Symposium: Earth and Internet (want to be free) - Interdisciplinary artistic research and the platform landscape
- When
-
- Location
- Färgfabriken
- Language
- English
- Organizer
- Södertörns högskola
Image credit: ARNEN. Courtesy of the artists.
How can we imagine more just, sustainable and non-extractive digital futures? And how are interdisciplinary and artistic research practices pointing to alternative ways to think about resource extraction and digital platform infrastructures?
On November 12-13, VISTRANS* will bring together artists, researchers, and scholars in a symposium dedicated to exploring intersections of digital extractivism, environmental and data justice, and emerging forms of resistance to the planetary impacts of digital technologies.
These include the acceleration of technology and geographies of digital media infrastructures, which cannot be separated from the geopolitics of supply chains - including the burdens of mining of critical and conflict minerals on fragile territories and vulnerable communities, and the environmental costs of facilities such as data centers. Importantly, these processes often unfold at the margins of democratic processes and public participation, and are experienced at various scales, from local to planetary, profoundly unequally. What are the urgent and critical debates challenging this moment and offering alternatives, and how can interdisciplinary artistic research advance these critical agendas?
The symposium
In the symposium, international scholars and artists based in Sweden, Germany, Finland, and Estonia, and combining media studies, sociology, environmental studies, contemporary art and performance, and architecture, will focus on the developments both in the so-called Global North and Global South. These geographies are violently divided by extractivism and coloniality in digital planetary transformations, yet also connected through practices of resistance, repair, re-existence, and liberation. The symposium is developed in collaboration with Färgfabriken, and is inspired by themes of extractivism, technology, and colonialism in Färgfabriken’s current exhibition “Rare Earth, Rare Justice” by Nigerian artist Ndidi Dike.
Two keynote presentations will be part of the program and open for the public: Gianfranco Selgas, researcher in political ecology and co-director of the Political Ecology Research Theme at KTH, will present his recent research about the visuality of extractivism around fossil fuels and minerals in Venezuela; and the Denmark-based artistic research group ARNEN (Artistic Research Network on Extractivism in the North) will present their work on extractive frontiers between polluted remains in the Arctic and ruins in Gaza.
The keynote presentations will be held at Färgfabriken, on 12 November, from 6 to 8 pm. The event is free, but registration is required until November 9th.
About VISTRANS*
VISTRANS* is a research group at Södertörn University, co-led by visual artist and researcher Isabel Löfgren, visual artist and Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication Studies, and mirko nikolić, environmental artist and postdoc researcher in Aesthetics. The Studio creates spaces for artistic research in the confluence of art, technology, and ecology seen from multiple geographic, epistemological, and interdisciplinary perspectives.
“We believe that the expanding field of artistic research in Swedish universities offers perspectives, methodologies and knowledge production processes that both complement and challenge established academic traditions”, say Isabel and mirko.
This is the second event organized by VISTRANS*. In May 2026, the symposium “Artistic Research and the Platform Condition” and a book launch “Platform Brutality” by Internet theorist Geert Lovink, examined how the platform condition of society affects bodies, labor, and temporality. With this coming event, the group explores how the landscape itself is transformed by the acceleration of platform economies, particularly with the dominance of artificial intelligence technological regimes and the extraction of resources needed to build this capacity.