Looking into the Machinery Room: Images and Visual Archives of Movement and Acceleration across the Mediterranean.
Conference at Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, 8-10 May 2025 organized by Eva-Maria Troelenberg, Anna Sophia Messner and Shraddha Bhatawadekar

(Research Group MEDMACH, ERC Horizon 2021, grant agreement ID: 101042597)

In this conference, we aim to seize the epistemic potential that arises when the production, circulation and storage of images and visual practices are interwoven with infrastructural histories. Taking the globally connected Mediterranean after 1800 as our geographical anchor, we look at visual histories around infrastructures and machineries which envision, enable, or also inhibit, interrupt or destroy processes of mobility and acceleration.

This approach addresses the need to write a timely history of the Mediterranean, reaching beyond national or cultural borders and essentialisms. We focus on the period starting from the 19th century which is increasingly characterized by fossil-driven acceleration and marked by an ever-increasing connectivity and movement, but also by profound alterations through nation-building and human interventions into nature. The same technical progress which triggered these processes also meant that these histories have been more systematically documented, narrated and broadly circulated through images and visual practices than ever before.

Against this background, a main query of the conference is about the places where knowledge is kept in this context. By interrelating the geographical space and the spaces of knowledge storage and production, we aim to map out institutions and archives whose holdings and practices are relevant for the unearthing and understanding of visual histories of movement after 1800. Thereby, we understand the notion of the archive not as metaphorical; rather, it is always bound to the material and technical reality of tangible and legible visual practices in a concrete historical context. At the same time, the archive is also to be understood in a dynamic epistemic sense, which includes the loss of, disinterest in, or resistance against image- and archive practices. This latter aspect is crucial to avoid privileging the normativity of official archives and the state or corporal power over the histories of nomadic, diasporic or marginalized agents and communities. This type of archival thinking emphasizes the relation of human agents to the material remains and to the ecosphere of the Mediterranean. It asks how individuals or communities engage with visual sources of knowledge on a local, regional and global scale.

We are particularly interested in case studies that examine the role of vehicles, vessels, train stations, port facilities, airports, bridges, water dams, channels, border structures and other infrastructural elements within the visual fabric of diverse sites around or connected to the Mediterranean. The visual practices surrounding these sites can range from touristic imagery to scientific documentation, from utopian planning to the creation of memorials, including the curatorial reinterpretation and re-use of infrastructural sites.

Program

Thursday 8 May
5:00 PM Welcome
Eva-Maria Troelenberg, Anna Sophia Messner and Shraddha Bhatawadekar, MEDMACH, HHU Düsseldorf
5:15 PM Keynote Lecture Chair: Eva-Maria Troelenberg
Naor H. Ben-Yehoyada, Columbia University, New York
Scenes from a Relationship
7:00 PM Dinner (for speakers)
Schloss Mickeln

Friday 9 May
9:00 AM Welcome / Coffee
9:30 AM Introduction
Eva-Maria Troelenberg and Anna Sophia Messner
10:00 AM – 12:00 PM Panel I: Technologies and Temporalities
Chair: Stefanie Michels, HHU Düsseldorf
Alexander Gall, Deutsches Museum, München
The Mediterranean as a Powerhouse: Herman Sörgel’s Atlantropa Project
Aimée Plukker, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
Travel Temporalities: Stazione Roma Termini and the Trans Europ Express
Carmen Belmonte, University of Padua
From Addis Ababa to Syracuse. A monument to Fascist Imperial War Technologies and Infrastructure across the Mediterranean
12:00 - 1:30 PM Lunch
1:30 – 3:30 PM Panel II: Machineries of Empire
Chair: Shraddha Bhatawadekar
Malte Fuhrmann, Center of Advanced Studies, Sofia
Locomotion and Power. Inserting the Leader into Images of Steam-Powered Transport
Jonathan Stafford, Leibniz-Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, Berlin
Sail, Steam and Speed? Representing steamship mobilities in the nineteenth-century Mediterranean
Turgut Saner, Istanbul Technical University – BTU-Cottbus
The Journey of Haydarpaşa Terminus (Istanbul) from Imperial Glamour to Republican Sentiments
3:30 - 4:00 PM Coffee Break
4:00- 5:30 PM Keynote Lecture
Chair: Erin H. Nolan, Bates College, Maine
Hannah Baader, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut
Engineering Botany in and of the Mediterranean
7:00 PM Dinner in Town (for speakers)

Saturday 10 May
9:30 AM – 12:00 PM Panel III: Migration and Mobilities in Crisis
Chair: Argyrios Sakorafas, MEDMACH, HHU Düsseldorf
Giorgia Mirto, Columbia University, New York
Lampedusa’s Cross to Bear: the transformation of migrant’s boat fragments into relics
Iro Katsaridou, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Towards a situated history of migration in contemporary Mediterranean: Forensic Architecture’s Pylos Shipwreck project (2023)
Coffee Break
Andrea Matošević, Juraj Dobrila University of Pula
Riveted steel (dis)connections. The case of Galeb Ship in the Mediterranean and Beyond
Erin H. Nolan, Bates College, Maine
Imagined landscapes and Istanbul’s Modern Machine Rooms
12:00 - 1:30 PM Lunch
1:30 – 3:30 PM Panel IV: Connectivities and Visual Representation
Chair: Anna Sophia Messner
Hanni Geiger, Global Dis:connect/Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
The Adriatic highway. Liminal tourism infrastructure between connections and disconnections
Franziska Weinmann, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Differentiation from Jaffa: visual representations of Tel Aviv’s port as a symbol of a new Jewish maritime approach
David Motzafi-Haller, Université de Neuchâtel
The “Land of Israel” from the Birds’ Eye View: aerial photography and the Zionist colonization of Palestine, 1920-1945
3:30 - 4:00 PM Coffee Break
4:00- 5:00 PM Final Discussion
Chair: Shraddha Bhatawadekar

For details on the research project see: https://medmach.hypotheses.org/

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.