FAVOURITE NETWORKS

Mycelium: because it's the internet of the forest, interlinking fungus roots through which "information" travels like an underground internet. The most interesting networks are the ones that grow by themselves. (Loes)

El Paquete: Cuba’s underground harddisk media delivery network (Heerko)

the central nervous system because we carry it within us it’s old and complicated and fascinating (Juliette)

The European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity
Politics, electricity networks and time entangledDue to a political dispute between Serbia and Kosovo more electricity was used than delivered which resulted in a frequency deviation in the european electricity network and caused a delay up to six minutes of millions of clocks in Europe (Selby)

Samizdat, which translates to ‘self-publishing’ in Russian. This was a literary network of dissident activity within the Eastern Bloc, where people reproduced underground and censored publications. I like this network because people were making the reproductions fully by hand, since access to publishing equipment was highly controlled. I also like this famous quote from Vladimir Bukovsky about the dangers of this kind of distribution: “Samizdat: I write it myself, edit it myself, censor it myself, publish it myself, distribute it myself, and spend time in prison for it myself.” (Margarita)

Mail Art. A teacher of mine was/is a mail artist and he kept saying: its just about being in the network, telling others that you were in the network, playing with the network infrastructure, and having other people’s shit laying around your house (and nothing else!). Ben Vautier is an artist for example that made a post card where both sides looked the same, and you could put a different address on either side. The work is called ‘the postman’s choice' (Karl)