Subtend and Subvert: Infrastructures and Capitalist Life

How do infrastructures both enable and delimit political agency? How, in particular, do they work to facilitate or repress forms of anti-hegemonic struggle, given that infrastructures so often appear as hardened, historically amalgamated articulations of past action and power? To what extent do they allow for this power to be resisted or negotiated?

This one-day research event, organized at Utrecht University, is co-organized by Steyn Bergs (UU) and Kirsten Lloyd (University of Edinburgh). It will focus on contemporary artistic practices that examine the role infrastructures play in enabling or delimiting political agency in the historical present. Contributions will focus on racial infrastructures, the putative invisibility of infrastructure in everyday life and its connection to issues of social justice, and infrastructural ‘microhistories,’ among other things, with a focus on urban contexts.

Programme

PART 1
13:15 Steyn Bergs, ‘Infrastructures and Anti-Anti-Reproduction’
14:00 Joyce Joumaa, artist presentation ‘Blackout: Corrupt Infrastructures in Post-Collapse Lebanon’
14:45 Q&A with all participants
15:00 coffee break
PART 2
15:25 Screening: Alberta Whittle, business as usual: hostile environment (2020), 16 minutes.
15:45 Kirsten Lloyd, ‘Racial Infrastructures’
16:30 Q&A with all participants
17:30 onwards, wine reception (location TBC)

The event is free and everyone is welcome. Coffee and tea will be provided, and there will be a reception afterward. If you should have any questions, contact s.bergs@uu.nl. This event is generously supported by the Art History section at Utrecht University, as well as by the Open Cities Platform of Institutions for Open Societies.