DER FILMENDE BAUHÄUSLER ALFRED EHRHARDT & DIE KLANGWELT DES BAUHAUSES

Film lecture to accompany the klangwerk am bauhaus concerts

Eight short films, with their colour restored by the Ehrhardt Foundation, demonstrate how Ehrhardt's musical training and the influence of the Bauhaus manifested themselves in his preoccupation with abstraction, archaism, basic form, surface textures, ornament, rhythm, polyphony and seriality. The Bau- haus was made life processes visible through media in a manner that is striking for the way in which it an- ticipates our present-day environmental concerns. ‘Spiel der Spiralen’ (Game of Spirals, 1951, 15') reveals the convoluted architecture of snail shells, aided by the boldly etched, accurate music of Bach. In ‘Tanz der Muscheln’ (Dance of the Mussels, 1956, 16'), pat- terned shells revolve to the modern electronic sounds of Wilhelm Keller and Bernhard Aign. The bizarre un- derwater world of ‘Koralen, Skulpturen der Meere’ (Corals, Sculptures of the Seas, 1964, 12') unfolds to the electroacoustic music of Oskar Sala. ‘Kunst unser- er Zeit I: Skulptur’ (Art of Our Time I: Sculpture, 1959, 14') films modernist sculptures in the green parklands of the Aue at documenta II in Kassel. In ‘Vulkanisches Antlitz’ (Volcanic Face, 1962, 11') glowing lava flows sluggishly downhill and red molten magma spurts up in huge arcs. In ‘Gletscher und ihre Ströme’ (Glaciers and their Streams, 1962, 10'), the arctic world of per- mafrost covers the glaciated volcanoes. In ‘Kochende Erde’ (Boiling Earth, 1962, 11'), hold springs bubble up contrasting with the bold colours of sulphurous vol- canoes. ‘Eis: Grönländische Skizzen’ (Ice: Greenland Sketches, 1962/63, 12') travels down through the is- land's ice sheet: from coastal pack ice and the sheet of inland ice to vast glaciers accompanied by clinking electronic sounds from Sala. By contrast, ‘Nordische Urwelt (Island)’ (Nordic primeval world Iceland, 1941, 17') still uses a bombastic and boastful late romantic music – in a tacky Nazi style.

The short films will be presented together with a lecture by the freelance filmmaker and writer Thomas Tode, who will characterize the Bauhaus in Weimar as an early environmental movement.