LI-MA’s library brings together a growing collection of publications by artists, collaborators, and scholars working across media art and digital culture. Through this series, we occasionally highlight titles from the shelves that continue to inform, question, and expand these discussions. We begin with Handmade Networks, a book by Steffen Köhn and Nestor Siré. The publication brings together research-based artworks that explore how communities in Cuba have created inventive alternatives grassroots computer networks and other informal systems of digital exchange.
From the Aksioma, the publisher: Handmade Networks presents a body of research-based artworks by Steffen Köhn and Nestor Siré. Their collaborative projects explore how the Cuban people have compensated for their lack of internet connectivity by building massive alternative infrastructures, such as grassroots community computer networks or offline “sneakernets”. They document how Cubans defy material scarcity by recycling or appropriating obsolete technologies, creating digital exchange platforms on messenger applications, or engaging in play-to-earn blockchain games. By examining the resilient and resistive potentials of these vernacular infrastructures, Köhn and Siré’s work also reimagines such networks as viable alternatives to the capitalist, consumerist digital infrastructures controlled by an oligopoly of Big Tech companies that have homogenised the global internet.
Nestor will shed light on his practice during Transformation Digital Art 2026. Read his interview with LI-MA: https://li-ma.nl/article/inside-transformation-digital-art-2026-nestor-sire/
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