Favoriten Festival: Symposium „Disrupted Infrastructures. Public Retreats as Spaces for Interruption and Reorganisation“
As part of the Favoriten Festival, the symposium “Disrupted Infrastructures. Public Retreats as Spaces for Interruption and Reorganization” will take place, during which Gwendolin Lehnerer, a research associate at the documenta Institut, will chair the following panel:
Panel: “Practising Infrastructures: Making Do, Making Otherwise”
With: Jeannette Petrik, Marie Samrotzki
Chair: Gwendolin Lehnerer
October 1, 2026, 2.45 pm
Dietrich-Keuning-Haus, Leopoldstraße 50–58, 44147 Dortmund
Free admission; register here.
In English
Symposium
The symposium will take place from September 30 to October 1, 2026, as part of the Favoriten Festival in Dortmund. Theme: Human infrastructures form the foundation of our daily lives and our coexistence. When familiar routines no longer function, gaps emerge—places of disruption, but also of reorientation. The symposium is dedicated to these moments of disruption. It focuses on strategies for repairing, repurposing, and rethinking infrastructures, drawing on international perspectives from academia, the arts, activism, and curatorial practice. These perspectives examine the transformation of industrial regions, disruptions in democratic processes, the importance of social participation and public spaces, as well as artistic and activist practices of disruption.
The symposium is organized in cooperation with the DFG Research Group “Infrastructure: Aesthetics and Provision,” the Institute for Theater Studies at Ruhr University Bochum, and the University Course in Curating the Performing Arts at the University of Salzburg.
Panel
In conversation with Jeannette Petrik and Marie Samrotzki, DIY practices will be understood not merely as aesthetic or pragmatic strategies, but as forms of creating one’s own infrastructures: How are spaces, public spheres, and communities organized beyond established structures? What forms of knowledge and collaboration emerge in the process? And to what extent can disruption, retreat, and infrastructural gaps serve as productive starting points for other forms of artistic and social practice?
For more information, please visit the festival’s website.
