Deutsches Haus at NYU, in collaboration with the German Consulate General in New York, Bauhaus Stiftung Dessau, and Bundeskulturstiftung, presents a conversation among Torsten Blume, Jenny Brockmann, Jeanette Redensek, and Ursula Staudinger, which will be moderated by Meghan Forbes.
In discussing what the fascinating material experiments and body exercises conducted at the early Bauhaus in Weimar tell us about the utopian desire for equilibrium and balance, this conversation will unravel how these experiments correspond to contemporary studies on body exercises and body movement which alter the perception of the outside world, i.e. studies on how body exercises influence brain processes and how this can benefit physical and psychological health of elderly people.
This event takes place three days before the opening reception of the exhibition “Bauhaus in Balance” (May 10-June 27, 2019), on May 9, 6pm, at the German Consulate General in New York, 871 United Nations Plaza, New York, NY 10017
About the speakers:
Torsten Blume works as a research associate, artist, and choreographer at the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation. The overall theme of his research work and artistic exploration is the historic Bauhaus stage workshop. Since 2017, he is directing the project “Bauhaus Open Stage – Performative Architectonics.” It is laid out as a series of related projects in cooperation with international universities, to re-address the Bauhaus stage workshop in contemporary performative studies as a specific pedagogy for architectural, design, and art education.
Ursula M. Staudinger is a German psychologist and aging researcher. She is Professor of Sociomedical Sciences and Professor of Psychology at the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center at Columbia University. Between 2013 and 2017 she was the founding director of the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center and President of the affiliated International Longevity Center USA. Ursula M. Staudinger is known for her work on the positive plasticity of aging (cognition, personality) as well as her research on resilience and on wisdom. Recently she has conducted groundbreaking studies to better understand the cumulative effects of work on cognitive aging.
Jenny Brockmann is a German artist and researcher. She studied Fine Art at Berlin University of the Arts, where she was a master student of Rebecca Horn. She also received a diploma in Architecture from the Technical University Berlin. Her sculptures and installations, which range from the organic to the philosophical, have been shown in numerous venues all over the world, including e.g. at The Genia Schreiber University Art Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel; Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, Peekskill, NY, USA, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan, and Viborg Kunsthal, Denmark.
Jeannette Redensek is director of the Josef Albers catalogue raisonné, a project of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation. Her essays on Albers’ materials and techniques have appeared in publications of the Kunstmuseum Bern; Henie-Onstad Kunstsenter Oslo; Fundación Juan March Madrid; and Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts Taiwan. She was a fellow in the Berlin Program at the Freie Universität Berlin and holds a doctorate in architecture and urbanism from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
Meghan Forbes (moderator) is the C-MAP fellow for Central and Eastern Europe at The Museum of Modern Art and a visiting scholar at the Institute for Public Knowledge at NYU. Meghan has a Phd from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She has received numerous grants and fellowships to support her work on the textual and visual iterations of transnational Central European avant-gardes between the two world wars, including a Fulbright award to conduct research in Berlin, Germany in 2014-2015. Meghan Forbes is the sole editor of International Perspectives on Publishing Platforms: Image, Object, Text (Routledge, 2019).
Attendance information:
Events at Deutsches Haus are free of charge. If you would like to attend this event, please send us an email to [email protected]. Space at Deutsches Haus is limited, please arrive ten minutes prior to the event. Thank you!
“Bauhaus in Balance – Exercises in Body and Mind Calibration” is a DAAD-sponsored event.
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