you were not expected to do this

Resistance, interference, accidents – all terms which share a distinctly negative connotation of obstructing rather than advancing traditional forms of production. That the opposite may very well be the case more often than not; that certain forms of production may actually benefit from such hindrances or even be of necessity; indeed, that these hindrances add or constitute a manifestation of production in their own right; this is what the conference “you were not expected to do this. on the dynamics of production”, organised by the postgraduate school “Materiality and Production”, set out to explore when it was held at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf in April 2014. This book collects some of the contributions to the three-day conference, essentially following its four main points: ‘On the Necessity of Resistance’, ‘Virtual Failures’, ‘Spaces of Accident’, and ‘Working Traces’. From the general resistance of language in matters of translation to deliberately imposed obstructions in the production of art, from the natural dynamics of materiality to more immaterial factors leaving behind their traces in the productions process, what the articles in this book collectively address is that conventional notions of resistance and failure as standing in opposition to invention, progress and creativity need to be significantly updated. In the end, that which is not expected is often that which creates production in the first place.