Communication and travel networks that open the world to us are the characteristics of globalization. At the same time we feel increasingly isolated, controlled, and threatened by those global systems. How can we react to or modify our dependence upon them? The term “structural power” is used in political theory to analyze the systematic exclusion and repression of minorities. In reference to that concept, this seminar will trace how “infrastructural power” shapes and structures today’s communicative and social foundations. Together with activists from Syria, Turkey, China, and Iran, Christoph Wachter and Mathias Jud have built several independent communication networks over the past years. This seminar explores independent networks such as theirs, with the goal of fostering personal empowerment.

transmediale Co-Curricular is carried out in cooperation with Allianz Kulturstiftung.