Paper short abstract:

Sovereign media are primed to exploit the ruins of a logistical future. Drawing on artistic experiments, my interest in this paper is to think how infrastructure of communication operate as a form of sovereign media, bringing the singularity of the state as a sovereign entity into question.

Paper long abstract:

Sovereign media are apparatuses of indifference. They are a negative media of subtraction. "Unlike the antimedia, which are based on a radical critique of capitalist (art) production, sovereign media have alienated themselves from the entire business of politics and the art scene" (Adilkno). Sovereign media are not consciousness raising machines. They hold no megaphones. Immanent to media of ubiquity, the dull surface of sovereign media are ideal hosts for the practice of anonymity. They involve a game of tinkering with parameters of the given. They operate within formats of familiarity and flourish when systems short-circuit. Sovereign media are primed to exploit the ruins of a logistical future.

My interest in this paper is to think how infrastructure of communication operate as a form of sovereign media, bringing the singularity of the state as a sovereign entity into question. Sovereign media are not a return to the politics of exodus, but a way to scale autonomy beyond tactical media as demonstrated by WikiLeaks, among others. Part of such work involves unleashing alternative blueprints, prototypes, and test cases for a future that arises out of infrastructural ruins. This paper surveys artistic strategies for hacking infrastructure, ranging from broadcasting planetary acoustics using demilitarized radio satellite systems in post-Soviet Latvia to the collective reengineering of financial technologies to devise parasitical enterprises that generate financial resources for cultural, social, and political projects. The sovereignty of infrastructural ruins includes a reformatting of the world after the orgy of capital accumulation and exploitation.