Planetary infrastructures

This thematic line is based on the assumption that designing the future makes sense only if, as formulated by infrastructural critique, we view processes, regulations, institutions, technologies, networks, and operations as a dispersed infrastructural arena on which we act. The focus will include submarine fiber optic cables, railway lines, power grids, increasingly large and energy-consuming data centers supporting the planetary cloud and increasingly computationally demanding artificial intelligence, new space infrastructure, satellites, command & control centers, new border walls along with perimeter security, airports, ports, nodal points for planetary logistics and trade, nuclear power plants, mines, and their connections to power structures and the fantasies, narratives, and ideologies supporting them. Thus, dealing with infrastructural speculation, BW LAB also works on infrastructural prototypes: objects, solutions, organizations, technologies, relationships, and situations related to them. In this block, we also examine the relationship between artificial intelligence and automation with the new topography of power, state borders, jurisdictions, and what Mel Hogan calls data surplus.