Sunday March 8, 7:30pm
Performance: “Reflektorische Farblichtspiele” (Reflecting Color-Light-Play)
By Kurt Schwerdtfeger
Performed by Tessa Hughes-Freeland, Ray Sweeten, Genevieve HK, and Stephanie Wuertz
Q&A follows the performance
Microscope is very pleased to present a live performance of Kurt Schwerdtfetger’s “Reflektorishe Farblichtspiele (Reflecting Color-Light-Play)” (1922/66) in connection with a solo exhibition of the work at the gallery through March 22nd.
The piece — which consists of up to five movements, or “Sätze” including: “Vegetativ Form,” “Bauhaus 1922,” “Streifen und Gitter” (Stripes and Grids), “Rotes Quadrat” (Red Square), and “Hommage à Oskar Schlemmer” — utilizes a large hand-built cube projection apparatus in which performers activate stencil shapes and a switchboard of colored lights to form a complex, abstract light play appearing on its screen surface.
The performance features Tessa Hughes-Freeland on the keyboard-like light system; Genevieve HK and Stephanie Wuertz manipulating the stenciled shapes, and Ray Sweeten on live sound augmentations to the 1966 soundtracks by Wolfgang Roscher, as well as offering additional visual support.
A Q&A with the performers will follow the performance. More info on Reflektorische Farblichtspiele below.
General admission $12
Students & Members $10
It was in 1922 that the then 25-year-old artist and student debuted the work as part of the Bauhaus Lantern Festival at the home of Vasily Kandinsky.
“While conceptualizing a shadow play titled “Days of Genesis” for a Lantern Festival it seemed necessary to use not only shadow figures but color shapes on black as well. At that very moment I perceived the idea of color-light plays in abstract form with free-moving, superimposed shapes of colored light moving in time.” – Kurt Schwerdtfeger, 1962
“Reflektorishe Farblichtspiele” has in recent years received wider recognition as a revolutionary work of the Bauhaus movement and of 20th century film, sculpture, and performance. It most recently appeared at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin (March – June 2019) and at Paul Klee Center in Bern (Sept 2019 – January 2020) as part of the international exhibition “bauhaus imaginista,” curated by Marion von Osten and Grant Watson, in connection with 100 years of Bauhaus celebrations and where it was one of four central works around which the exhibition was formed.
The current rendition uses an apparatus built in 2016 by Daniel Wapner, in collaboration with the gallery, for “Dreamlands: Expanded,” a series of one-night performances that took place at the gallery as part of the Whitney Museum’s “Dreamlands, Immersive Cinema and Art, 1905-2016” and was the first re-staging of the work in 50 years. The visual score and sound elements are based on documentation of the 1966 presentation as well as original notes and other information from the Schwerdtfeger Estate.
Although no recordings of the original performance exist, photographs of images generated from that performance appeared in the first Bauhausbuch of works from 1919-1922, in MoMA’s 1938/39 exhibit “Bauhaus 1919-1928” as well as in the more recent “Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity”, 2009/10.
Special thanks to Chrissie Iles, Paula and Stefan Schwerdtfeger, and Daniel Wapner.
Information about the exhibition HERE
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Kurt Schwerdtfeger was born in 1897 in the German city of Puddiger (now Podgórki, Poland). Schwerdtfeger in 1919 moved first to Königsberg, then Jena to pursue studies in art history and philosophy. In 1920, he joined the newly founded Bauhaus in Weimar as a sculptor and studied under Oskar Schlemmer and Johannes Itten. Schwerdtfeger focused on his own work, while at the same time contributing commissioned works to festivals and exhibitions, in the context of which his “Reflecting Color-Light-Play” (Reflektorische Farblichtspiele) came to life and was first performed in the apartment of Wassily Kandinsky in 1922.
As a representative of the students, he participated in meetings and intervened in the planning and implementation of the Bauhaus Week. In 1924, Schwerdtfeger left the Bauhaus in protest of his work being appropriated by a fellow student. Schwerdtfeger began working at the newly founded Kunstgewerbeschule Stettin in 1925 and became head of the sculpture department at the Stettin School of Applied Arts two years later. In that period Schwerdtfeger exhibited his work among others in the Galerie Der Sturm in Berlin, alongside works by artists from the group “Berlin Secession” as well as the French “UAM” (Union des artistes moderne).
At the time he also became a member of the Novembergruppe (November Group), the Werkbund (a German association of artists, architects, designers, and industrialists established in 1907) and later of the artist federation Künstlerbundes Neues Pommern (New Artists Association of Pomerania). In 1937, he was dismissed as teacher and his artworks in museum collections were branded as “degenerate art” and removed by the Nazis. Nevertheless, he set up a studio in Stettin and continued to work as an artist.
In 1946, Schwerdtfeger was appointed professor at the Alfeld College of Education, in Alfeld, Germany and was in contact with Paul Citroen, Walter Gropius, Gregor Rosenbauer and Lothar Schreyer, among others. Schwerdtfeger reconstructed “Reflektorisches Farblichtspiele“ with his students between 1964 and 1966 for a performance at the Kunstverein Hannover that took place just a few weeks after his death on August 8, 1966.
Schwerdtfeger’s work appeared in the exhibitions “Bauhaus: 1919-1928” at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 1938/39; in “50 jahre bauhaus” at Wuertembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, Germany in 1968, which then traveled to Amsterdam, Paris, New York and Tokyo, among others. In Alfeld, an assembly hall has been named after him, and his sculpture “Saint Francis” is publicly displayed. Schwerdtfeger’s work is in public collections in Berlin and Stettin as well as in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA, among others.
Tessa Hughes-Freeland works in a variety of formats and mediums, and her films and live expanded cinema performances have been shown in diverse venues, ranging from internationally prominent museums to seedy bars in gritty neighborhoods. Her work is best described as “confrontational, transgressive, provocative and poetic”. Her films have screened internationally in North America, Europe and Australia and in prominent museums and galleries, including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the New Museum, and the KW Institute of Contemporary Art in Berlin. In 2018 a program of her films was included in the “No–Wave, Transgression” Film Series at MoMA. In November 2019 she had a solo exhibition at Howl Happening in and was the featured artist for “Body as Playground: Body as Battleground” exhibition in Gothenburg, Sweden in January 2020. Five of her films are also included in an exhibition touring museums in Asia. Hughes-Freeland has been a juror for several festivals, and has programmed extensively, most recently for “Punk Lust: Radical Provocation 1971-85“at The Museum of Sex.
Genevieve HK is an artist, archivist, projectionist, film curator based in New York City. As part of the liquid light-show performance group A Clockface Orange, she collaborates with sound artists and musicians to compose live improvisational visuals using techniques informed by light shows of the 1960s. Since 2015, she has performed alongside the Optipus Film Collective, and in 2016 participated in “Dreamlands: Expanded”, a series of expanded cinema events organized by Microscope Gallery in collaboration with The Whitney Museum as part of the exhibition “Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art, 1906-2016”. In addition to her performance work, Genevieve also co-teaches Liquid Light-show Performance at Mono No Aware.
Ray Sweeten is an artist and computer programmer, working in the intersections between image, sound and information systems using a hybrid of digital and analog media. Sweeten has performed and screened work at the New Museum, The Kitchen, MoMA PS1, NY Underground Film Festival, San Fransisco Electronic Music Festival, CinemaTexas, The Stone, Liverpool Biennial, Aurora Picture Show, Lux Spain, Monkey Town, Millennium Film Project, Participant Gallery, Pacific Film Archive, Chicago Filmmakers and has held youth workshops for electronic music at Community Musicworks (RI), Vibe Songmakers(NY), and The Guggenheim Museum (NY). Since 2011 he has been one half of collaborative artist duo Lisa Gwilliam and Ray Sweeten (DataSpaceTime) applying original coding to current technologies to create works across various mediums including moving image, digital drawings, and installation works, among others.
Stephanie Wuertz is a filmmaker based in Brooklyn. Her film practice builds and comments on the avant-garde film tradition. Using film and outmoded equipment like the Bolex and JK optical printer, she’s explored issues surrounding obsolescence, the archive, and re-enactment. Her work has screened at Anthology Film Archives, Microscope Gallery, and The New Museum and has travelled to California, South America, Paris, and the UK. From 2012–2014, she served as President of the Board of Millennium Film Workshop and has curated film programs at UnionDocs, The New School, the Film-maker’s Coop, and Le Petit Versailles. She edits and shoots video for The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she is currently co-curating the archival film series From the Vaults. She is also working on a feature about the American painter Albert Pinkham Ryder.