Infrastructures form the material prerequisite for basic processes of our life and coexistence to work. They ensure the supply of life by transporting and distributing raw materials, energy, goods or labour. In an industrialised environment, infrastructures of supply include not only traffic networks and means of transport, but also the organisation of care and support or the establishment and maintenance of cultural spaces. Infrastructures regulate perceptions and behaviour, access and participation, inclusion and exclusion; they are just as indispensably necessary for the maintenance of life as they are carriers of systemic and also epistemic violence.
Due to the worldwide COVID-related caesura, the rhythm and organisation of these fundamental areas have been disrupted in many ways: They are at a standstill or - quite the opposite - overloaded and fatigued. However, this situation also gives rise to the potential to reflect on the status quo and the reconfiguration of existing infrastructures. For it is precisely the phases of dormant interruption (of sleeping), of withdrawal and crisis that make it possible and necessary to reflect on the question: "How do we want to live?"
With the event series Ermüdung und Versorgung (Fatigue and Supply) - a cooperation between Urbane Künste Ruhr and the Institute of Theatre Studies at the RUB - we are turning the spotlight on issues surrounding the concepts of sleep and infrastructure. The focus is on scientific and artistic perspectives on the body and time as well as on the interrelationships between visible and invisible infrastructures.
Concept: Jörn Etzold, Britta Peters, Alisha Danscher and Rika Sakalak
Organisation: Alisha Danscher, Rika Sakalak
- Dates
The following events will take place as part of the Ermüdung und Versorgung event series:
- Important note
The events will take place in compliance with the currently valid COVID regulations. The Wanderersalon #30 Schlafende Infrastrukturen kicks off the event journey and takes place in hybrid form. Registration is required. On site, 2G+ and masks are compulsory.
Events
Vermessung des Körpers
The age of data collection through sleep, step or cycle apps brings forth an infrastructure of recording our physical activities, always under the sign of self-regulation and optimisation of performance. Humans also need to be measured in order for robots and humans to work together ideally. These measurements of the body are shaped by implicit assumptions concerning gender, performance and health. At the same time, the interactions between humans and machines open up new possibilities by questioning the assumption of "natural" bodies. But where do their limits lie today?
The event not only addresses how intelligent machines complement and shape our bodies, but also looks at artistic reflections on the measurement of the body. Together with artists Yuri Pattison and Asad Raza as well as Alexandra Pirici, who had a hologram interact with a human performer in the Waschkaue of the Kokerei Hansa as part of the Ruhr Ding: Territorien 2019, we will discuss which infrastructural conditions shape the relationship between humans and machines and how this hybrid relationship affects our understanding of our bodies and social interaction.
A Wandersalon as part of the series Ermüdung und Versorgung (Fatigue and Supply), a cooperation between Urbane Künste Ruhr and the Institute for Theatre Studies at the Ruhr University Bochum. The series explores issues around sleep and infrastructures.
Industrialisierte Zeit
Discussion with Julia Schade (Postdoc in the research training group The Documentary. Excess and Deprivation at the Ruhr University Bochum), Ruth Ewan (artist), Rachael Rakes (curator) and Britta Peters (Artistic Director Urbane Künste Ruhr).
What temporal structures can be used to organise life today? Whereas with the beginning of industrialisation, work and leisure followed the clock of the machines in strictly differentiated areas, a new division of time is developing due to the increasing post-material ways of working: the growing penetration of all areas of life with the digital makes the separation of the private and the public more difficult, a protected place of retreat must be actively fought for through a temporary exit from the communicative networks. For the global infrastructure itself, with its option for non-stop consumption, work and communication, never sleeps.
With the event Industrialisierte Zeit (Industrialised Time), we would like to take a look at the historical developments of temporal infrastructures from a scientific and artistic perspective and speculate on possibilities and vanishing points for other rhythms and scalings beyond linear time calculations.
The organiser is the Institute for Theatre Studies at the Ruhr University Bochum.
Supported by the AnGuS programme of the Rectorate of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum.
Schlafende Infrastrukturen
Performative lecture and discussion with Alina Schmuch, Jörn Etzold and Beny Wagner.
To what extent are architecture and cities shaped by technologies and metadata? How does the interplay of visible and invisible infrastructures affect our relationship to a building? How are the interconnected public structures of exchange shaped and what role does photography play in their processes? It is these questions about the relationship between the hidden and the obvious, inside and outside, but also the physical and the technological that occupy artist Alina Schmuch in her work. In her current project Interior Spaces, she deals with the history and developments of water infrastructures in the Ruhr area. Her starting points are the historical image material from the photographic archive of the Emschergenossenschaft in Essen and new imaging processes from inspection robots. In conversation with Prof. Jörn Etzold and filmmaker and scientist Beny Wagner, Alina Schmuch provides insights into her research. Together they fan out the diverse questions that arise from tracking down the "sleeping" infrastructures.
The Wandersalon #30 Schlafende Infrastrukturen kicks off the event series Ermüdung und Versorgung (Fatigue and Supply), a cooperation between Urbane Künste Ruhr and the Institute for Theatre Studies at Ruhr University Bochum. The series explores issues around sleep and infrastructures.