Towards a New Weimar (high-definition video for projection)
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Towards a New Weimar draws on the visual heritage of the Bauhaus school, whilst at the same time referencing the downfall of the Weimar republic and Germany's subsequent political descent into the disaster of Fascism. The work reflects on current developments in Western politics, with democracy ever weakened by the lack of visionary politics; parties tend increasingly toward an increasingly crowded centre ground. Policies are less often debated in Western parliaments that who thought them up first. Race and cultural difference are becoming increasingly divisive political issues whilst political authoritarianism is paradoxically offered in parallel with weak political will, governed by opinion poll and media reaction.The dangers of weak democracy were typified by German politics in the inter-war period, where Nazism became an easy sell to a jaded population. At the same time as Nazi utopianism was being brewed by the National Socialists, Modernist Utopianism was being refined at the Bauhaus, until the closure of the school by the Nazi party is 1933. The utopian aspirations of both could be seen as perfectly parallel, but the Bauhaus eventually incurred the wrath of the party due to the political inclinations of its staff and student bodies. The Nazi party itself had no policy on architecture at this time.The work is based around apparent geometric abstraction reminiscent of the Bauhaus constructivism, and in particular that of László Moholy-Nagy and the films of Oscar Fischinger. The kalediscopic animation reveals its graphic source in the swastika, whilst retaining a compelling and hypnotic surface, which itself hints at the modes of public engagement utilised by political systems past and present.