This working group’s point of departure is the proposition that democracy can be understood not primarily as a space of visibility, discursivity, or deliberation, but as an acoustic field structured by reverberation, resonance, and the distribution of what can be heard. Its ethos lies not in a self-centered, intentional gaze that administers a visible order of representation, but in a tentative, exposed voice that reconfigures what it means to appear and expose oneself in public. Following Blanchot’s claim that “to speak is not to see,” democracy may depend on the capacity to speak without the assurance of visibility, to inhabit a space where sounding precedes authoritative recognition.

How do temporal experiences shape democratic practices, coexistence, and meaning-making more broadly? This is the overarching concern of the working group “Aesthetics of Temporalities,” which draws on critical approaches to the notion of time to challenge dominant narratives of linearity, progress, and modernity. Building on interdisciplinary insights, the group is particularly interested in temporal ambivalence and disruptions, futures, and resulting contingencies. All individual research projects—ranging from aging and rejuvenation discourses to contemporary literary retellings, as well as queer and HIV-related temporalities—trace the various sites where time ultimately affects and shapes subjectivity.

The working group "Bonds" explores what holds people and things together. Bonds are understood as conditions, limits, and obstacles of democratic coexistence, encompassing meanings that range from confinement and commitment to obligation, debt, and reliability, as well as attraction, adhesion, and gravity. Bringing together perspectives from art history, film studies, and philosophy, the group gathers and analyzes conceptual resources that render bonds intelligible, while also investigating mundane sites, objects, and images that bind. The findings are incorporated into an expanding "Glossary of Bonds."

Appearances may seem immediate and self-evident, yet the conditions under which we appear, are perceived, and are recognized are anything but. Who appears, for whom, and under what conditions is always already shaped by social, aesthetic, and political forces. Thus, by taking appearances as our starting point, we aim to explore questions of representation and spectatorship in a manner which recognizes the foundational role that aesthetic and sensorial elements play in the creation of our shared political world.