ABSTRACT
The Light Prop and photograms as condensers of various light phenomena bring us to Moholy-Nagy's technique of breaking down and transcribing the properties of various manifestations of modern life to engender a multifaceted Spielraum. For Moholy-Nagy photography, film, and light design had the potential for making visible modernity's challenge to our perception of the world, by, for instance, transforming visual characteristics of architectonic space and spatial experience. The Light Prop offered a similarly unfamiliar, visually and spatially engaging performance that responded to Gropius's call, in a no less ambivalent manner, to create collective encounters through modern design. The exhibition focused on the problem, with ambivalent results, of how to channel the tension between people and modern technology, as well as between the tactile and increasingly optical experience of the city, into socially positive encounters and places of social gathering.
