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AEGEAN DATAHAVEN

a cooperative platform in the archipelago

www.aegeandatahaven.com

We are the islands united. We claim the sun, the sea and the information for the people.

This is the year 2092.
After facing continuous tensions and political upheavals in Europe there is no more space for manifestos. There is an intense need for building on and reviving myths instead. We, the people of the Aegean sea, bearing on our shoulders the weight of a long history nurtured by the myth, are aware of this urgency.

Thus after many decades of decline and struggles in the area, we are committed to revive the extended network that was present here centuries ago. By building an Aegean Datahaven we reconstruct nodes and connections within the archipelago but also outside of it. Our Aegean Datahaven is open and it is functioning on a traditional cooperativism platform that derives directly from the traditional societies of the Aegean islands. We stand for privacy and ownership of the personal data, for sustainability and collaboration between the islands and for net neutrality. We stand against big corporations and the Cloud.

In the face of the harsh and erratic regional conditions, the Aegean Datahaven connects the islands with each other. It underlines the strength needed to live on the sea surrounded by the sea. We seek to create new topologies and networks and to challenge the established forms of sovereignty, identity, geography and power in our region.

We are the islands united. We claim the sun, the sea and the information for the people.


about

The Mediterranean Sea, in the sidelined European South, has been the stage of major tensions and urgencies due to its geographical particularity and cultural diversity: climate change, population movements, financial crisis, military and political conflicts, tourist exploitation. Part of the Mediterranean Sea, the Aegean archipelago connects but also divides two continents being therefore of crucial importance for many centuries in this area.

Having opposed numerous gentrification attempts and investment plans during the last decades, the archipelago is found to accommodate in the future a decentralized network of small, fully sustainable, climate-controlled data centres, constructed on the islands or floating on the water, which enables people to safely and privately store and share their digital information and memory without relying on any kind of corporate cloud. This network of data centres managed by the islanders brings into form a kind of local traditional platform cooperativism.

The islanders’ community consists of people who abandoned the urban centres of Europe, former refugees and indigenous islanders. In the face of the harsh and erratic regional conditions, the Aegean Datahaven connects the islands with each other creating new topologies and questioning at the same time the established forms of sovereignty, identity, geography and power, examining in this way new alternatives for Europe.

An extended archive of the data centers can be found in the Aegean Datahaven collection. The data centers are depicted on a series of drawings by an unknown traveler.


The Aegean Datahaven is a project that was conceived and realized by Greek visual artist Kyriaki Goni in 2017. The focus of her work is during the last years on notions such as digital memory, oblivion, data distribution and datafied self. She exhibits her work internationally (ISEA, SIGGRAPH, ADAF, ODDSTREAM etc.) and presents part of her research in conferences (SIGGRAPH, Onassis Cultural Center & Ars Electronica). Her art paper on her work Deletion Process_Only you can see my history, on oblivion and datafied self was published on Leonardo 49:4, The Journal of the International Society of the Arts, Sciences and Technology.

The project was commissioned by the Onassis Cultural Center on the occasion of the exhibition Tomorrows, 2017.


email: contact@kyriakigoni.com
website: kyriakigoni.com