a public infrastructure
a public infrastructure is a project by Alexandra (Sasha) Anikina and Angela YT Chan that asks: To what extent are technological infrastructures in the hands of the public?
Developed as part of SOUNDSCALE in collaboration with the Critical Infrastructures and Image Politics (CIIP) group and hosted at John Hansard Gallery, a public infrastructure was a meeting space and an evolving programme of workshops, conversations, collective making, and working sessions. It brought together a sculptural installation for gathering, a playful public workshop series, and a tech justice assembly.
The project explored the interconnected themes of technology, social, racial, gender, and climate justices. It asked how technologies connect us to public spaces, what rights we have to these technologies, whose voices are heard, and who provides care and support when infrastructures fail. The programme explored public access to technology, our connections to neighbourhood and community through technology and place, and who provides care and support when infrastructures fail.
The meeting space was created within John Hansard Gallery as part of Community Takeover, which explored care for ourselves, each other, and our surroundings. The installation provided a setting for gathering, co-learning, co-making, sharing resources and methods, and imagining alternative infrastructures, particularly what might constitute a public one. It was an evolving installation that grew through workshops and activities over the summer, as participants made recordings, embroideries, sounds, photographs, and other artefacts together.
Through communal, creative, and investigative activities, participants were invited to document and trace technologies, sound, and space, and to explore the infrastructures around them in Southampton. The programme used qualitative, deliberately slow, and co-created artistic research to explore technology literacy, public agency, trust, and justice.
The programme developed towards an evolving installation and the framing of a tech justice assembly: a public forum and collective discussion-performance on rights to technology and rights to public space, drawing on concerns including climate, racial, and socioeconomic justice.
What are our rights to public spaces?
What are the technologies that connect us to each other and to these spaces?
What are our rights to these technologies?
Who hears when we speak out in public spaces?
Who takes care when listening?