Excavations: Governance Archaeology for the Future of the Internet

As a contribution to current digital policy conversations, this exhibition brings explorations of human governance practices, from ancient civilizations to contemporary social movements, from the slums of emerging megacities to Indigenous communities—all into dialogue with the governance of the Internet. Excavations: Governance Archaeology for the Future of the Internet is interested in what might be learned from pre-digital mechanisms across diverse societies and cultural practice. There is a long record of practice and research on governance in the social sciences that bear valuable insights. This multimodal  space of exploration acts as a media archaeology of a wide range of historical, present-day, and fictional governance practices, to radically expand the repertoire available for governance in online and offline communities alike. The format aims to facilitate a conversation beyond familiar models to imagine new, more inclusive Internet governance policies, actively centering actors coming from underrepresented fields of arts and humanities. It is a result of a cohort process consisting of 10 art projects from diverse groups of artists across continents. By gathering a range of voices from internationally renowned artists, the exhibition offers perspectives from heterogenous cultural contexts, bringing perspectives such as intersectionality, indigenous practices, and media archaeology into the conversation. Curated by Federica Carugati of (King’s College London), Darija Medic and Nathan Schneider (Media Enterprise Design Lab, University of Colorado Boulder), the exhibition includes artists and researchers such as: Barabar (Bhawna Parmar and Rubina Singh), Mateus Guzzo, Caroline Sinders, Şerife Wong, Eryk Salvaggio, Ioanna Thymianidis, Mara Karayanni, Mallory Knodel, Jenny Liu Zhang, Cat Chang, Isaac Gilles, Antonia Hernández, Lotte Louise de Jong and Amelia Winger-Bearskin.