From the expansion of imperial telegraph and wireless networks in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to the deployment of UAVs and orbital satellites in the present day, imperial powers have long relied on extensive communication infrastructures to assert and sustain authority. This workshop invites critical engagement to examine how empires in colonial and post-colonial contexts project, maintain, and extend their power through infrastructures. By centring the role of violence and infrastructure, the workshop seeks to move beyond reductive narratives of globalization, emphasising instead the material and coercive dimensions of imperial communication systems.

This workshop invites scholars, artists, and archivists to explore the entangled relationships between infrastructural projects, colonialism, and communication technologies. It encourages participants to critically reassess dominant paradigms that have shaped our understanding of the communicative past. It encourages participants to trace the complex and often contradictory ways in that infrastructure is used and resisted. Over the course of this two day workshop, we will reflect on how diverse scholarly and artistic practices might contribute to reimagining the communicative past and provide new frameworks for interpreting the enduring legacies of colonialism and infrastructure.

Reserve your ticket here