Background and additional information

Stop trying to seduce us with your visions of the past – film development proposal

Location:Gropiusstadt(former death strip)

Scene: Dawn, a feld in Brandenburg, just outside Gropiusstadt, Berlin/Germany (before 1989: GDR)

Actors: Seven actors (both male and female). In their twenties, fit, normal build, ethnicity unimportant. Naked.

Props: Seven flags (see image) on poles.

Music: Carl Orff, Ecce Gratum.

Duration: Approximately 5mins.

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Design by Jonathan Trayner

Background: The film is the follow on from Jon Trayner's artist residency in Berlin last year with Pilotprojekt Gropiusstadt where he produced a test shoot for this film. This was produced with only one actor and a small MiniDV camera.

How the public will engage with the work:

The work will be exhibited in one of Manchester's foremost galleries with a history of public engagement both within art audiences and the wider community and has been submitted to art festivals around Europe (for 2010/2011)

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Cross-reference: Unity in diversity

The Bauhaus' "novel method of education in design has been widely misunderstood and misinterpreted. The present generation is inclined to think of it as a rigid stylistic dogma of yesterday whose usefulness has come to an end because its ideological and technical premises are now outdated. This view confuses a method of approach with the practical results obtained by it at a particular period of its application. The Bauhaus was not concerned with the formulation of timebound, stylistic concepts, and its technical methods were not ends in themselves. It was created to show how a multitude of individuals, willing to work concertedly but without losing their identity, could evolve a kinship of expression in their response to the challenges of the day. Its aim was to give a basic demonstration of how to maintain unity in diversity, and it did this with the materials, techniques, and form concepts germane to its time. It was this method of approach that was revolutionary…” -- from “The Role of the Architect in Modern Society,” address given at Columbia University (March 1961) by Walter Gropius
(I found this quote on a recent blog which is followed by numerous responses by the blog's subscribers regarding Gropius’ ideas about gathering artists and collaborating together, see
http://roberttracyphdhonors400.wordpress.com/2009/09/16/german-bauhaus/)