Panel: Cable Breaks. The Powers Below the Surface

DEEP CABLES: Uncovering the Wiring of the World. The 8th event of the Disruption Network Lab. Panel: Cable Breaks. The Powers Below the Surface with Ingrid Burrington (artist and researcher, USA), Helga Tawil-Souri (associate professor Middle East and Islamic Studies NYU, Palestine/USA), Gabriele “Asbesto” Zaverio (sysadmin, co-founder, MusIF, FreakNet MediaLab, IT). Moderated by Jacob Lillemose (postdoctoral researcher and curator, Copenhagen Center for Disaster Research, DK). If the Internet is material at its core, based on an infrastructure of physical cables, it is in principle also victim to the same laws of physics as other material entities. Rather than understanding the Internet as a given thing, almost like a second air, the emphasis indirectly suggest that the Internet is a thing that like so many other things could one day break or disappear. While there is certainly reason to criticise the Internet when it works at its worst as a control mechanism there is just as much reason to be critically aware of the instances when it might not work at all, when it breaks down and our dependency on – and trust in – it is exposed, in some cases with catastrophic consequences. This panel is dealing with “cable breaks” as a metaphorical concept, showing that the Internet is a result of political and power alliances – andtherefore subjected to vulnerabilities and interruptions related notonly to its physical materiality, but also to cultural and political dynamics. It wants to investigate various blackout scenarios by inviting respectively an artist focusing on submarine cables and the confluence of local and global politics and history in specific US landingsites; a media scholar and documentary filmmaker expert on Internet breakdown and vulnerabilities during conflicts, analysing the digital occupation of Palestine; and a computer programmer working with "breaks", digital-divide and off zones in Italy and Sicily. www.disruptionlab.org/deep-cables (http://www.disruptionlab.org/deep-cables) Photo: Maria Silvano Produced by Voice Republic For more podcasts visit http://voicerepublic.com