Orbit Palace: Indications of figures and spaces of redundant time

As an artistic contribution to the exhibition Shrinking Cities (2004), Orbit Palace examines the complex structure of urban spaces under the aspect of redundant time. How do people spend their time in areas where deindustrialization and a large amount of disused spaces characterize the landscape? The project explores how people whose daily routine is not (or no longer) determined by the rigid schedule of Fordist production shape their everyday life away from institutional measures and leisure activities. What spaces do they use and create for their activities? Into which social, informal and socioeconomic contexts are their areas (of action) integrated? And how does the meaning of »work« and »leisure time« change when – in the face of high unemployment – work appears to be a »luxury« and free time a »failing«?

We use the title »Orbit Palace« as a search word for those locations that have become the home for redundant time. They are spaces that are no longer, or not yet, part of economic and social memories as the result of complex transformational processes. They are locations that signify a breach with the past and whose future appears similarly vague: derelict buildings, fallow land, abandoned infrastructures, ruins, and new cityscapes. Seven characters are documented in stories and photos: the »club maker«, the »spontaneous angler«, the »in-between trader«, the »freeriders«, the »cat lady«, the »football partisans« and the »snack-shop family«.

Field research and art project, 2003/04, together with Jens Fischer, Katja Heinecke, Reinhard Krehl (Leipzig) and Nils Emde (Hamburg) – installation, 7 lambda prints in light boxes, 179,5 x 123 x 15 cm / 135,5 x 123 x 12,5 cm, sitting area – contribution to the exhibition Shrinking Cities, KunstWerke Berlin, 2004

NEW PUBLICATIONS IN ENGLISH

Steets, Silke (2022): Epilogue: Spatializing Cities, Exploring Urban Religion, Re-Imagining Urbanity. In: Space und Culture. Open Access & Online first.

Steets, Silke (2022): »This Is Not Just a Story About New York« – Refiguring Spaces through Innovation. In: Sociologica. International Journal for Sociological Debate 16(2). Open Access: https://sociologica.unibo.it/article/view/15456.

Knoblauch, Hubert / Steets, Silke (2022): »Here Is Looking at You«: Relational Phenomenology and the Problem of Mutual Gaze. In: Studia Phaenomenologica XXII. Gestures. S. 125–144. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5840/studphaen2022227.

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