more contested, space scarcer, environmental changes more palpable than in the present. Growth and development are ubiquitous terms, but where and how do they become visible? The exhibition circles around aspects of physical, organic, but also mental, personal and digital growth. It considers the connection and discrepancy between measurable expansion (and the values and definitions we have set for it) and experienced, felt growth, and the impact of these apparent opposites on our living spaces. Icelandic writer and climate activist Andri Snær Magnason, for example, pointed out in his book ‘Dreamland’ (2006) that we judge a nation's success and prosperity almost exclusively by (measurable) factors such as economic growth or gross domestic product, without considering (non-measurable, experienced) aspects such as satisfaction or happiness within the population or the health of the environment. Moreover, we are not even aware of many extensive growth processes because they take place on the smallest scale and are not visible to the human eye. The spread of fungi, viruses and bacteria, for example, is hardly perceptible to us, even though it is the basis of life for many species. Similarly, the inexorable increase in digital data volumes remains abstract and invisible, manifesting itself at best on full storage media, while space in the clouds continues to grow unabated. where do we grow from here is a continuation of the question Walter Gropius posed in 1919 before founding the Staatliches Bauhaus: "How will we live, how will we settle, what forms of community will we strive for?" The exhibition also hints at African-American human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Martin Luther King Jr.'s manifesto titled ‘Where do we go from here: Chaos or Community’, which in 1968 addressed issues of social justice and belonging, among others. Now, in 2023, a new generation is raising the same questions about how we want to move forward from where we stand, how we want to develop, grow and evolve as individuals but also as a society, and what aspects play a particular role in that process. The exhibition features works by five students of Bauhaus-Universität, four alumni, and three international artists who are already established. None of them provide final answers to these big questions, but open up individual perspectives on the topic of growth with their works and take a look at different aspects of it. At the same time, POWER HOUSE is also conceived as a dynamic project. Starting from this first episode, it will continuously change, grow and shrink, spreading across the museum, the public space, and all the way to the campus. A collaborative project of Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, the university gallery nova space and Klassik Stiftung Weimar