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.