On Extrastatecraft

Under the title Hyperpresent, five contemporary thinkers will give a talk on a new idea that they introduced themselves. Afterwards, they will engage in a conversation with philosopher Laurent De Sutter – who curated this series.

Extrastatecraft controls everyday life in the city: it is the key to power – and resistance – in the twenty-first century. Infrastructure is not only the underground pipes and cables controlling our cities. It also determines the hidden rules that structure the spaces all around us – free trade zones, smart cities, suburbs, and shopping malls. Extrastatecraft charts the emergent new powers controlling this space and shows how they extend beyond the reach of government. In this conversation, Keller Easterling will explore areas of infrastructure with the greatest impact on our world – examining everything from standards for the thinness of credit cards to the urbanism of mobile telephony, the world’s largest shared platform, to the ‘free zone,’ the most virulent new world city paradigm, and suggesting some unexpected techniques for resisting power in the modern world.

• Keller Easterling is an American architect, urbanist, writer, and professor at Yale University. Her book mainly focuses on the infrastructure organisation of the world. Her last book is Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space.