Pipelines, sewers, power lines, highways, fiber-optic cables: countless conduits and routing systems establishing connections—from municipal, national and global levels up to satellites in Earth's orbit. They create fluid spaces through which energies, things, people, ideas and data are constantly moving. Without them, the achievements and everyday conveniences of modern societies would be unthinkable. As a human-made addition to nature, they provide us supply and disposal, mobility and communication.
Paradoxically, these infrastructures—despite, or perhaps because of their monstrosity and ubiquity—usually remain below the threshold of our perception: in English, “infra” means “below”. Hidden underground and behind facades, they are simply the subject matter of technocratic planning. This invisibility is strategic. Behind the apolitical facade lies the actual point of friction. This is most often revealed when their promised functionality and efficiency falter.
If the connection does not work, or the heating fails, if traffic jams, if costs rise, if supply chains break, the supply systems banished to the social subconscious awaken deep political feelings of frustration—in part, just the fear of being left behind is sufficient. At this point, the fetishism for state, progress and growth, which is deeply linked to infrastructures, is revealed. Their expansion promises the future, but also holds tremendous potential for conflict. Their presence stands for the existence of the state. Their functioning means good governance. Their failure equals state failure. Their complexity makes societies vulnerable.
The geological history of infrastructures includes the depletion of natural resources, the displacement of people, colonialism and imperialism. Infrastructural violence is directed externally through recklessness, expropriation, exploitation and exclusion. Internally, it controls those whom it supplies through dependency. Once built, infrastructures become sluggish. They are expensive to maintain and cumbersome to adapt to changing processes. They are permanently installed inertial forces. But their functions are by no means one-dimensional. They empower, enrich or corrupt not only politicians and utility companies. Their functions are misused and subverted by their users. They can even be transformed socially.
The exhibition “über leitungen . infra structures” is dedicated to increasing social attention to infrastructures and presents artistic positions with the intent of analyzing them, but also looking at forms of subverting and surmounting them. How do we design future infrastructures that don't extract from people and nature?
