October 14—15, 2022
ZIRKA, Dachauer Str. 110C Munich
Defining infrastructures is a question of perspective: all the technologies that grant movement between institutions or systems and thus form the conditions for wider processes in society can be described as infrastructures. Since these dynamic junctions are deeply embedded in our everyday life and exist through repetition, they often only become visible in the event of a disruption or failure, when they paralyse other elements in a chain and thus reveal complex processes of circulation and distribution of monetary, social or cultural capital. Infrastructures are thus not only fundamentally relational, they also reproduce and represent at an elementary level the grand ideological structures that choreograph our lives. Drawing on the idea that infrastructures organise movement, Performing Infrastructures examines the extent to which cultural performances—speech acts and collective choreographies—themselves act as forms of infrastructure and how they regulate social participation.
Performing Infrastructures took place on a site that, due to its history, can be read as a symbol of overlapping material and immaterial infrastructures. ZIRKA – Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Raum- und Kulturarbeit was recently founded on the site of the so-called Kreativquartier (Creative District), an area that has been growing steadily since the 1970s and is a mixture of studios, venues and production facilities for the independent (performing) arts scene, as well as entrepreneurs in the field of “creative work,” and is thus part of the city’s cultural policy agenda. Before its conversion, however, the building served as the operations centre for Munich’s city drainage system for over 60 years and thus alludes to precisely those tangible and at the same time mostly invisible infrastructures that are firmly integrated into our everyday lives.
In October 2022, the two-day programme of performances, workshops and installations drew on the processual, relational and (im)material characteristics of infrastructures themselves. The artistic practices of Ivan Cheng, Nina Emge, Johanna Klingler & Alexandra Symons-Sutcliffe and Olia Sosnovskaya deal with power relations of cultural infrastructures. At the same time, they ask for alternative systems of movement by means of collective forms of organisation.
Organised by
Elena Setzer, Franziska Linhardt & Jakob Braito
Visual design by
Alina Derya Yakaboylu
Photos by
Constanza Meléndez
Special thanks to
Akademie der Bildenden Künste München (jour fixe), Dylan Spencer-Davidson, Henrike Legner, Lara Fritz & Christoph Schaller (STUDIO CNP), Lilo Lucia Meyer, Marina M. Kolushova & Victor Stuhlmann & Ossi Lehtonen (Good and Bad), Maxi Blässing, Maximiliane Norwood, Münchner Kammerspiele, naiv studio, Ophelia Flassig, Pathos München e.V., Skateschule München, ZIRKA – Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Raum- und Kulturarbeit.
This project was funded by
City of Munich – Department of Arts and Culture
PERFORMING INFRASTRUCTURES
14/10/22 7 pm
Olia Sosnovskaya
Citing sources
15/10/22 2 pm
Johanna Klingler & Alexandra Symons-Sutcliffe
Collective Struggle Terry Dennet and the history of worker's photography
15/10/22 5 pm
Ivan Cheng
Passagiato's: Stealing Valour
14+15/10/22
Nina Emge
Not in Use (microfon stand 1—5)
October 14—15, 2022
ZIRKA, Dachauer Str. 110C Munich
Defining infrastructures is a question of perspective: all the technologies that grant movement between institutions or systems and thus form the conditions for wider processes in society can be described as infrastructures. Since these dynamic junctions are deeply embedded in our everyday life and exist through repetition, they often only become visible in the event of a disruption or failure, when they paralyse other elements in a chain and thus reveal complex processes of circulation and distribution of monetary, social or cultural capital. Infrastructures are thus not only fundamentally relational, they also reproduce and represent at an elementary level the grand ideological structures that choreograph our lives. Drawing on the idea that infrastructures organise movement, Performing Infrastructures examines the extent to which cultural performances—speech acts and collective choreographies—themselves act as forms of infrastructure and how they regulate social participation.
Performing Infrastructures took place on a site that, due to its history, can be read as a symbol of overlapping material and immaterial infrastructures. ZIRKA – Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Raum- und Kulturarbeit was recently founded on the site of the so-called Kreativquartier (Creative District), an area that has been growing steadily since the 1970s and is a mixture of studios, venues and production facilities for the independent (performing) arts scene, as well as entrepreneurs in the field of “creative work,” and is thus part of the city’s cultural policy agenda. Before its conversion, however, the building served as the operations centre for Munich’s city drainage system for over 60 years and thus alludes to precisely those tangible and at the same time mostly invisible infrastructures that are firmly integrated into our everyday lives.
In October 2022, the two-day programme of performances, workshops and installations drew on the processual, relational and (im)material characteristics of infrastructures themselves. The artistic practices of Ivan Cheng, Nina Emge, Johanna Klingler & Alexandra Symons-Sutcliffe and Olia Sosnovskaya deal with power relations of cultural infrastructures. At the same time, they ask for alternative systems of movement by means of collective forms of organisation.
Organised by
Elena Setzer, Franziska Linhardt & Jakob Braito
Visual design by
Alina Derya Yakaboylu
Photos by
Constanza Meléndez
Special thanks to
Akademie der Bildenden Künste München (jour fixe), Dylan Spencer-Davidson, Henrike Legner, Lara Fritz & Christoph Schaller (STUDIO CNP), Lilo Lucia Meyer, Marina M. Kolushova & Victor Stuhlmann & Ossi Lehtonen (Good and Bad), Maxi Blässing, Maximiliane Norwood, Münchner Kammerspiele, naiv studio, Ophelia Flassig, Pathos München e.V., Skateschule München, ZIRKA – Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Raum- und Kulturarbeit.
This project was funded by
City of Munich – Department of Arts and Culture