Fragile Connections

Interactive installation of three synchronized videos, an offline web server and DIY WIFI antennas

*Seeing Stones and Spaces Beyond the Valley*, *II Bienal de Varsovia, Polonia [2022]*

– In collaboration with Steffen Köhn –

ABSTRACT

STATEMENT

Fragile Connections is an interactive installation and the outcome of an artistic research project by Nestor Siré and Steffen Köhn about SNET (Street Network), a vast grassroots computer network connecting tens of thousands of users across Cuba’s capital Havana. This vernacular infrastructure not only compensates for the lack of internet access but has also generated new relations between people and fostered new forms of community. SNET allows users to play multiplayer video games, chat, send messages, debate in forums, share files, or host websites. It relies on a network of thousands of participants who collaboratively create, operate, and maintain its hardware and software infrastructure. The network’s material base consists of miles of ethernet cable running across streets or balconies, Wi-Fi antennas mounted on poles on rooftops, and servers and network switches operated by an army of volunteer node administrators. As the software interface through which the network is accessed, SNET makers have repurposed TeamSpeak, an outdated voice conferencing software that allows users to communicate with each other via voice and text over the Internet or a LAN. While TeamSpeak was firmly rooted in gaming culture (being designed for gamers who can use the software to communicate with other players in the same team in a multiplayer video game), it is employed in SNET as a central organization tool for its many features, customizability, and low system requirements.

While SNET effectively became illegal in August 2019, when the Cuban government introduced new regulation on the use of Wi-Fi, some of its admins successfully negotiated its integration into Tinored, the official nationwide intranet that connects the state’s network of Youth Computer Clubs. This secured the survival of many of its offerings but resulted in the loss of its autonomy. The protests and negotiations for SNET’s survival in many ways anticipated later conflicts that had major political implications for the political system in Cuba. The resistive potential of vernacular infrastructures such as SNET also makes them unique local alternatives to the capitalist, consumerist digital infrastructures, controlled by a handful of Big Tech companies that have homogenized the global Internet.

Our installation replicates the technological set-up of an SNET node and thus constitutes a fully functioning local area network (SNET actually developed out of private LAN parties in which Cuban video gamers first experimented with network technology). It allows audiences to connect with their smartphones to explore parts of the network themselves and view or download research documents about SNET’s history. It further consists of a three-channel video documenting a focus group interview with three admins about SNET’s rise, fall, and rebirth. This interview was conducted over one of the network’s TeamSpeak servers and recorded on their desktop screens. Further elements of the work are an infographic detailing SNET’s power dynamics and hierarchies and a set of stickers with icons and symbols that SNET members use to express their digital identities. These stickers allow visitors to performatively take on an SNET personality themselves.