7th International Marianne Brandt Contest 2019

7th International Marianne Brandt Contest 2019 now is over!

Kunstverein Villa Arte e.V. now is accepting submissions for the 7th International Marianne Brandt Contest 2019 themed “I am all of glass”.

About Competition

Kunstverein Villa Arte e.V. now is accepting submissions for the 7th International Marianne Brandt Contest 2019 themed “I am all of glass”.
The International Marianne Brandt Contest is supported by the Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony and the City of Chemnitz and held every three years since 2001.

In 2019, when the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus is being commemorated all over Germany and the world, the 7th International Marianne Brandt Contest will focus on the functional and metaphorical potential of glass as material, which has had an unrivaled formative influence on the visionary beginnings of the German school of design.

“I am all of glass,” wrote Marianne Brandt in 1922 in one of her poems – a year before she resolved to give up painting at the Bauhaus in Weimar and become a designer of useful things. At the Bauhaus she wanted to be everything other than appear fragile; neither “dainty”, nor soft, i.e., in no way correspond to the clichés of femininity also dominant among the Bauhaus men. She thus held her ground at the Bauhaus not only as the only woman in the tough metalworking section, but created numerous hollowware pieces in Weimar – like the tea infuser developed out of austere spherical geometry – and other objects, which are revered today as design icons... For the Bauhaus, glass was not just a utopian building material, which promised open, light-flooded spaces for a new, modern feeling of life. Particularly for László Moholy-Nagy – Marianne Brandt’s most important teacher – it was also the medium of a categorically new way of designing spaces, objects and images with light. Today we touch hardly any other material more frequently than we do hard, smooth, fragile glass. This is due to omnipresent touchscreens and the vessels we drink from. Every day, we see the world through glass: many façades are of glass, all windows and most electronic screens, eye spectacles and vehicle windscreens. The lenses of microscopes and cameras are among our most important allies in technically supported perceptions of our environment. The 7th International Marianne Brandt Contest also asks whether glass today can be linked to auspicious visions charged with utopian resonances, and what functional and metaphorical significance today’s designers, photographers and artists associate with this material.

The 2019 Contest includes the following categories:

• Product Design - in this category, the contest asks for products that incorporate both glass-enabled functions and uses, as well as designs that develop practical and helpful artifacts with regard to the metaphor and characteristics of glass. A product, a study or an image documentation with a maximum of three variations can be submitted.

• Photography - the category photography is about image-finding, which motivates a change in the perspicacious and sensory perspectives of the material and materiality of glass, and works that explicitly draw their characteristics from material observation and study. Three single images or a series of maximum five images can be submitted.

• Experimental Design - this special category focuses on processes and designs for experimental and unconventional exploration of glass in design processes. Requested are experimental arrangements, studies and models to explore dimensions of the possibilities of the material as well as free artistic explorations of visions and nightmares on light and transparency. A product, a study or an image documentation with a maximum of three variations can be submitted.

Submissions can be uploaded in PDF format (max. 5 MB/max. 5 pages) to this platform: www.contest.marianne-brandt-wettbewerb.de. The contest is divided into two phases:

The first phase contains the digital submission of the exhibits. Participants may upload a digital version of their exhibit as a single PDF document (max. 5 MB/max. 5 pages) to this platform: www.contest.marianne-brandt-wettbewerb.de. The jury will then nominate the exhibits for the second phase.

The second phase includes the submission of the exhibits by mail. In case participants are nominated for this phase they will receive further details for their submission by mail. The postage fee for submission and return by mail is covered by the participant.

Prizes will be awarded in the categories of design, photography and art and there will also be several special prizes. The 60 works will be exhibited in the Industrial Museum Chemnitz, Germany.

The participation fee is 30 Euro.