The meeting is convened by BAK and the freethought collective in collaboration with students and the art and education department of HFBK.

Conventionally understood as the operative ­substrate of contemporary global life, the term “infrastructure” invokes systems such as physical networks for transportation and communication, the organization of waste and utilities, resource flows, digital management, and capital movements. Moving away from these material associations, freethought develops the notion of “spectral infrastructure” geared toward the ghostly, affective, and fugitive intensities that undergird both infrastructural and quotidian life. The ongoing trajectory conjures the spectral through textures, rhythms, atmospheres, invocations, gestures, vernaculars, and affects—elements that escape traditional forms of tracking or measurement, calling instead for experimental forms of mapping, sensing, and tracing.

Leading to the realization of a publication in 2024, a culminative strand of the Spectral Infrastructure trajectory includes a multifaceted series of collective study, research, and public programs, as well as Public Editorial Meetings. Taking place throughout 2022 in Hamburg, Bologna, and Utrecht, these meetings aim to bring together and negotiate the speculative knowledges gathered throughout the research trajectory.

The PEM includes presentations by freethought members Stefano Harney, Adrian Heathfield, Massimiliano Mollona, Louis Moreno, Irit Rogoff, and Nora Sternfeld; with opening words by Wietske Maas (BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht).

Date: Tuesday 14 June 2022
Time: 18–20.00 hrs
Location: Lerchenfeld Aula, HFBK, University of Fine Arts, Hamburg, Germany