The concept of space both reflects the respective framework conditions in itself and leads the philosophical undertaking of an empirically-free categorisation ad absurdum: At the beginning of philosophising stands the metaphysical question of the beginning or the “ground” of all things (Greek: arche), to which space as a conception of origin provides an answer; at the end we find the insight into the ('an-archic') structure of space that cannot be justified by thought alone and an insight into its emergence from political, economic, historical and above all social contexts.

Today, we are witnessing an unprecedented awareness of space, be it in philosophy, art, geography, and other such as academic discourses. However, after ages of discussion about time and its descriptions, why space, and why today?

Since organising, redistributing, promoting, annexing, and defending territories are basic exercises of political as well as economical and military decisions, to enthrone space as the new all-round theory means no less than to refer to the most traditional power dynamics we can imagine.This may be no surprise in given the strong effects of de-territorialisation as one main feature of the world’s status quo.

This group wants to intersect different artistic research practices and discourses as heterogeneous but complementary articulations of space, that address, operate on and contribute in different ways and capacities, to the transformation of the contemporary environment and its challenges: the social, the infrastructural, the technological, the sensory, the virtual, the built and the unbuilt.

Therefore the group consists of media theorists, composers, artists, performers, linguists, and architects to enable an interdisciplinary delineation of the field but also to strengthen a multidisciplinary research on the social impact of space(s) in our society in order to define certain strategies dealing with the multi-layered meanings of space in the mediatised every day and the arts. The group wants to investigate these contexts within artistic research practices and provide a framework for contextualisation and reflection on these practices.