Harvard University, Mar. 14-15, 2008

Call for Papers/Participation

Bauhaus Palimpsest: the Object of Discourse
Harvard University Art Museums, March 14-15, 2008

The Bauhaus has been proved an unwieldy, even unstable
historical subject: couched as an idea, crucible, and-for
some-pariah. It remains distinctive because of the layered
pedagogic methods and discursive practices employed both at
the design school and in its name subsequent to its closure in
1933. Indeed, due to the emigration of many of its former
masters and students the Bauhaus ceased to function as a
singular site. In diaspora, it became beset by the weight of
nationalism, discourses on modernism (and ensuing reactions
against them), socio-political change, and shifting attitudes
about consumerism, consumption, education, art making, and
authorship. This has resulted in myriad-and at times
conflicting-views of the Bauhaus generally and, importantly,
the forms produced both at the school and in its wake.

When one views the Bauhaus as a kind of palimpsest, however,
one has license to probe the institution, its history, and its
objects as documents that have been written over and
strategically erased to reveal and conceal their diverse
origins and revisions. This begs numerous questions: Does the
perennial interest in the Bauhaus signal its continued
relevance, or merely its permeability in a history that can be
written and re-written on top of it? How might a
historiography of the Bauhaus look and what effect might this
have upon what and how the Bauhaus means today? And
importantly, how do so-called Bauhaus objects function-in the
past or today-in light of this mercurial identity?

More generally today, the status of the object has been called
into question in a number of ways-the material effects of
ideas and ideology, interactions with theory, its indexical
uses, its being in the world, its role in the subject/object
relationship, and the very meaning of materialism itself. The
Bauhaus presents a useful example through which to assess
these larger issues; its objects were presumably agents for
change to the practitioners of the Bauhaus, but are they
critical repositories that unlock the past, denuded of other
than aesthetic value as museum pieces, or have they assumed a
new status in contemporary culture for historians, designers,
and users? Specific to a conception of the functioning of the
Bauhaus as a kind of palimpsest, we ask: What is the role of
Bauhaus objects in light of the design school's complex
history and the historical, theoretical, and political forces
that helped mold it? Why, for instance, is it that many
Bauhaus methods (its pedagogical strategies, for example) seem
to run counter to the appearance of objects produced at the
school? Why and how have certain notions about the school,
its objects and their designers dominated its reception? How
do Bauhaus objects stand up over the course of (critical)
time? How have the Bauhaus and its objects been mapped onto a
larger discourse-or how might they be?

We welcome historical and exploratory papers that contend with
any of these themes; comparative papers on topics germane to
the Bauhaus and/or its historical arc as well as individual
designers, architects, artists, and intellectual structures
that helped shape it; and papers related to the status of the
object broadly-encompassing multiple theoretical and artistic
strategies. We also invite presentations from contemporary
architects and designers.

*

Confirmed participants include Barry Bergdoll, Philip Johnson
Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern
Art; Professor, Columbia University and Toshiko Mori, Robert
P. Hubbard Professor in the Practice of Architecture and Chair
of the Department of Architecture, Harvard University Graduate
School of Design; Principal, Toshiko Mori Architect.
Honorarium and expenses paid to participants. Our intent is
that select papers will be published as an edited volume.

Please submit a brief letter of interest that includes contact
information and a 500-word abstract of the proposed paper, for
a session 25 minutes in length. Submission deadline: October
26, 2007. Please submit abstracts to each of the following:

Robin Schuldenfrei (schulfas.harvard.edu)
Jeffrey Saletnik (saletnikuchicago.edu)
Peter Nisbet (peter_nisbetharvard.edu)

This conference has been organized by Robin Schuldenfrei
(Harvard University Graduate School of Design and the
University of Illinois at Chicago) and Jeffrey Saletnik
(University of Chicago), with Peter Nisbet (Daimler-Benz
Curator of the Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University Art
Museums).