Site Responsiveness. Translocal Interdependencies and Heterogeneous Temporalities in Art and Architecture.

It is a widely shared diagnosis that translocal connectivity and interdependence of events are defining characteristics of our present. Beyond increasingly powerful infrastructures for the transport of goods and data, and a globally synchronized information sphere, this condition is shaped by the destabilization of both the planetary and many local ecosystems. Against this backdrop, the concept of the site requires a fundamental revision. Sites can no longer be understood as fixed anchor points or stable stages for events. Instead, they are nodes where diverse but interdependent processes overlap – ranging from high-frequency digital data flows to slow ecological transformations.

This conference explores how art and architecture have responded to this dynamism and translocal interdependence. Since the 1960s, “site-specific” approaches have evolved from mainly material and spatial definitions toward social, ecological, and infrastructural conceptions. We focus on cases in which the complexity of the site becomes fully operative, foregrounding the multiplicity and heterogeneity of the forces that constitute it.

Shifting from site specificity to site responsiveness, the conference highlights practices that do not simply adapt to sites but actively reconfigure the processes that shape them – creating new couplings, exposing tensions, or seeking forms of mediation and recalibration. Responsiveness encompasses both critical exposure and dialogical engagement within a fragile, more-than-human world. Our aim is to test responsiveness as an analytical category in artistic, architectural, and urban practices, with particular emphasis on translocal relations and heterogeneous temporalities. The conference fosters an interdisciplinary exchange to explore how these practices register, intervene in, and reconfigure the complex relations that define the contemporary sites.

Programme

Thursday, June 11, 2026

17:00–18:00
Introduction

18:00–18:50
Sabine Weingartner
“Emilio Prini’s Translocal Projects in the late 1960s: Between Installation, Protocol, and Circulation”

18:50–19:40
Christopher Williams-Wynn
“Governed by Operations: Nancy Holt’s System Works and the Infrastructural Turn”

19:40–20:00
Panel Discussion moderated by Jakob Schillinger

20:30
Reception with Drinks and Finger Food

Friday, June 12, 2026

09:30–10:20
Veronica Caprino
“Unfinished Landscapes: Practices of Collective Response-Ability”

10:20–11:10
Stefano Setti and Ludovica Tomarchio
“Across Architecture and Sculpture: Consagra’s Frontal Theatre as a Responsive Practice”

11:10–11:40
Coffee Break

11:40–12:30
Alexandra-Elena Burtea
“Instrumentalising Typology: Protest near the Protocol Villa”

12:30–13:00
Panel Discussion moderated by Susanne Hauser

13:00–14:00
Lunch Break

14:00–14:50
Iris Giannakopoulou, George Papam, and Clare Fentress
“Plots and Counterplots: Interrogating Site through Land and Narrative”

14:50–15:40
Beatrice Azzola, Annalisa Azzola, Irene Pancrazi, and Hassan Ahmed
“Stolen Land and Disappearing Reefs: The Techno-Ecological Paradox of Reclamation Practices in the Maldives”

15:40–16:00
Panel Discussion moderated by Stefan Neuner

16:00–16:30
Coffee Break

16:30–17:20
Léa Dreyer
“Global Weather, Global Networks: Translocal Connectivity in Telecopy Art”

17:20–18:10
Simon Baier
“Non-Site Answerability: Adrián Villar Rojas’s Figuration of Sculptures”

18:10–18:30
Panel Discussion moderated by Christoph Chwatal

Saturday, June 13, 2026

09:00–09:50
Erika Brandl
“When Infrastructure Forecloses the Future: Responsiveness and Generational Sovereignty”

09:50–10:40
Andrea Crudeli
“Critical Regionalism and Adaptive Reuse in the Case of Massimo Carmassi in Pisa”

10:40–11:00
Panel Discussion moderated by Sebastian Egenhofer

11:00–11:30
Coffee Break

11:30–12:20
Alicia Lazzaroni, Antonio Bernacchi, and Anna-Lena Mueller
“Patchy Panoramas: Architecture as Expanded Landscape”

12:20–13:10
Emma Kaufmann LaDuc
“From Taskspace to Tectonics: Surveying the Carrière de Crozet”

13:10–13:30
Panel Discussion moderated by Ludovica Tomarchio

13:30–14:30
Coffee Break and Closing Session

Organized by Sebastian Egenhofer, Susanne Hauser, Stefan Neuner, Christoph Chwatal, and Ludovica Tomarchio in the framework of the NOMIS Foundation-funded research project “Site Complexes: Responsive Practices for the 21st Century” (University of Vienna/Berlin University of the Arts).

The conference is open to the public; no registration is required.

For further information, please contact Christoph Chwatal at christoph.chwatalunivie.ac.at and Ludovica Tomarchio at l.tomarchioudk-berlin.de