TERRITORIO ECTOPLASMA: On the impact of Digital infrastructures on the Environmental, Social and Mental Ecologies

Check the programme here. 

Convened by  architect Marina Otero Verzier, Territorio Ectoplasma is a week-long critical studies programme that looks at the territorial dynamics and often overlooked spaces and bodies that sustain the activity of metropolitan centers. In particular, it focuses on the digital infrastructure making possible our datafied, urban life. 

In the last decade, the world has experienced unprecedented production and consumption of data. According to International Data Corporation (IDC), global data will grow by 23 percent annually from 2020 to 2025. The data-driven

TERRITORIO ECTOPLASMA: SESSION #1 Introduction

TERRITORIO ECTOPLASMA INTRODUCTION: WHO WANTS THE CLOUD IN THEIR BACKWARD?

Many of us use phones, computers, streaming platforms, video games, and other services that increase data production and consumption. Many celebrate advances in climate science, healthcare and electromobility, or are excited about developments in AI, the Internet of Things, and the Metaverse. Consequently, we support the opening of new mines, extraction of more resources, constructing more data centers, the production of more batteries and development of more power plants that keep the promises of infinite growth

TERRITORIO ECTOPLASMA: SESSION #2 Data Storage

MARINA OTERO'S PRESENTATION

Data centers are a fundamental component of today’s digital infrastructure. This session focuses on their socio-political implications and environmental impacts, and their relevance for the future of data sovereignty.

MÉL HOGAN (online)
5-6 PM

Since 2012, Mél Hogan has advanced research on data storage. Her work explores alternatives to data centers and their excessive water and energy consumption. She also critically analyzes technological solutions that allegedly could solve the data deluge, such as DNA-based storage. Currently, Hogan is curious about

TERRITORIO ECTOPLASMA: SESSION #5 Mineral extraction

Digital infrastructures are entangled with the landscapes of resource extraction. Accelerated extraction and consumption of minerals used for construction of batteries and devices, and the subsequent development of digital subjectivities has led to an unprecedented destruction of ecosystems. Speakers will move between land and sea, macro and micro scales, and time frames, lawmaking and activism to unveil emerging forms of resistance to resource extraction.

LARA ALMARCEGUI (online)
1 - 2 PM

Artist Lara Almarcegui looks into the essential, yet scarcely asked, questions about ownership of

TERRITORIO ECTOPLASMA: SESSION #6 Ectoplasm exorcism

“Progress” comes too often at the expense of those communities portrayed as backward, uneducated, animalized, or non-existent. Some of them turn this violence and discrimination into a force for their survival by means of embodied practices and more-than-human solidarity. Mobilizing design, fiction and performance, transfigurations, incantations and rituals, the session seeks to invoke and embody the “ectoplasm territories” we addressed during the week and engage them in the creation of “counterworlds.”

THANDI LOEWENSON (online)
11 - 12 PM

In this performance lecture, Thandi Loewenson

The Conversion Code - Prototype

This proposal investigates the "Joshua Project," a website and database that, in its own words, "highlights the peoples and places with the least access to the gospel in order to prioritise mission efforts." It is a central infrastructural node of contemporary fundamentalist evangelical missions -...

The Things Network Madrid

Hay que destacar que Wireless logic es uno de los mayores operadores IOT alternativos de Europa con 5 millones de SIMs desplegadas y que viene a proponernos posibles colaboraciones con la comunidad.

También aprovecharemos para:

  • Repasar las últimas actividades en las que hemos participado, especialmente la OSHWDem19 de A Coruña.
  • Organizar el próximo taller en colaboración con HackMadrid %27 (https://www.meetup.com/es-ES/HackMadrid-27/events/265893235/) para montar más nodo V2 y ampliar los que ya tenemos con la extensión de puerta abierta.
  • Coordinar el taller que realizaremos en

The Vibes of Power. Calin Segal

In a time when the image has been rendered primordial and text relegated to the metadata, aesthetics operates as central instrument of governance, capable of subverting and reconfiguring reason itself. Building on this premise, the project investigates how sensorial strategies are mobilized to...

User Agreement. Álvaro Soto López

User Agreement is an artistic research project exploring the relationship between technology, faith and power in the digital age. Through a critical and speculative lens, it proposes imagining a hypothetical "technological cult" as a way to reflect on how platforms, algorithms and online communities...