Dec 2nd 2019

Film screening and artist talk with Biennial contributor Wendelien van Oldenborgh and Adrienne Brown, Associate Professor, University of Chicago, about van Oldenborgh’s film Two Stones.

Two Stones, 2019, is a single screen projection with two soundtracks on separate headphones and a specially designed seating object (in collaboration with Laura Amann).

The film explores the trajectories and ideals of the Bauhaus-trained, German architect Lotte Stam-Beese and the Caribbean activist and writer Hermina Huiswoud through dialogues and appearances by contemporary protagonists. Both Stam-Beese and Huiswoud spent time working in the Soviet Union in the early 1930s and both ended up being active in the Netherlands after WWII.

Two Stones was filmed in the 1930s constructivist district of KhTZ in Kharkiv, Ukraine, the first large housing project on which Lotte Stam-Beese worked, and in Stam-Beese’s celebrated 1950s Pendrecht, designed during her period as Rotterdam’s main architect / urban planner.

In the 1970s, Hermina Huiswoud was agitating against the Rotterdam housing rule, which limited Caribbean Dutch inhabitants to settle in any of the city’s districts if their presence would exceed 5% of the population.

Resonances as well as dissonances between the distinct trajectories of the two women and their expectation from communist ideology, are sensed through thoughts and experiences of the protagonists, who all have a personal or professional relation to the issues at hand.

Part of our two day Biennial Talk Series and Film Screening celebrating the Bauhaus’ centennial: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/two-stones-film-screening-tickets-82682237799

The Chicago Architecture Biennial — open now through January 5, 2020 — is the largest exhibition of architecture, art, and design in North America. Explore how architecture shapes our communities, cities and environment through free exhibitions, performances, tours, films, and talks. View a full schedule of programs at chicagoarchitecturebiennial.org

Image courtesy of Wendelien van Oldenborgh. “Two Stones, 2019. Still, single screen with two soundtracks, 28 min each, commissioned by bauhaus imaginista.

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