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Herbert Bayer, Walter Gropius and László Moholy-Nagy, Exhibition of the Building Workers Unions (1931), Installation View

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Herbert Bayer, Walter Gropius and László Moholy-Nagy, Exhibition of the Building Workers Unions (1931), Installation View Herbert Bayer, Walter Gropius and László Moholy-Nagy, Exhibition of the Building Workers Unions (1931), installation view. Photo: Walter Christeller, courtesy of Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin. Bayer, Gropius and Moholy-Nagy: © 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. JCS_3.1_ROCCO_26-48.indd 26 4/1/14 1:40:56 PM Jcs 3 (1) pp. 26–48 Intellect Limited 2014 Journal of curatorial studies Volume 3 Number 1 © 2014 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/jcs.3.1.26_1 VANESSA ROCCO Southern New Hampshire University Activist Photo Spaces: ‘Situation Awareness’ and the Exhibition of the Building Workers Unions Abstract Keywords This article aims to demonstrate how the exhibition form and content created a labour union powerful dialectic in the Exhibition of the Building Workers Unions (Berlin, 1931). exhibitions Interactive display techniques designed by Herbert Bayer, László Moholy-Nagy photography and Walter Gropius supported messages advocating the crucial societal and eco- exhibitions nomic role played by construction-sector labour unions. Designed to promote the Herbert Bayer system of free trade unions in Germany, the show demonstrated the potential effec- László Moholy-Nagy tiveness of photography as an integral part of a didactic system, choreographed El Lissitzky into various displays that combined images with dynamic graphics and informa- Walter Gropius tive texts. To foster interest in the material, the artists used audience-involving Nazism and aesthetics strategies including startling viewpoints, photo-strips mounted on moving laths, and touch stations that would beckon the viewer. Taken together, the techniques constituted one of the boldest inter-war attempts to stimulate viewers through multi-sensory empowerment, and incite collective awareness at a time of immense political stakes. If on previous occasions, the viewer marching past the picture- wall was lulled […] into a certain passivity, now our design should make the man active. This should be the purpose of the [exhibition] room. – El Lissitzky, quoted in Zervigón (2013) 27 JCS_3.1_ROCCO_26-48.indd 27 4/1/14 1:40:56 PM Vanessa Rocco 1. Jorge Ribalta (2008) Exhibition spaces served as a site of primary importance in early twenti- presents this intersection as a ‘new eth-century avant-garde experiments. Russian Constructivist El Lissitzky cartography’ for the summarized this point succinctly in the opening epigraph, which affirms study of photography. that the artists of the era were determined to create a more engaged populace. Radically experimental exhibition spaces – often photo-based – were considered a mass media unto themselves in the European inter-war period, and as such the most radical emphasized mass messages, and de-emphasized individual experiences in front of individual prints. One of the starkest ways one can see this emphasis on collectivity play out is through the Ausstellungsstand der Baugewerkschaften (‘Exhibition of the Building Workers Unions’) (BWU), in Berlin in 1931, on which former Bauhaus designer Herbert Bayer and former Bauhaus master László Moholy-Nagy collaborated on the photo displays, while Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius designed the architectural structures. This article aims to place this seldom-discussed exhibition more prominently in the study of photography in the public sphere, particularly within historiographic analyses that create an intersection between art, the social sciences, and politics.1 As a growing area of research, it is necessary to counter the art historical tendency to return repeatedly to the same canonical exhibitions, thus suppressing highly illuminating transitional moments. Such moments are all the more crucial to comprehend during political upheavals like those of the early 1930s, a crossroads at which BWU stands. BWU was installed in one large room, 900 square metres, and part of a much larger, sprawling exhibition: the Deutsche Bauausstellung (‘the German Building Exhibition’), held at the Ausstellungshallen am Funkturm in Berlin, from May to August 1931. The intended audience for the Deutsche Bauausstellung was a general one, and the purpose was inter- preted at the time as one to ‘give over to the general public new ideas and new architectural thinking’ (Rode 1931: 163). Organizers achieved this through a large variety of display rooms. In addition to the BWU, thematic rooms included subjects ranging from urban planning and housing, to issues of rural settlements. The organizers, at least according to reception from socialist-leaning quarters at the time, considered buildings as amal- gams capable of summarizing many of the current economic problems facing Germany, as well as the most fruitful solutions to those problems: Five million unemployed. Loss of sales markets. Idleness in all indus- tries. Collapse, hunger, poverty. The best heads are looking for a way out, a valve, which could ease the mental and physical pressure. We know that economic, social, cultural and political aspirations hang together to form a unit […]. Which is better suited to identify society, the social, economic and technical context that the new liberating ideas can produce, as the general house, the building? (Rode 1931: 163) In other words, as the social, cultural and political ‘hang together’, they form a dynamic cluster. In the case of the Deutsche Bauausstellung, a locus of these forces that could help understand how they functioned produc- tively together was ‘the building’. And in the case of the specific exhibition I will address in this article, the BWU, the locus was those who build, that 28 JCS_3.1_ROCCO_26-48.indd 28 4/1/14 1:40:56 PM Activist Photo Spaces is, the men and women who contributed their efforts as roofers, painters and bricklayers, among other trades. The Political at the Exhibition of the Building Workers Unions The journal Soziale Bauwirtshaft (‘Social Construction Industry’), published by the VsB (the Association of Social Construction Companies), provided an introduction to the sprawling exhibition surrounding the BWU, by giving basic facts such as those listed above. The text then provided an enormously detailed guide to the one-room BWU display within. The fact that the BWU room was highlighted above others in this publica- tion was not surprising, given the mutual job of the journal and the show to espouse the position of the trade unions, a group assumed to be aligned with the political left. The VsB had many berths devoted to its enterprises at the BWU, and coexisted with those of several other building union organizations, including the Baugewerksbund (‘Building Workers Association’), the Roofers Association, and Dewog (finance union enter- prises). The societal urgency expressed in this publication for a strong free trade union movement was palpable. Indeed, the organized labour move- ment would become, especially in 1932 and early 1933, the final political bulwark against the vicious assaults of the National Socialists. Eighteen months before the final acquiescence of the German political leadership to the Nazi party, the organizers of the Bauausstellung were still convinced of the self-evidence of collective – rather than autocratic – prescriptions for the economic malaise racking Germany. Otto Rode included a manifesto-style list that equated the workers’ enterprise with that of ‘economic democracy’. Through the mounting of the larger exhibi- tion, this was realized as a kind of spatial manifesto. His list advocated the myriad ways that trade unions held a special place in the economy: 1) The lost war in the consciences of the workers elevated responsi- bility for the state and economy […]. 2) The workers desire […] eco- nomic democracy through responsible participation in the production process and fair distribution of labour. 3) The working man should [be] in the future not only the object but also the subject of the econ- omy. 4) The free trade unions have taken up this idea and organized. (Rode 1931: 169) Thus workers were considered essential to the functioning of the economy and its future recovery. Up until that point, the article addressed the social importance of architectural developments in general. Rode’s spatial mani- festo then switched specifically to the BWU exhibition and the central position of the workers and unions who make buildings ‘happen’. The purpose of the construction unions was emphasized as serving the community, building the character of the public sector union members, and raising the standard of living of workers. The text then described specific sections of the BWU display that were then keyed into installa- tion shots. Rode summarized the purpose of the show at the end of his article as one of both showing accomplishments and of searching for new 29 JCS_3.1_ROCCO_26-48.indd 29 4/3/14 2:28:23 PM Vanessa Rocco forms of expression in the areas of a social economy. It concluded with a list of credits for Gropius, Bayer and Moholy-Nagy (Rode 1931: 178). Taken together, the different parts of Rode’s article in Soziale Bauwirtschaft created an inextricable connection between the enterprises of artists and those of workers. Prelude to Exhibition of the Building Workers Unions: Film und Foto and The Deutscher Werkbund Exhibition Moholy-Nagy laid the foundation for BWU through the organization of many aspects of a previous exhibition, Film und Foto, mounted in Stuttgart in 1929, and regarded as one of the most important in photographic history. In this exhibition, he installed a wide variety of experimental images, including photograms,
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