-1
archive,tag,tag-laboratory,tag-339,qode-social-login-1.1.3,qode-restaurant-1.1.1,stockholm-core-2.3,select-child-theme-ver-1.1,select-theme-ver-8.9,ajax_fade,page_not_loaded,paspartu_enabled,menu-animation-underline,fs-menu-animation-underline,header_top_hide_on_mobile,,qode_grid_1300,qode_menu_center,qode-mobile-logo-set,wpb-js-composer js-comp-ver-6.6.0,vc_responsive
In Voices Blog

gdc voices part iii: research. in. action. 

[Editor’s note: this post continues the series of interviews with our postdocs. For previous entries, see here and here.]

What collaborations, events and publications in the past, present or future show how the three research focuses are driving research at gd:c and beyond?

AG: If you want to see the three focusses in motion, the gd:c bridging conference 2025 is the obvious starting point. Bridging the initial era of gd:c (2021-2025) with the second (2025-2029), the bridging conference brought together the team, the directors, the advisory board as well as current and former fellows. This shows where cultural infrastructures stop being scenery and become methods of inquiry: the venues, platforms, institutions and networks that sustain cultural production while subtly shaping who is granted access, visibility and voice. SQ: And at the bridging conference, time became impossible to ignore. The panel on temporalities made that very clear. Elizabeth DeLoughrey took us into deep time and the deep sea. Siddharth Pandey followed movement, memory and transformation in Shimla in the Indian Himalayas. Ulinka Rublack unpacked the layered temporalities embedded in the global ecologies of early modern dress commodities. Different archives and different scales with a shared insight: globalisation is not only about space. It is also about pace, delay, repetition and uneven timing.

The temporalities panel at the gd:c bridging conference (left to right: Siddarth Pandey, Elizabeth DeLoughrey, Ulinka Rublack, Susanne Quitmann; photo: gd:c)

CF: That again is where laboratories come in. The lab is not just a room with equipment; it is a way of making worlds comparable (and potentially improveable). Laboratories extract, isolate and translate environments into models and data. That makes connections travel. But it can also sever abstractions from the social, ecological and political conditions that sustain them. In that sense, labs connect infrastructures and temporalities: they organise access and authority, and they structure time through protocols, calibration, waiting and projection. SQ: Precisely such connections are why the gd:c summer school matters. Out of our diverse research environment, this particular format is where early career researchers and practitioners workshop methods together. It is one of gd:c’s most direct ways of building a shared language across disciplines and engaging with works in progress. AG: The 2024 summer school, Cultural infrastructure(s) – dis:connective perspectives, made that tangible. Organised by Christopher Balme, Nikolai Brandes, Hanni Geiger, Nic Leonhardt and Tom Menger, it brought grad students, postgrads and creative practitioners together in a week of lectures, master classes and hands-on formats, plus excursions that connect theory to real sites and their politics. Shannon Jackson’s lecture, Delivery systems: ecological infrastructures across the arts, set the tone. Infrastructures are the delivery systems for culture, power and possibility. Master classes by Eve Olney, Ursula Ströbele and Shannon Jackson deepened the conversation, while Dasha Sotnikova’s zine-making workshop translated analysis into practice. Excursions to Munich’s Architecture Museum and the Gasteig HP8 cultural complex grounded the discussion in the city’s institutional landscapes.

2024 summer school Cultural infrastructure(s) – dis:connective perspectives (Photos: gd:c)

CF: Looking ahead, the 2026 summer school, Worlds in the lab: experimental sites of dis:connectivity, continues that momentum by focussing on laboratories as built, protocol-driven environments. They are spaces that stage rehearsals, isolate variables and project futures. They promise preparedness and resilience, but they also raise hard questions about uneven labour, risk and exposure. Who gets included in the future worlds and scenarios that are being rehearsed, and who bears their costs? The programme foregrounds experimental pedagogical formats ranging from conceptual studios and hands-on exercises to field excursions in order to explore the lab itself as a method participants can actively stress test.

Worlds in the lab: experimental sites of dis:connectivity. gd:c summer school 2026.

SQ: And the 2027 summer school deals explicitly with temporalities. We want early career researchers to help shape the gd:c research focus on temporal dis:connectivity by tracing its conceptual and material tensions across fields and by co-developing a shared analytical framework for bringing diverse disciplinary projects into dialogue.  AG: Beyond recurring formats, the focusses also generate projects and publications. Sometimes the most immediate case is the institute itself. I am currently researching the chain of ownership of the building that houses gd:c, which was a house of haute couture until 1963. Its transformation into a research institute shows how cultural infrastructure is continuously reinterpreted and reactivated. The building is not a neutral container. It carries histories, spatial habits and reputations while being repurposed for new forms of research and community. SQ: On the publication side, we’re developing a gd:c blog series that makes temporalities visible in a quick, accessible format. Short contributions from scholars from gd:c and beyond explore temporal dis:connectivity, referring to how divergent temporal frameworks shape global connections and disconnections, and how global connections, in turn, produce new temporal regimes. The topics range widely – fossils, dance, stars and more – but the throughline stays sharp: in a global perspective, we cannot think about time in the singular. CF: I know I’m starting to sound like a broken record, but once you tune in to laboratory logics, you start seeing them everywhere: in field stations, observatories, simulation facilities, archives, exhibition spaces, and art and design studios. Labs make complexity workable. They translate environments into standards, models, datasets and test beds, so ideas, methods and future imaginaries can travel. But they also make dis:connectivity uncomfortably visible: what gets extracted, what gets excluded, what becomes legible, and what remains opaque. That’s why our research focusses don’t stop at gd:c. They permeate scholarly and artistic collaborations as well as the events where our research moves into the public conversation. To name a few ventures into the broader debate, the gd:c Voices blog, our bi-annual journal static, and our ongoing film Q&A series, which brings global filmmakers and films into dialogue with wider audiences about globalisation’s many affects and effects.

gd:c magazine static

AG: And if you’re curious what else we have brewing, consider this your gentle nudge to stay in touch. Drop by our website and various social channels to keep your finger on the pulse of gd:c. We look forward to seeing you around to come dis:connect with us. Continue Reading
14 April 2026
In Voices Startseite

gdc voices part iii: research. in. action.

What collaborations, events and publications in the past, present or future show how the three research focuses are driving research at gd:c and beyond?

AG: If you want to see the three focusses in motion, the gd:c bridging conference 2025 is the obvious starting point. Bridging the initial era of gd:c (2021-2025) with the second (2025-2029), the bridging conference brought together the team, the directors, the advisory board as well as current and former fellows. This shows where cultural infrastructures stop being scenery and become methods of inquiry: the venues, platforms, institutions and networks that sustain cultural production while subtly shaping who is granted access, visibility and voice. SQ: And at the bridging conference, time became impossible to ignore. The panel on temporalities made that very clear. Elizabeth DeLoughrey took us into deep time and the deep sea. Siddharth Pandey followed movement, memory and transformation in Shimla in the Indian Himalayas. Ulinka Rublack unpacked the layered temporalities embedded in the global ecologies of early modern dress commodities. Different archives and different scales with a shared insight: globalisation is not only about space. It is also about pace, delay, repetition and uneven timing.

The temporalities panel at the gd:c bridging conference (left to right: Siddarth Pandey, Elizabeth DeLoughrey, Ulinka Rublack, Susanne Quitmann; photo: gd:c)

CF: That again is where laboratories come in. The lab is not just a room with equipment; it is a way of making worlds comparable (and potentially improveable). Laboratories extract, isolate and translate environments into models and data. That makes connections travel. But it can also sever abstractions from the social, ecological and political conditions that sustain them. In that sense, labs connect infrastructures and temporalities: they organise access and authority, and they structure time through protocols, calibration, waiting and projection. SQ: Precisely such connections are why the gd:c summer school matters. Out of our diverse research environment, this particular format is where early career researchers and practitioners workshop methods together. It is one of gd:c’s most direct ways of building a shared language across disciplines and engaging with works in progress. AG: The 2024 summer school, Cultural infrastructure(s) – dis:connective perspectives, made that tangible. Organised by Christopher Balme, Nikolai Brandes, Hanni Geiger, Nic Leonhardt and Tom Menger, it brought grad students, postgrads and creative practitioners together in a week of lectures, master classes and hands-on formats, plus excursions that connect theory to real sites and their politics. Shannon Jackson’s lecture, Delivery systems: ecological infrastructures across the arts, set the tone. Infrastructures are the delivery systems for culture, power and possibility. Master classes by Eve Olney, Ursula Ströbele and Shannon Jackson deepened the conversation, while Dasha Sotnikova’s zine-making workshop translated analysis into practice. Excursions to Munich’s Architecture Museum and the Gasteig HP8 cultural complex grounded the discussion in the city’s institutional landscapes.

2024 summer school Cultural infrastructure(s) – dis:connective perspectives (Photos: gd:c)

CF: Looking ahead, the 2026 summer school, Worlds in the lab: experimental sites of dis:connectivity, continues that momentum by focussing on laboratories as built, protocol-driven environments. They are spaces that stage rehearsals, isolate variables and project futures. They promise preparedness and resilience, but they also raise hard questions about uneven labour, risk and exposure. Who gets included in the future worlds and scenarios that are being rehearsed, and who bears their costs? The programme foregrounds experimental pedagogical formats ranging from conceptual studios and hands-on exercises to field excursions in order to explore the lab itself as a method participants can actively stress test.

Worlds in the lab: experimental sites of dis:connectivity. gd:c summer school 2026.

SQ: And the 2027 summer school deals explicitly with temporalities. We want early career researchers to help shape the gd:c research focus on temporal dis:connectivity by tracing its conceptual and material tensions across fields and by co-developing a shared analytical framework for bringing diverse disciplinary projects into dialogue.  AG: Beyond recurring formats, the focusses also generate projects and publications. Sometimes the most immediate case is the institute itself. I am currently researching the chain of ownership of the building that houses gd:c, which was a house of haute couture until 1963. Its transformation into a research institute shows how cultural infrastructure is continuously reinterpreted and reactivated. The building is not a neutral container. It carries histories, spatial habits and reputations while being repurposed for new forms of research and community. SQ: On the publication side, we’re developing a gd:c blog series that makes temporalities visible in a quick, accessible format. Short contributions from scholars from gd:c and beyond explore temporal dis:connectivity, referring to how divergent temporal frameworks shape global connections and disconnections, and how global connections, in turn, produce new temporal regimes. The topics range widely – fossils, dance, stars and more – but the throughline stays sharp: in a global perspective, we cannot think about time in the singular. CF: I know I’m starting to sound like a broken record, but once you tune in to laboratory logics, you start seeing them everywhere: in field stations, observatories, simulation facilities, archives, exhibition spaces, and art and design studios. Labs make complexity workable. They translate environments into standards, models, datasets and test beds, so ideas, methods and future imaginaries can travel. But they also make dis:connectivity uncomfortably visible: what gets extracted, what gets excluded, what becomes legible, and what remains opaque. That’s why our research focusses don’t stop at gd:c. They permeate scholarly and artistic collaborations as well as the events where our research moves into the public conversation. To name a few ventures into the broader debate, the gd:c Voices blog, our bi-annual journal static, and our ongoing film Q&A series, which brings global filmmakers and films into dialogue with wider audiences about globalisation’s many affects and effects.

gd:c magazine static

AG: And if you’re curious what else we have brewing, consider this your gentle nudge to stay in touch. Drop by our website and various social channels to keep your finger on the pulse of gd:c. We look forward to seeing you around to come dis:connect with us. Continue Reading
13 April 2026