Handmade Networks

Steffen Köhn, Nestor Siré

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. 


Colophon

Handmade Networks
Steffen Köhn, Nestor Siré

Contributors: Bani Brusadin, Erick J. Mota, Steffen Köhn, Nestor Siré

Editor: Janez Fakin Janša
Editorial assistant: Rok Kranjc
Copyediting: Miha Šuštar
Design and layout: Federico Antonini, Simone Cavallin

Print: Collegium Graphicum
No. of copies: 300

Published by: Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana

Represented by: Marcela Okretič

Ljubljana, June 2024 | © Aksioma, the authors

Promotion and distribution: Sonja Grdina

The research for and publication of this book were generously funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation), project number 428086777.

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