Experimental structure of discourse: mapping the discourse formations of Bauhaus ideals

In the relativistic world of the 21st century, if the Bauhaus would still be upheld as doctrine, we must face the truth: it can hardly be considered a provocation. Rather, we most often find ourselves caught between contradictory wishes to preserve an intact past and to make sense of a resolute avant-gardism. This paper proposes that the Bauhaus, as a discursive knowledge body, be structuralistically analyzed with Foucauldian Discourse Analysis. Our claim is substantiated by: first, that a F oucaultian concept of discourse offers an alternative to the practice of history and theory; second, that the publication of Bauhaus reveals a discursive structure in a F oucaultian sense; third, that discourse-analysis-search-engine can perform the analysis on the Bauhaus corpus, contributing to emergent epistemological positions; fourth, that this revealed structure of discourse could be mapped and re-materialized to invite interferences on today’s territory of Bauhaus Discourse. The research and development process in the accompanying project “Bauhaus Orbits – scenographic apparatus for discourse analysis” (bauhausorbits.de) will be discussed.