11.04.2026 –, Seminarraum 3 Sprache: English
This interactive workshop will give insights into an ongoing artistic research project focused on the destructive impact of hyperscale data centre construction on landscapes and ecosystems. Inspired by visual and narrative materials unearthed by the research and participants’ own experiences, we will develop a series of zines.
Cloud Factories is an artistic research project that engages with landscapes designated as future data centre sites through counter-mapping, visual experimentation and print production.
The starting point for our research is the looming arrival of a hyperscale data centre by Meta: As plans to build a 200MW facility near the rural Dutch town of Zeewolde became public in 2022, a coalition of residents, activists and farmers mobilised to stop the project. Soon after, authorities in Talavera de la Reina, a city in a drought-affected and economically deprived region in Central Spain announced that Meta is planning build a large data centre on the outskirts of the city. Construction is due to start soon.
What happens to landscapes and more-than-human lives when the ‘Cloud hits the ground’? And which alternative futures do we envision for territories being transformed into Big Tech ‘Cloud’ factories?
Inspired by insights into our ongoing research covering data centre sites in Spain and the Netherlands, we will collaboratively develop a series of zines that shed light on data centres’ destructive effects on landscapes and ecosystems and dream about non-extractivist designations for such territories.
Through this exercise, we will explore how to expand our research to other sites and ways of seeing.
Papertrail is an experimental publishing platform that engages in dialogue with hidden infrastructural systems and their effects on visual culture and discursive practices. In an environment dominated by ephemeral digital platforms, Papertrail embraces printed matter as a carrier of counter narratives and prefigurative imaginaries responding to the everydayness of infrastructure.
Papertrail is based in Den Haag (NL) and was founded in 2023 by Apsara Flury (TH/CH) and Livio Liechti (CH).