Research without dead time: On epistemological solidarity and academic counterespionage

On 28 March 2025, Vasilis Galis from the section Technologies in Practice presented his inaugural lecture at the IT University of Copenhagen. The lecture is entitled “Research against dead time”. The title of the talk is inspired by the slogan “Live without dead time”. The slogan was daubed on a wall of the Sorbonne in Paris some-time in May 1968 and criticized the fact that life has become completely colonized by the current economic system. The slogan recognizes capitalism as an ontological system of a variety of relations that perform temporalities! Morbid temporalities! Universities and academic research are part of this ontological system too. On the other hand, to live without dead time means to embody a great refusal, to find pleasure in resistance and critique, to transform every moment of existence into a rejection of the market, and into an affirmation of social change. The way forward is through this kind of radical play. Academic life and research are also an integral part of this play. And this is something that has marked my motivation to conduct research.