15-20 Minute Paper
Allison M. Schifani
Santa Barbara Graduate Program in Comparative Literature
University of California
Biography
Allison Schifani’s research interests include twentieth-century Latin American and U.S. American literatures and cultures; intersections of space, text and technologies; cultural geography and environmental theories and representations.
Abstract
In this paper I will discuss the horizontally organized Buenos Aires Libre, a cadre of new mediaartists, hacktivists, programmers and technophiles who are building their own autonomous network, apart from the internet, in Buenos Aires. The network uses line of sight connections via directional antennae to link member-built nodes and users throughout the city. I look at the alternative activations of sprawl and horizontality in urban space done by the project as potentially resistant. I also examine notions of junk and excess in urban intervention as sites with distinct political potential.
The Buenos Aires Libre network uses older, clunkier technologies to speculate on the possible futures of this very wired South American city. Connecting via the web is quite easy in the vast majority of the city so, unlike most examples of autonomous networks throughout Latin America, Buenos Aires Libre does not fill an infrastructural gap. The superfluity of the network, however, is key to the speculative labor the group is invested in doing. It asks users to ground their access to the network in its material substrate. It eschews ‘virtuality’ and easy access in favor of a ‘do-it-yourself’ approach to informational traffic, demanding that users understand themselves as producers of the network’s future.