// new media class


Stefanie Bálint-Gruber — Maintaining Idleness

Potential Energy — Energy Potential — Winter 2025

Maintaining Idleness is technical infrastructure disguised as a dollhouse.
By miniaturising the concept of fake buildings within the exhibition space, the work conceals a necessary exhibition setup behind a seemingly passive facade.
While it appears idle from the outside, the dollhouse provides the exhibition with functioning Wi-Fi and network infrastructure. In doing so, the work challenges the notion that idleness is synonymous with inactivity. Instead, it presents idleness as a condition that must be actively maintained, much like the seemingly invisible processes that sustain domestic and infrastructural norms.

Dollhouse, router, electronics