EINSTELLUNGSRAUM e. V. Norbert Wilting: Heidelberg Maschine

speed insofar that small print runs of a local paper for example could be printed, cut, folded and delivered in bundles within 20 minutes. With printing it is like with car races and driving with high speeds about precision and regularity. And the whole thing represents a complex system where engineering, distribution, infrastructure and daily use each unfold effect influencing all fields of society.

3. Blood, trafic and data streams

But with the EchtzeitPlastik by Wilting it is not about printing but he means something else with 'machine'. This is what the image on the invitation postcard tells us showing a gray station wagon with a red structure on its roof. It is the vehicle with which he drives daily to and back from Cologne to Heidelberg. To name only the car as a machine would be too simple. One has to take the object on the roof into consideration which looks like a vastly enlarged tissue sample.
With this montage the vehicle, which was photographed in its daily situation, is absolved from its vehicle reality being an industrial product and can no longer count as something authentic that was captured with a snap shot on the parking lot. Documented is the standing station wagon possibly at a break during a working day which consists of transporting blood samples to a laboratory. This is a breadwinning job but only conditionally fundamental for the art work which nevertheless has to do with his art as driver, because it cannot be separated from course of life. His occupation as driver which forces him into the regularity of a metronome, leads to new insights at the same time that remain barred for sporadic users of the highways.

speed insofar that small print runs of a local paper for example could be printed, cut, folded and delivered in bundles within 20 minutes. With printing it is like with car races and driving with high speeds about precision and regularity. And the whole thing represents a complex system where engineering, distribution, infrastructure and daily use each unfold effect influencing all fields of society. 3. Blood, trafic and data streams But with the EchtzeitPlastik by Wilting it is not about printing but he means something else with 'machine'. This is what the image on the invitation postcard tells us showing a gray station wagon with a red structure on its roof. It is the vehicle with which he drives daily to and back from Cologne to Heidelberg. To name only the car as a machine would be too simple. One has to take the object on the roof into consideration which looks like a vastly enlarged tissue sample. With this montage the vehicle, which was photographed in its daily situation, is absolved from its vehicle reality being an industrial product and can no longer count as something authentic that was captured with a snap shot on the parking lot. Documented is the standing station wagon possibly at a break during a working day which consists of transporting blood samples to a laboratory. This is a breadwinning job but only conditionally fundamental for the art work which nevertheless has to do with his art as driver, because it cannot be separated from course of life. His occupation as driver which forces him into the regularity of a metronome, leads to new insights at the same time that remain barred for sporadic users of the highways.	The daily stay on the same legs of the highway at certain times gets him amongst the other professional motorists that use the transportation system also with great consistency so that the particular freight may be picked up and delivered on time. Thus it is obvious here to debate the whole relation quasi as machine. Following Michel Foucault one could call the whole relation as a dispositif⁵ - concretely a traffic dispositif - that melds the sum of the production conditions and societal necessary work and at the same time is linked with a scientific and administrative superstructure which guides, researches, optimizes and uses profitably. The whole is highly functional and state controlled. This explains the regularity which lets the complete system appear so stable in movement as well so that it comes across virtually stable. And yet just these efforts to keep the whole in a constant state of flux are the condition for individual efficiencies and products are permanently in movement with great speed and are allocated to parts of society. The remarkable with Heidelberger Maschine is that the dynamics of the traffic flow is similar to the flow of blood. And when one considers that the test results of the transported blood samples are transformed in data and shipped electronically from the laboratory for medical diagnosis one can concretize the term 'dispositif' here and expand it at the same time because here blood, traffic and data flows interlock and represent an extensive combination of biological, data processing, traffic and medical - technical systems. But what happens to the people who are fitted in this close- meshed system at various spots - if as labourer or patient - and function according to plan even though seen from the outside especially the former as driver are en route individually on long stretches where they may take own routes any time.
	5 It is about a 'dispositif' here in the sense by Foucault. Even though he disregarded the aspect of objects, machines and hardware in connection with his study about institutional exercise of power the term is adequate here. I refer to Giorgio Agamben (Que cos e un dispositivo?, Rom 2006), who goes back to a quotation by Foucault from 1977 where Foucault defines the term (page 7-8). As subject Foucault considered architecture but it shows that - compared to architecture - especially cars in their dynamics still much stronger imply and multiply possibilities for operation that make necessary certain behaviour patterns and thus not only form structures but also help for them to spread which then favours the attached interests by which they contribute with the serving as a means of individuals and societies.
The 1th. exhibition in HYBRID EINSTELLUNGSRAUM e.V.	more pictures
Supported by the department for culture, sports and media of Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg and district office Wandsbek
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