In this workshop, I, together with the participants, explore the panorama as an art form and medium, as well as a phenomenological concept that can be translated from the original vision-based approach into artistic approaches towards other receptors of our bodily sensory system like sound, smell, touch, and so on. We experience and discuss the panorama and make practical experiments to create our own interpretations. We go on excursions to visit the Panorama Mesdag and the beach of Den Haag to explore ‘our gaze as a panorama by itself’ (Merleau- Ponty) and gather inspiration in the landscape of the dunes and the shore. During this day, we have the time and space to get to know each other better, talk about the panorama, landscape, and our experiences in an informal environment. Within this workshop, we want to playfully explore this comparatively young art form* and find potential translations into other artistic media. We ask and discuss questions like: Where did the panorama go, where is it today? What is a panorama and what is not a panorama, and why? The workshop aims at people who want to dive into a history of artworks where the viewer, through his bodily presence, is involved in the emergence of the perceptual phenomena of the works.

*first panorama: View of the Fleet at Spithead, London, inaugurated 1794

Panoramas practice, as one can state with Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a very own “magical theory of seeing”. Therefore, the workshop is accompanied by a seminar in which I together with the students study and discuss the text The Panorama and its Promise of Manifestation by Jörg H. Gleiter**. The text examines the different elements of the Panorama such as faux terrain, the tunnel, and its enveloping spatial characteristics. Furthermore, the text reflects on existing panoramas such as the Jerusalem Panorama in Altötting (DE), the Peasants’ War Panorama in Bad Frankenhausen (DE), and The Panorama Mesdag in The Hague (NL). Hereby, the text and the seminar lay focus on the constituting visual, spatial, and perceptual-theoretical elements of these panoramas and the panorama as immersive artwork as such with a strong reference to Maurice Merleau Ponty’s theories on phenomenology and our bodily perception and processing of our environment.

Themes of the text are, for instance, the limits of constitution, imagination, illusion, Gegenstandsversprechen (promise of manifestation), travesty, and the aspect of the illusion being physically constructed in space.

The seminar is introduced by a visual presentation of the panoramas discussed in the text plus a selection of historical and contemporary artworks such as Pierre Huyghe’s After Alife Ahead, or Giotto di Bondone’s Saint Francis Cycle (San Francesco at Assisi).

The participants are challenged not only to think of the panorama as the predecessor of cinema and VR but as a concept for a number of immersive media, which can take upon many forms of manifestation.

**in: Kunst. Bild. Wahrnehmung. Blick. Merleau-Ponty zum Hundertsten, hg. Antje Kapust u.a., Bonn 2010. 
Original German title: Das Panorama und sein Gegenstandsversprechen English translation by Alexander J. Heil: The Panorama and its Promise of Manifestation.

Jörg H. Gleiter is professor for Architecture theory at the faculty of architecture, Technische Universität Berlin.

One Day Workshop

Elements

• introductory text
• introductory lecture
• seminar
• excursion
• practical experiments

Schedule

One Week Workshop Schedule

Elements

• introductory text
• introductory lecture
• seminar
• excursion
• practical experiments

Schedule