Back  to  n o w h e r e
Gerald Nestler

Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot remain in the cradle forever.1
Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky, 1911

BEYOND THE EXTERNAL

This sentence, written in 1911 by the space travel pioneer Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky, catapults mankind from planet Earth into the cosmos. It expands the field of vision from the terrestrial to the cosmic. The mathematical formulae devised by Tsiolkovsky, which form the basis for overcoming earth‘s gravitational force and are used today for launching manned rockets into orbit, are the trajectories for the beginning of the conquest of space. With this the utopia of a journey into the cosmos began to become reality. Science and technology gradually worked through the utopia of a real visit to a [previously] utopian place—a reality witnessed in the worldwide live broadcast of the first moon landing. Science fiction in literature and film and technological visions etc. form the flight paths of a scientifically inspired cosmogony and astronomy of space now to be explored. Mankind is still looking at the stars—but now from outer space.

The above quote from Tsiolkovsky is based on the thought that the future world of mankind lies in the universe and it is now a question of exploring it. It requires a new orientation, a new view of what "humanity" means and especially its form, its design and its development. At the same time as Tsiolkovsky's research into space travel, the accelerated release from being stuck to the earth, various approaches and attempts were developed in order to go beyond the "status quo" and envision a new world and a new humanity. At a time of new departures this also means tracing utopian potential and creating utopias.

In the case of the proponents from the Gläserne Kette [The Crystal Chain] this meant not [only] taking people into space but bringing space to them, finally showing them the way to become space themselves. "Space—distance—inconceivable expanse all around! Without beginning—without imaginable end—and floating in it, astral but still heavy—Earth—the Sun—many earths!—Millions!—Millions of suns!? Obeying greedy longing, they tried to raise themselves—above and beyond themselves—into space—to feel it—in its dimensions"2, Wenzel August Hablik described his vision under his pseudonym "W.H." in his letter of 28 July 1920 to the Gläserne Kette.

Utopias, new concepts of society and alternative models decisively moulded and influenced art, but also social systems during and after the turn of the last century but one. The period between 1910 and 1930, characterised in Europe by the First World War and the break-up of an old social order, was at the same time a period of intensive attempts to have an influence on society, to shape it and change it. Artistic attitudes were consistently inspired by the idea of the avant-garde not only carrying the seeds of the future within it but creating the future itself—a parallel to the motivations behind many scientific developments.

Light wants to go through the whole of space and comes alive in crystal.
Paul Scheerbart, Glashaus dictum

SPACE TRAVEL

Representatives and forerunners [particularly Paul Scheerbart] of the above-mentioned Gläserne Kette constitute a special form of avant-garde thought, work and life that is at the centre of the installation
n o w h e r e3. They developed the utopia of a new architecture and art—an architecture of glass, of the crystalline, of colours. By these means they aimed to change society and humanity. They saw themselves as radical architects who were working on a new creation, aiming for social change from the roots up. The dictum of the art critic Adolf Behne, who was close to the Gläserne Kette went: "Reflection on the roots", the creations of architects "must naturally and organically grow out of a primal cell"4. In his invitation to the Ausstellung für unbekannte Architekten [Exhibition for Unknown Architects], which led Bruno Taut to found the Gläserne Kette, Walter Gropius, who named himself Maß [Measure] as a member of the Gläserne Kette but took no active part in the correspondence, wrote to Hablik in 1919, "The design you sent in to us has aroused general interest. Sketches of utopian ideas are especially desired. […] The exhibition will only include a small number of radical architects."5 The forerunner of the Gläserne Kette, Paul Scheerbart, wrote in Glasarchitektur, which he dedicated to Bruno Taut, "The new milieu that we create for ourselves in this way must bring us a new culture. […] The new glass milieu will transform people completely."6

The radical concerns of the Gläserne Kette did not consist of an expansion of an 'itinerary horizon by rocket propulsion'. It lay in the spiritualization of people from individuals into collective, super-individuals. This was intended to be fulfilled under the aegis of glass-crystalline architecture, the art form which for them represented the highest form of art because it was the only one that could effectively change reality—which did not however prevent them from designing space ship residences, cosmic habitats or organic dwelling caves. In architecture they expanded the space inhabited by man into extraterrestrial, submarine and alpine areas in a visionary and fantastic way. 

"Today I dreamed a dream that stretched over 12 years. I had a flying settlement built. […] On 23 December 1920, after we have circled the globe five times without an accident and with a feeling of absolute safety, in all directions at various altitudes, made marvellous discoveries and carefully noted them down, the flight upwards towards Mars should begin"7, wrote Hablik in his diary as early as 1908. The participants in the Gläserne Kette correspondence did not see people as interstellar tourists. Mankind should—at the end of its striving—crystallise out into a star, transform into crystal—one of the central metaphors of the correspondence. "I have here on my table a thick piece of yellow glass. It is heavy, a building block, but it is never the same. Its prismatic form, it's there, and still in solid form. The container of the new soul that we are preparing will be like this."8 At the end of the path of development [in the remote future?] stood crystal: "Thus, in ideal crystal, the yearnings towards opening the frontiers of knowledge and overcoming the isolation of a physical body combine into a common vision. Into the utopian vision of a totally spirit-formed body", writes Wolfgang Pauser in his Kulturgeschichte des Kristallinen [A Cultural History of the Crystalline]. "The part cannot perceive the universe, but the universe comprises of the part and must feel it in joy and sorrow, in conflict and love. […] Man is the last creation of divinity—the whole new world is in minds, in consciousness, in thoughts, in the great reflex of the soul and the spirit, and the ever more pure transmission of everything onto this pure mirror,"9 as Hermann Finsterlin put it in a letter to the Gläserne Kette. The 'space travel' of the Gläserne Kette led inwards, to a realisation of mental space—in the meantime, on the journey so to speak, the cosmos as exterior space would be "conquered along the way", because inside and outside gravitate into each other. Hablik brought this to the point in relation to architecture: "Utopian architecture—made feasible by the material of glass and exalted by the symbol of crystal—is the symbolic expression of the future aspired to." 

RADICAL-PRISM / COLLAGE

The ludic environment n o w h e r e also catapults the visitor into a cosmos. However, this universe is developed completely differently to the one that Tsiolkovsky and his successors opened up to us. It is an approach towards the concrete idea of the cosmos and the architecture of the proponents of the Gläserne Kette. The virtual space which the visitor flies through is a 'nowhere' and yet simultaneously a 'here and now'. It is a collage of various utopian elements that populate the space of the environment and enable it to be experienced in an associative way. 

As a virtual collage n o w h e r e offers an alternative to conventional virtual 3D spaces. Whereas in classical collage the assembly of apparently alien images and texts provokes new connections and interpretations, in this virtual 3D collage the juxtaposition opens up into layers of depth—into fractal levels of meaning and association which are themselves once again collages, virtual assemblages. In the 1950s 'Combine Painting' [Robert Rauschenberg] arose from collage and in turn contributed to the creation of 'Environmental Art' [Edward Kienholz]. If we now use collage as a means of expression for a 'ludic environment', we refer to a development in art history from the time of the Gläserne Kette onwards, which finds its continuation in digital art.
n o w h e r e  takes a step forward in its fusion of the Gläserne Kette and the collage. In his letter of 28 July 1920 Hablik writes, "I live in the conviction that every strong artist [in other words: 'astral power' person] can be a Cubist now—in one minute an Ex-, in an hour an Impressionist—Dadaist and so on! There is no-one—who only on the basis of a scheme [whether an -ist or an -ism] would like to or can do justice to everything that expansively pervades his world soul [Weltseele]!"10 The visions, fantasies and designs of the Gläserne Kette representatives do not yield a coherent picture. They were not at all interested in coming up with a joint programme or manifesto to attain 'human crystal', nor in sub-ordinating themselves to a style as individuals. Quite the contrary, they were inspired by an open exchange of different ideas—among themselves and with others. With reference to Gustav Theodor Fechner, Taut compares the intersecting writings of the Gläserne Kette proponents with astral cosmic rays, and crystal with its prismatic refraction presides over the exchange as godfather. In his letter dated 15 April 1920 he formulates this as follows: "Affirmation of individuals, ‘the unique ones' through the secret of together, genuinely a mystery. Have you read in Fechner's Leben nach dem Tode [Life After Death] how the spiritual rays intersect, slide into each other, however in such a way that each sphere remains unbroken like pieces of writing slanting over each other?!"11

Does this not make the Gläserne Kette itself a collage consisting of its members and their contributions? Katherine Hoffman stated that "Collage may be seen as a quintessential twentieth-century art form with multiple layers and signposts pointing to the possibility or suggestion of countless new realities."12 And Max Ernst defined collage as follows: "Collage technique is the systematic exploitation of the coincidental or engineered encounter of two or more intrinsically alien realities on an apparently unsuitable level for the purpose—and the spark of poetry which leaps across the gap as these two realities come together."13 The secret correspondence under pseudonyms, which at the same time is opened up by exhibitions and publications [such as Frühlicht published by Bruno Taut], the openly declared differences which, overlaying and overwriting each other, come together as something new and the poetry resulting from it in my opinion allow this interpretation.

n o w h e r e  can thereby be understood as a prism that makes it possible to experience several different 'radiations' from the Gläserne Kette as a projected media-collage which virtually materialises as far as to enable a journey in time through their world and beyond as colours, light and forms. 'Leaving Earth's orbit' does not acquire rocket propulsion from Tsiolkovsky's mathematical formulae but from a digital light culture developed from crystalline material. It leads outwards and inwards into the cosmos of the Gläserne Kette and back into the cradle of a modernity which designed itself in the future, in a time that is reality for us but for them was promise. 

Footnotes:

1	Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky in a letter in 1911. Tsiolkovsky was a scientist and pioneer of space travel. The primary equation for rocket propulsion, the "Tsiolkovsky rocket equation", is named after him. His most famous work "Exploration of Space with Rocket Devices" published in 1903 in Russian, was certainly the first academic treatment of rocket technology.
2 	Iain Boyd Whyte and Romana Schneider, Die Briefe der Gläsernen Kette, Wenzel August Hablik, Letter 47, "Der neunte Tag" [The Ninth Day], p.153, Berlin 1986
3 	The project title n o w h e r e was inspired by: William Morris, News from Nowhere,1891, a dream narrative of a socialist England in the 21st century
4 	Ralph Musielski, Bau-Gespräche, Architekturvisionen von Paul Scheerbart, Bruno Taut und der "Gläsernen Kette", p.154, Berlin 2003 ibid. p.122
5 	ibid., p. 122
6 	Paul Scheerbart, Glasarchitektur, part "CXI, Die Glaskultur", Berlin 1914
7 	Ralph Musielski, ibid. p.142
8 	ibid. p.87
9 	Iain Boyd Whyte and Romana Schneider, Die Briefe der Gläsernen Kette, Hermann Finsterlin, Pseudonym "Prometh", letter 48, Berlin 1986, p.158
	10 Iain Boyd Whyte and Romana Schneider, Die Briefe der Gläsernen Kette, Wenzel August Hablik, letter 45, Berlin 1986, p.140
11	Iain Boyd Whyte and Romana Schneider, ibid. p.85
12 	Katherine Hoffman, Collage: Critical Views, Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1989, p. 1
13 Quoted and translated from the German version of the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia.!