The Future Behind Us | Ep. #6: Chasing the Physicality of the Internet [w/ Evan Roth]
Internet has obliterated borders, distances and other hallmarks of geography, making us forget its material reality: its data centres, wires, routers, processors and a vast network of intercontinental cables. Artist Evan Roth has travelled the globe to make infrared videos of coastal landscapes where fiberoptic submarine cables emerge from the sea to enable communication across oceans.
Contemplating the infrastructure that makes and shapes the internet helps us see through the digital noise, find new ways to share space with people we’ve never met and delineate a more complex picture of the vulnerabilities and complexities that shape the dynamics and geopolitics of 21st-century communication systems.
Additional content
Evan Roth
https://www.evan-roth.com
Red Lines
https://www.artangel.org.uk/project/red-lines
Books mentioned in the conversation:
Andrew Blum, Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet, 2012 (Ecco)
https://www.andrewblum.net/tubes-2
Astra Taylor, The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age, 2014 (Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company)
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250062598/thepeoplesplatform
Arden Reed, Slow Art: The Experience of Looking, Sacred Images to James Turrell, 2019 (University of California Press)
https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520300583/slow-art
COLOPHON
Host: Régine Debatty
Guest: Evan Roth
Recording: Régine Debatty
Music, editing and audio mix: Gašper Torkar
The Future Behind Us podcast series
Curated by: Régine Debatty
Coordinated by: Janez Fakin Janša
Produced by: Marcela Okretič
Production:
Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2024
Part of:
PXXP•XXV: Speculation and Decay
Conceived and co-organised by:
Aksioma
For:
Pixxelpoint – 25th International Festival of Contemporary Art Practices
Produced and co-organised by:
Nova Gorica Arts Centre
In the framework of:
GO! 2025 – European Capital of Culture, Nova Gorica 2025
Supported by:
the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Nova Gorica