This research project analyzes the ambivalent status of pipelines as physical infrastructure objects. From a technical perspective, pipelines are merely transportation systems for raw materials. From a political-economic viewpoint, they gain importance as a decisive factor in geostrategic power and economic relations. From an ecological perspective, they pose insufficiently mitigated risks to environments through large-scale interventions into landscapes, many of them still pristine. Symbolically, they serve as media that communicate narratives of contact, transmission, and interconnectedness among subjects and cultures, spaces, and times. In researching pipelines as hybrid, multi-functional media, the project follows Macdonald’s (2017) assumption that fossil fuel transmission systems should not be confined to the sphere of political-economic interests and technical infrastructures. Rather, pipelines should be understood as cultural objects imbued with symbolic value. To explore these complex linkages and to analyze how the discourse on pipelines navigates the tension between interdependence and disengagement, the project draws on exemplary case studies. The main focus is on three pipeline projects that link Eastern and Western Europe: 1. the Soyuz Pipeline, implemented as a COMECON joint project to deliver gas from the fields developed near Orenburg in the 1960s to Central and Western Europe; 2. the Bratstvo pipeline, a key object of European détente policy in defiance of U.S. sanctions to transport natural gas from Western Siberia via Ukraine to Western Europe since 1984; 3. the Nord Stream (Severny potok) 1 and 2 pipelines, which supplied (or were intended to supply) natural gas to Western Europe by bypassing transit countries and which became symbolic of a new Cold-Hot War era in Europe.

The project consists of three sub-projects:

1. Route and Transit: Ukraine as a Hub for Pipeline Traffic Between East and West
   Prof. Dr. Susanne Strätling
   
   Regardless of their physical size, pipelines—along with the raw materials they carry—usually remain below the threshold of perception. This blindness to the infrastructure of resource transport goes hand in hand with a neglect of the spaces through which this transport takes place. These are territories of passage, energetic transit zones, an unmarked “space of flows” that is reduced to its function as a transit corridor. In the fossil fuel trade between Eastern and Western Europe, Ukraine—which possesses one of the world’s largest pipeline networks—has been relegated to the role of a largely neutralized medium, intended to facilitate uninterrupted contact between producers and consumers, yet itself remaining outside the spotlight as an independent actor. This subproject aims to bring this overlooked interstitial space to light.
   
   

2. “Living with the Pipeline”. Transformations, Circulations, and Topographies of Energy Infrastructures in Eastern Europe
   Mathilde Stangenberger, M.A.
   
   The dissertation project examines how pipelines as material objects manifest ideationally and culturally, and which narratives and practices are employed and emerge hereby. The project is based on the premise that pipelines function not only as transport routes for energy, but also as spaces of social imagination that interact with cultural practices, labor relations, and gender relations. The project focuses primarily on the transformative, circulatory, and topographical characteristics of pipelines. This enables a multi-angled perspective on pipelines that addresses their materiality and constructed nature while also going beyond this physical dimension. In addition to the “Soyuz” and “Bratstvo” pipelines, the project focuses in particular on the “Transgas” pipeline, which runs through Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Within this spectrum, various political and cultural dynamics surrounding pipelines between East and West come into focus.
   
   

3. Maritime Transit Zones: Underwater Pipelines and the Exploration of the Seafloor
   Dr. Clemens Günther
   
   Oceans deserve special attention as critical transit routes for the transport of oil and gas. The expansion of offshore energy production and the rapid development of oceanography have driven the construction of undersea pipelines. This subproject examines the military, economic, legal, scientific, and cultural logics underlying the exploration and appropriation of the deep sea through Eastern European case studies. Among other topics, the research explores visual representations of the deep sea through an intercultural and interdisciplinary comparative lens, investigates (alternative) geographies of the ocean as both a living environment and an economic space, and analyzes visions for the future of maritime infrastructure. The project focuses primarily on the second half of the twentieth century while also considering post-socialist developments.