MIES VAN DER ROHE HOUSE | BERLIN
ELEMENTAL VESSELS symposium

Symposium: September 15, 2023 at the Mies van der Rohe Haus

Uli Aigner will be part of the final discussion at 7:15 p.m.

Location: House Lemke, Mies van der Rohe Haus, Oberseestraße 60, 13053 Berlin

-> Symposium Information: URL or PDF (German)
-> Edition Mies van der Rohe

In the development of a modern understanding of form and design, ceramics represent a central moment. An expression of a specific knowledge of materials and technical skill, the potted form mediates between tendencies of industrialization and rationalization. In particular, a look at Asia - for example, through French art ceramists from the second half of the 19th century, the Secessionists and the Vienna School of Applied Arts, as well as master ceramists such as Lucie Rie, Bernard Leach, Hans Coper, or the ceramic workshop of the Bauhaus - allows a differentiated understanding, possibly lost today, of a culture of form between art and craft, innovation and insistence on the way to a new perception of a modern everyday living.

Especially today, when a certain return to traditional craft values has set in - not least in connection with the "material turn" - the clay turned on the wheel has become a dazzling subject. If the experience of vessels as objects of use and media of a "modern elementarity", i.e. a reform culture of life beyond hermeneutic-semantic confusions after the end of the stylistic form, the symposium asks about the historical-theoretical background: What is the role of the formally elementalized utilitarian object in an ornamentless time? How does modern space acquire form and meaning through its use; what is the significance of its furnishings? What are the trajectories between art, craft and technology? How does the development of ceramics proceed from facade decoration to an object in space as part of the modern culture of form and of space as a subject of architectural theory?

Such and other questions will be discussed at this interdisciplinary symposium with guests from architecture, art history, philosophy, but also with ceramic artists, who are to include Günter Figal, Christian Witt-Döring, Uli Aigner, among others. In addition to the selected objects of the exhibition itself, the inclusion of philosophical concepts, theoretical writings and historical foundations in the form of a scientific discussion will help to consider the "experience of use" between man, object and space as a unity and bring together new developed spatial concepts of architecture with the elementalization of form in modernism: Space and object are placed in an effective space, thus telling the other story of a specific modernity in which continuity and rupture, meaning and form, use and contemplation "coincide." An accompanying publication is planned.

Program
(The conference language is German)

9 am Welcome with coffee

9:45 am-12:15 pm
FURNISHING UP IN THE SPACE OF MODERNITY

Albert Kirchengast, BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg
Space and form without ornament?

Wita Noack, Mies van der Rohe House Berlin
Otto D. Douglas-Hill and the living space of Berlin Modernism

Nina Wiedemeyer, Bauhaus-Archiv / Museum of Design
Bauhaus Vessels

12:15 pm Lunch break

1:30-4:00 pm
EXPERIENCE OF SPACE, EXPERIENCES IN SPACE

Günter Figal, Freiburg im Breisgau
Hollow form, ritual and sojourn: elementarity and cognition

Joachim Hahn, TU Dresden
Use of things: everyday life and transcendence

Thomas Hasler, TU Vienna
History: Rudolf Schwarz and the "profane sacrality"

4:00 pm Coffee break

4:15-6:45 pm
PRACTICES

Roger Boltshauser, ETH Zurich
Present: Sound and Architecture

Sascha Alexandra Zaitseva, Head of Ceramics Studio, University of Applied Arts Vienna
Vita composita - between art and craft, between action and contemplation

Christian Ruschitzka, University of Applied Arts Vienna
New old way

6:45 pm-7:15 pm
CLOSING ROUND

Discussion with the exhibiting ceramists

7:15 pm Apéro