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In Voices Startseite

temporal dis:connectivity: a new blog series

susanne quitmann
This series of blog posts explores how time – both as an idea and as a lived experience – has shaped our global world. Bringing together scholars from various disciplines, it examines what happens when global connections are delayed or rushed, and how societies have understood and organised time in a modern, increasingly interconnected world. By focusing on these shifting rhythms and perceptions, we’re exploring what they reveal about the nature of both globalisation and about time itself. Globalisation is often described in simple terms: either the world is becoming more connected, or it is pulling apart. The concept of global dis:connectivity, developed at gd:c, challenges this binary view. It argues that connection and disconnection are not opposites but exist side by side and constantly shape one another. Interruptions, resistances, absences and detours are not exceptions to globalisation; they are a central part of globalisation. We often become most aware of our interconnectedness when it falters: wars, economic crises, pandemics and supply chain disruptions remind us how deeply entangled our lives are. Even nationalist or isolationist movements, which appear to reject globalisation, operate through international networks, revealing the paradoxes at the heart of our global age. Temporalities is one of three research focusses at gd:c. Much research on globalisation has focused on space. As a case in point, the three previous research focusses at gd:c were disruptions, absences and detours. However, those are not only spatial phenomena; they are temporal too. They involve pauses, delays and acceleration. Historians and scholars from other fields have increasingly turned their attention to how societies understand and experience time. Particularly over the past two decades, research has shown that time is not simply a neutral backdrop to events. It is shaped by culture, politics, technology and power. As early as the 1970s and 1980s, thinkers such as Reinhart Koselleck argued that modern societies developed a new sense of historical time, one in which the future was no longer seen as predetermined but open and fundamentally different from the past. Stephen Jay Gould, in his reflections on geological time, explored how cultural narratives shape our understanding time and history. His work continues to influence debates about the Anthropocene and Big History, which stretch our sense of both time and space.  

Jess-Hans Martens, Ship’s clock (Schiffsuhr), Freiburg im Breisgau, c.1865, Deutsches Uhrenmuseum, Furtwangen (2006-131). CC BY-SA.

In the modern era, experiences of and ideas about time were closely tied to globalisation. Steamships, railways and the telegraph seemed to shrink space and time, bridging geographical distances and accelerating life. Migrants and traders experienced both rapid movement and prolonged waiting. The introduction of Greenwich Mean Time as an international standard in 1884 created a shared global reference point for communication and commerce, even as it divided the world into time zones and met significant resistance.

The World Time Zone Chart, 1921, from the Ministry of Transport, Maritime Transport Division’s Search and Rescue charts of New Zealand and the Pacific, Archives New Zealand (ABPV W3111 Box 4/ 63),. CC BY 2.0.

Global time zones necessitated precise technology to quantify time objectively. Such technology spread around the world, but Sebastian Conrad has shown that they could also be adapted to fit local customs of timekeeping.[1] Time was a political tool as well. European powers used temporal terms to justify colonial domination, casting non-Western societies into what Dipesh Chakrabarty memorably calls the ‘imaginary waiting room of history’.[2] This blog series invites readers to rethink globalisation and global history through the lens of time. By focusing on interruptions, accelerations, time keeping and competing temporalities, we explore how attention to time can transform our understanding of global processes, past and present, and our understanding of history itself. [1] Sebastian Conrad, '"Nothing is the Way it Should Be": Global Transformations of the Time Regime in the Nineteenth Century', Modern Intellectural History 15, no. 3 (2018): 821n doi:10.1017/S1479244316000391. [2] Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe. Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 8.
bibliography
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Provincializing Europe. Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. Conrad, Sebastian. '"Nothing is the Way it Should Be": Global Transformations of the Time Regime in the Nineteenth Century'. Modern Intellectural History 15, no. 3 (2018): 821-48. https://doi.org/doi:10.1017/S1479244316000391.   Continue Reading
29 April 2026
In Voices Blog

temporal dis:connectivity: a new blog series

susanne quitmann
[Editor's note: click here for the next post in the series]   This series of blog posts explores how time – both as an idea and as a lived experience – has shaped our global world. Bringing together scholars from various disciplines, it examines what happens when global connections are delayed or rushed, and how societies have understood and organised time in a modern, increasingly interconnected world. By focusing on these shifting rhythms and perceptions, we’re exploring what they reveal about the nature of both globalisation and about time itself. Globalisation is often described in simple terms: either the world is becoming more connected, or it is pulling apart. The concept of global dis:connectivity, developed at gd:c, challenges this binary view. It argues that connection and disconnection are not opposites but exist side by side and constantly shape one another. Interruptions, resistances, absences and detours are not exceptions to globalisation; they are a central part of globalisation. We often become most aware of our interconnectedness when it falters: wars, economic crises, pandemics and supply chain disruptions remind us how deeply entangled our lives are. Even nationalist or isolationist movements, which appear to reject globalisation, operate through international networks, revealing the paradoxes at the heart of our global age. Temporalities is one of three research focusses at gd:c. Much research on globalisation has focused on space. As a case in point, the three previous research focusses at gd:c were disruptions, absences and detours. However, those are not only spatial phenomena; they are temporal too. They involve pauses, delays and acceleration. Historians and scholars from other fields have increasingly turned their attention to how societies understand and experience time. Particularly over the past two decades, research has shown that time is not simply a neutral backdrop to events. It is shaped by culture, politics, technology and power. As early as the 1970s and 1980s, thinkers such as Reinhart Koselleck argued that modern societies developed a new sense of historical time, one in which the future was no longer seen as predetermined but open and fundamentally different from the past. Stephen Jay Gould, in his reflections on geological time, explored how cultural narratives shape our understanding time and history. His work continues to influence debates about the Anthropocene and Big History, which stretch our sense of both time and space.  

Jess-Hans Martens, Ship’s clock (Schiffsuhr), Freiburg im Breisgau, c.1865, Deutsches Uhrenmuseum, Furtwangen (2006-131). CC BY-SA.

In the modern era, experiences of and ideas about time were closely tied to globalisation. Steamships, railways and the telegraph seemed to shrink space and time, bridging geographical distances and accelerating life. Migrants and traders experienced both rapid movement and prolonged waiting. The introduction of Greenwich Mean Time as an international standard in 1884 created a shared global reference point for communication and commerce, even as it divided the world into time zones and met significant resistance.

The World Time Zone Chart, 1921, from the Ministry of Transport, Maritime Transport Division’s Search and Rescue charts of New Zealand and the Pacific, Archives New Zealand (ABPV W3111 Box 4/ 63),. CC BY 2.0.

Global time zones necessitated precise technology to quantify time objectively. Such technology spread around the world, but Sebastian Conrad has shown that they could also be adapted to fit local customs of timekeeping.[1] Time was a political tool as well. European powers used temporal terms to justify colonial domination, casting non-Western societies into what Dipesh Chakrabarty memorably calls the ‘imaginary waiting room of history’.[2] This blog series invites readers to rethink globalisation and global history through the lens of time. By focusing on interruptions, accelerations, time keeping and competing temporalities, we explore how attention to time can transform our understanding of global processes, past and present, and our understanding of history itself. [1] Sebastian Conrad, '"Nothing is the Way it Should Be": Global Transformations of the Time Regime in the Nineteenth Century', Modern Intellectural History 15, no. 3 (2018): 821n doi:10.1017/S1479244316000391. [2] Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe. Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 8.
bibliography
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Provincializing Europe. Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. Conrad, Sebastian. '"Nothing is the Way it Should Be": Global Transformations of the Time Regime in the Nineteenth Century'. Modern Intellectural History 15, no. 3 (2018): 821-48. https://doi.org/doi:10.1017/S1479244316000391.   Continue Reading
27 April 2026
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