About the event
Event organised in collaboration with Aksioma - Institute of Contemporary Art, Ljubljana.
Handmade Networks presents a body of research-based artworks by Steffen Köhn and Nestor Siré. Their collaborative projects explore how the Cuban people have compensated for their lack of internet connectivity by building massive alternative infrastructures, such as grassroots community computer networks or offline “sneakernets”. They document how Cubans defy material scarcity by recycling or appropriating obsolete technologies, creating digital exchange platforms on messenger applications, or engaging in play-to-earn blockchain games. By examining the resilient and resistive potentials of these vernacular infrastructures, Köhn and Siré’s work also reimagines such networks as viable alternatives to the capitalist, consumerist digital infrastructures controlled by an oligopoly of Big Tech companies that have homogenised the global internet.
The book, published by Aksioma in 2024, opens with an essay by Cuban science fiction writer Erick J. Mota and closes with a conversation between educator and researcher Bani Brusadin and the artists.
Steffen Köhn, Nestor Siré
Handmade Networks
Edited by Janez Fakin Janša
EN | 23 x 15 cm | 176 pp | colour | soft cover | 2024
https://aksioma.org/handmade-networks
Copies available at a discounted price during the event.
About the Participants
Nestor Siré is a Cuban multimedia artist living and working in Havana, who reflects on the relationship between technology and society through transdisciplinary research. He is currently an artist in residence at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten (2024-2026).
https://nestorsire.com
Steffen Köhn is a filmmaker, video artist, and Associate Professor of Visual and Multimodal Anthropology at Aarhus University who uses ethnography to understand contemporary sociotechnical landscapes.
http://steffenkoehn.com
Jussi Parikka is a writer and a Professor in Digital Aesthetics and Culture at Aarhus University in Denmark where he leads the Digital Aesthetics Research Centre. His books include Operational Images (2023), A Slow, Contemporary Violence (2016), Digital Contagions (2007/2016), A Geology of Media (2015) and Insect Media (2010).
http://jussiparikka.net
Vanina Saracino is an independent curator, film programmer, writer, and lecturer whose work focuses on theories and art practices that question anthropocentric and binary worldviews from an intersectional perspective.
https://vaninasaracino.com
