In 1938, Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus, invited exiled European architects, designers and students to join him for a summer in Cape Cod, Massachusetts (USA). Out of this summer gathering grew a movement of the prime protagonists of modern architecture, like Marcel Breuer, Serge Chermayeff and Paul Weidlinger, who built houses for themselves and their friends, creating a space of utopic thinking and modern designs that evolved into postwar communal experimentation. An important part of this heritage has today been restored by the Cape Cod Modern House Trust. For several weeks in October 2014, David Bergé was artist-in-residence on the invitation of the Trust and lived in a restored house.

David Bergé reunited Tom Weidlinger, Paul Chermayeff and Tomas Breuer, the sons of 3 prominent Bauhaus figures for a 2-hour critical re-enactment of a cocktail party, of which many took place on Cape Cod in the 1940-ies. The protagonists of the re-enactment had not met since their childhood and during the entire duration of the event, David Bergé walked a loop through the house (containing two staircases) holding a camera closely.

The presentation of this work took place in the framework of The Image Generator Festival, curated by Mesut Arslan and consisted of a certificate signed by the ones attending the re-enactment of the cocktail party, as well as the looped video of the house and another looped video of the Extra City building in Antwerp, where the presentation took place.

The Cape Cod Loop, 2015
a cocktail party and looped video by David Bergé
commissioned by The Cape Cod Modern House Trust, Massachusetts, USA
curator Tülay Atak (residency project), Mesut Arslan (presentation), Michel Kolenberg (Vitrine presentation)
presented at Extra City kunsthal in the framework of The Image Generator Festival and Vitrine project at LUCA Library Brussels
with the support of The Cape Cod Modern House Trust, The Flemish Authorities and Platform 0090
acknowledgements: Zac Rose, Michel Kolenberg, Peter McMahon