Bildungsmoderne entzaubern

Between 2013 and 2019, artists Sabine Bitter and Helmut Weber, who live and work in Vienna and Vancouver, collaborated with Frankfurt-based urban sociologist Klaus Ronneberger to trace the relocation of Goethe University Frankfurt from the Bockenheim district to the Westend campus.
Their artistic research intertwines a sociological analysis of the university’s relocation with photographic reflections, focusing in particular on the campus architecture designed by German architect Ferdinand Kramer in the 1950s and 1960s. An extensive compilation of images recalls the emancipatory potential of these architectures and the university’s “spaces of knowledge” in Bockenheim, both of which were lost in the move.
Especially today — against the backdrop of their disenchantment through the neoliberal entrepreneurial turn — the images and accompanying texts renew the call for an understanding of the university that can fulfill the original promises of modern education: emancipation, democratization, and “education for all.”

Texts by Ruth Horak, Klaus Ronneberger and Sabine Bitter & Helmut Weber. The series Bildungsmoderne/Educational Modernism is published in cooperation with Edition Camera Austria, Graz.