Research Group 3: Synchronization and Participation

The previous research period investigated the dynamics of transferring affects (movere) and the resulting collective forms of action and movement (swarms). We will now study the synchronization of rhythms of action, movement, perception, and experience in order to analyze their significance for participating in collective (and also collective artistic) processes.

We will begin by asking how cultural change becomes evident in the present: How and in what ways do agents perceive that they are contemporaries of such a transformation? What moves them to orient their actions in relation to this transformation - while playing a central or peripheral part in it or being excluded from it?

On the one hand, this refers to the figures of evidence by which the changes are inscribed into the present by virtue of the specific juncture of future and past. We discuss this process as synchronization: How is the synchronization of individuals and collectives organized into transformative processes - or rather, how does it organize itself?

On the other hand, this gives rise to the question of participating in change: To what extent do transformative processes rely on generating possibilities or scenes for participation in which actors experience their contemporaneity with the change per se, allowing them to take on certain positions and roles? And what does "contemporaneity" mean in this context? To what extent does this refer to co-presence or to more complex temporal references that potentially relativize the status of presence or even make it appear questionable?

Envisaged research areas include concrete physical processes of synchronization in the everyday as well as in dance and experimental performances; collective artistic processes of production and artistic actions that explore or rehearse new forms of participation; and more comprehensive cultural structures of synchronization, such as internet communities and their intervention in cultural, social, and political contexts.


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