Alfredo Jaar The Cloud, Valle del Matadar, Tijuana - San Diego, frontière U.S.A.-Mexico border, 2000.
Photo : courtesy of the artist

Architecture of Network vs. Geometry of Separation

Lina Malfona

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Although the mechanisms of intense global connections appear to be prevailing over both solid physical boundaries — such as the Great Wall of China and the Green Line in Cyprus — and virtual limits — such as ideological barriers posed by censorship, religion, and xenophobia — the world’s geography still appears to have deep divisions. In other words, to use stronger imagery, the globe is still marked by deep cracks, just like Alberto Burri’s famous land art work in Gibellina, Sicily, known as Cretto.¹ 1 - Cretto means fissured and arid land, in reference to the artist’s land art work created as a memorial to the Italian city of Gibellina, which was destroyed by an earthquake.

In the era of the extra-spatial and extra-temporal pervasiveness of the World Wide Web, we are still witnessing conflict between two world models: one based on the concept of the wall, intended as a device producing fragmentation, ghettoization, and division; and one based on the concept of the network, in reference to the development of a new kind of virtual space based on connection and space-time continuity. Therefore, on the one hand the world map is marked by deep lines of separation — physical boundaries, frontiers, walls, and so on. On the other hand, the world appears as a network of connected places in which the city has lost its role of accumulator. As a matter of fact, the demands of competitiveness and efficiency, combined with the logic of entrepreneurialism, make cities as if they are corporations in order to attract investments, while the need to occupy large areas requires enterprises to locate outside the city centre. Therefore cities are splitting into different clusters — each one with a specific activity — and public space is being concentrated in large arenas, wellness centres, and huge spaces for meetings, expositions, and fairs, following a model of physical isolation and virtual connection. Furthermore, a different kind of space is destined for social relations — the post-public space,² 2 - See Daniel Van der Velden, Katja Gretzinger, Matthijs Van Leeuwen, Matteo Poli, and Gon Zifroni, “Hybridity of the Post-Public Space,” Open 11 (2006): 112 — 23. in which the power of the Internet is concentrated. Post-public space is made up of private hubs of technological power, techno poles, headquarters of Internet giants, universities, and research centres where inventors live and work. This network can be visualized on a map that puts the above-mentioned hubs in relation to the air routes that connect them. Physical, political, ideological, and architectural borders — intended as places where conflict is materialized — act as a counterpart to this map by creating a sort of diagram of the world that shows places of exclusion. According to this perspective, the squares where clashes happen can also be considered to be points on the map.