Capturing clouds: imagin(in)g the materiality of digital networks

Abstract

Titles such as the one above – capturing clouds – are ambiguous. Do clouds capture? Or are they themselves captured? Through this double meaning, the title enables a productive questioning of subject-object distinctions and therefore makes possible an interrogation of received notions of agency. In particular, when combining such ambivalences with issues of technology, a redrawing of arrows between a supposed subject and an assumed object entails interesting political consequences. This chapter conducts such a reframing in the context of contemporary digital networks, the power-laden dynamics of which are epitomised in the increasingly ubiquitous technology of cloud computing.<p>

<p>In the following, I interrogate how dynamics of capturing clouds in digital domains (in both possible meanings) interfere with borders and state power, and how they are resisted and rearticulated in and through contemporary works of art. Do digital networks and data clouds subvert state power and borders? Or do they, rather, reiterate and reinforce received structures of dominance by extending the ‘capillary reach of the state’ (Pugliese, 2013: 26) into every inch of a previously protected private sphere? To respond to such questions, this chapter will firstly revisit debates on the political implication of global networks. Highlighting the inherent materiality of digital technologies, I question and challenge discourses postulating liberating and empowering potentials of the Internet and argue for continuities rather than ruptures in transitions to contemporary network societies. Secondly, I use the example of cloud computing to relate this transition to issues of states, borders, power, and territory, before, finally, directing attention to artistic responses to new forms of political management and control. This way, the chapter explores a particular component of a global borderscape that is investigated at a more local level in chapter 4 of this volume.