Data Centers

An investigation into the complex politics of data centres, through photographs and essays.

Often hidden in plain sight, data centers are the backbone of our internet. They store, communicate and transport the information we produce and access daily along invisible pathways. The industry of data centres comes entwined with an iconography of generic, bland and sterile architectures: placeless, inconspicuous, anonymous structures - buildings, cable ducts, junction boxes and landing sites that could be anywhere, generating virtual infrastructures that are both everywhere and nowhere.

Bringing together photography, essays and case studies, Data Centers explores the entanglements of place, past and digital infrastructure, taking Switzerland as its example. Beyond the official story - Switzerland's favourable alpine climate, relatively low energy costs, the political stability of the area and its strategic positioning in Central Europe - Data Centers uncovers the narratives of techno-nationalist aspirations; of Swiss Chinese interdependence; of deregulation and once-almighty telecommunications enterprises; of cold-war legacies and the multi-billion dollar business of data security.

About the Authors

Monika Dommann is Professor of Modern History at the University of Zurich. Topics in her research and teaching are the intertwining of the Old and New Worlds, media-, economic- and legal history, the history of knowledge and science as well as the methods of historical science. She has a special focus on the history of material cultures, immaterial goods, logistics and data centres.

Hannes Rickli is a visual artist and has held a professorship at the Zurich University of the Arts since 2004. From 1988 to 1994, he worked as a freelance photographer for various newspapers and magazines and has staged visual art exhibitions in Switzerland and abroad since 1991. In 2004, he was awarded the Meret Oppenheim Prize from the Swiss Federal Office for Culture. His teaching and research focus on the instrumental use of media and space.

Max Stadler is a post-doctoral researcher at ETH Zurich (Science Studies and Collegium Helveticum). He has received a Ph.D. in the history of science, technology and medicine from CHoSTM, Imperial College, London. His research interests center on the history of "high-tech," labour, and the human sciences.

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