Networks & Infrastructures

The networks’ role has always been decisive for future-oriented scenarios. In the 60s, the city of tomorrow was imagined as a continuously evolving network which, thanks to the up-and-coming systems of communication, information, and transportation, would significantly improve the everyday life. New immaterial architectures would serve the inhabitants with respect to the environment. Nowadays, the electronic networks are at the same time nowhere to be seen and omnipresent. How do our expectations change in an era of ‘clouds’, ‘applications’, and ‘platforms’? How did the past ‘futures’ came to life?

Several works of the exhibition comment on the changes brought by the current condition of constant connectivity, and tackle the sovereignty of today’s networks. They address the changes that the networks brought to work and daily life, but also highlight issues of access and ownership of one’s data. They expose the infrastructures of today’s immaterial networks, underlining their physicality as well as the interdependence of economy, ecology, and technology. They make hypotheses about new network topologies with infrastructures placed in unexpected topographies, and speculations about their management and control by smaller groups of people.