Typo Utopia

TYPO UTOPIA – A homage to the ideas of the Bauhaus artists and the typography of the Bauhaus itself.

On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus, the Arts Foundation Saxony-Anhalt commissioned us to develop a free artistic work on the »Typography of the Bauhaus«. The work was to be presented in the foundation’s large gallery room (16m long, 4m wide and 6m high) in November 2019. We asked ourselves, how would the Bauhaus artists have dealt with typography if they had had our technical possibilities? What typographic experiments in space would they have dared to do?

In keeping with the utopian moment of the Bauhaus – to cultivate diversity and curiosity about the future – we wanted to create a special space in which one could immerse oneself in the world of thoughts of the Bauhaus people. From the Bauhaus universe, we had to find positions that still move people today. The texts were to be brought to life through a 360° projection with multi-channel sound. We wanted to dispense with footage and concentrate entirely on the material »writing and signs«. Our goal: to make the contents visible purely typographically and to make the beauty of the letters tangible.

TYPO UTOPIA (11 min) gives ten quotations of great Bauhaus artists a stage. Inspired by a wealth of ideas such as the principles of the movement, a three-dimensional performance of black, white, light, shadow, movement and sound was created. The different animations refer to the respective content (form follows function), create haunting images and show the variety of positions.

The 360° video documentation of the entire installation you can find here: https://youtu.be/gMCi0Iu11iQ