Presentation / Discussion
At Foyer Hub 1

“The activist need not face off against every weed in the field but rather, unannounced, alter the chemistry of the soil.” - Extrastatecraft, Keller Easterling

What do we consider to be the critical infrastructure of our age? And does there now exist a common language that could facilitate its shared use, reappropriation and mobilisation?

This session will seek to unpick how the use of existing infrastructural protocol, language and narrative can potentially be used to shift global information landscapes, broadband urbanisms, and free trade atopias.

The session will be led by Jay Springett, responsible for the network artifact #stacktivism; initially launched into the Twitter-sphere as an attempt to generate debate around, the emergent conversations and line of enquiries around infrastructures and the relationship we have to them. This gathering will open with the presentation of work by Erica Scourti and Tobias Revell who feature in this years Transmediale - after a series of short presentations for framing the subject at hand, discussion will then be opened out to those in attendance.

With Jay Springett

Jay Springett is a musician, writer, and communicator. He is concerned primarily with humans, organisations, technology, infrastructure, and the unseen intersection points of how these things co-exist and keep us alive. He also co-curates The Thought Menu: a nomadic talk and event series, and is passionate about DIY culture.

Requirements / Reading List:
e-flux editorial “Quasi-Events”
The Black Stack - Benjamin Bratton
Holding Up the World, Part II: Time/Bank, Effort/Embankments - Elizabeth A. Povinelli
The Negative Floats: Questions of Earth Inheritance - Natasha Ginwala and Vivian Ziherl
“Infrastructure Fiction” - Paul Raven
McKenzie Wark on Haraway, Marx, and #Accelerationism
Tim Maly on the tragedy of the systemic sublime
“The Container is not the Shipping” - Matthew Sheret
No to NoUI - Timo Arnall
Roads to power - Jo Guldi
Someone else’s problem? - Paul Raven
Designed conflict territories - Tobias Revell
Infrastructure for Anarchists - Vinay Gupta
Who owns the means of not dying? - Jay Springett