Title: Light club
Subtitle: on Paul Scheerbart's The light club of Batavia
First published: 2010
Description: Paul Scheerbart (1863–1915) was a visionary German novelist, theorist, poet, and artist who made a lasting impression on such icons of modernism as Walter Benjamin, Bruno Taut, and Walter Gropius. Fascinated with the potential of glass architecture, Scheerbart's satirical fantasies envisioned an electrified future, a world composed entirely of crystalline, colored glass.In 1912, Scheerbart published The Light Club of Batavia, a Novelle about the formation of a club dedicated to building a spa for bathing—not in water, but in light—at the bottom of an abandoned mineshaft. Translated here into English for the first time, this rare story serves as a point of departure for Josiah McElheny, who, with an esteemed group of collaborators, offers a fascinating array of responses to this enigmatic work.
Subjects: Architecture, Art, Nonfiction, German literature, history and criticism, 20th century
People: Paul Scheerbart (1863-1915)
LC classification: PT2638.E4 L536 2010