TP 2: Cinematic Scenes of Infrastructure

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Oliver Fahle; Dr. Felix Hasebrink
• Subject Area: Theatre and Media Studies
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 524611401

The project examines the appearance of infrastructures in fictional film. It assumes that feature films develop their own, historically variable aesthetic of infrastructure, which is to be described as an “infrastructure scene”. To this end, the project identifies historical axes of cinematic scenes of infrastructure, explores them with the help of interdisciplinary theories of film aesthetics and a specially created digital database and, in particular, asks how a contemporary scene of infrastructure emerges in digital media culture. A framework project examines the occurrence of infrastructures in feature films on the basis of three historical axes: (1) "Transportation and Traffic" is set in the 1920s and focuses on the slapstick film and its interactions of bodies and means of transportation; (2) "Environments and spaces of Communication" focusses on the so-called modern film of the 1960s/1970s and the emerging infrastructures of the post-war period; and (3) "Buildings and Architectures" looks into action and science fiction films from the 1970s/1980s onwards, focusing on imaginations of the destruction and subversion of infrastructures. The sub-projects (SPs) analyze contemporary films (ca. from 2000 onwards), taking into account the historical systematizations jointly researched in the framework project. They focus on cinematic scenes of data-based infrastructures (SP 1), on scenes of post-industrial infrastructure in contemporary independent cinema (SP 2) and on scenes of catastrophic infrastructures in US-American blockbusters, following slapstick and action films (SP 3). The overarching aim of the project is to research infrastructures historically and systematically as formative manifestations of cinematic aesthetics.

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• Subproject of: FOR 5710: Infrastructure: Aesthetics and Supply