Gluing is one of the most important cultural techniques of mankind. More than 100,000 years ago, adhesives helped early humans to create weapons and tools and to defend themselves against a hostile environment. Today, activists use adhesives to make politics.

Adhesives don't just hold things together. Materials engineers, physicists and chemists know: Adhesives also provide vibration damping, serve to seal against liquids and gases, corrosion protection, thermal and electrical insulation or conductivity, and, as the textbook so beautifully puts it:
"They also compensate for different joining part dynamics." So far, so good. But there were and are not only earth pitch, tree resin and glue on the one hand and super and industrial adhesives on the other. From a philosophical and sociological point of view, invisible adhesives also exist - they hold entire societies together, for example. However, the fact that superglues will one day be used as a political instrument in the fight for the environment and climate would not only have surprised our ancestors, it has also surprised us contemporaries.

With contributions from Olivia Wimmer, Erich Klein, Monika Halkort and Anna Lindner.

Service: Peter Moeschl, "Privatisierte Demokratie: Zur Umkodierung des Politischen", Turia & Kant

Web: https://oe1.orf.at/programm/20230415/716037/Klebstoff-was-die-Welt-zusammenhaelt

Research Institute for Social Cohesion

Stick together - Living in solidarity

Last Generation Activism

Lettre International

Peter Moeschl, On the (dis)proportionality of climate activism and art

Nordico City Museum Linz

FIFTITU For Women in Art and Culture

TU Vienna, When starch becomes glue

Austrian UNESCO Commission