Exhibition & Screening

Exhibition

Para-Moderne

Since the mid-19th century, a growing unease about industrialization, urbanization, and materialism developed, especially in Germany and Switzerland. More and more people longed for a return to nature and were willing to accept restrictions for this. Various life reform movements emerged, some even in specially established reform colonies where health, spirituality, and physical culture were to be practiced — a point of contact with dance modernism. The exhibition Para-Moderne illuminates the potential but also the problematic excesses of life reform which, via the detour of esotericism, led to eugenics, anti-Semitism, and racism.

On view until 10 August at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn;
www.bundeskunsthalle.de