Iz Paehr’s Sticky Network looks at Bengaluru’s intangible communication system

Berlin-based Iz Paehr is one of ten artistes who were in the city as part of the Goethe Institut’s bangaloREsidency

Technology has pervaded almost every aspect of our life; omnipresent to such an extent we are no longer “aware” of it. Iz Paehr, a media artist from Berlin, works in those spaces where virtuality and materiality intersect. Iz was in Bengaluru as part of the bangaloREsidency at Goethe Institut, and she partnered with the National Centre for Biological Sciences for the purpose of this project.

Titled ‘Sticky Network,’ Iz’s work centres around networks, specifically that of the internet and its forerunner, the telegraph. It explores the environmental and social implications of technology through the lens of history.

“My work is not only about infrastructure, but also questions disability, access and technology,” says Iz, explaining the different segments of her work. “The main project brings together stories around networks. One is on internet infrastructures and their materiality, while the other is on network ecologies — how the infrastructures of networks intersect and meet. I am also looking at trees and internet cables in the city as they provide a framework for these means of communication.”

One of the precepts of Iz’s work is how the architecture previously in use for the telegraph system has become the roadmap or blueprint for the laying of internet cables.

Among the many activities she conducted for Sticky Network was an event at Cubbon Park. “There was a hands-on workshop and network walk with 25 participants at the park. We had tied strings around a tree and then everyone walked away until they were no longer in range of the hotspot I had opened on my phone. The area was mapped out and the resulting work was called Hot Spot Constellation.”

Another piece Iz has created is on the networks in the city. “I focussed on cables running through Indiranagar and took note of them on the roads. Later, I printed screenshots of these streets on fabric and then embroidered the path of the cables on to it.”

Iz believes the topic of physicality and materiality of networks often go unnoticed, “and when they go unnoticed, the politics around them also goes unnoticed.” She goes on to add how many of the trees that were part of the telegraph network have since been felled. When the technology became obsolete, the trees that were integral to their functioning were no longer deemed important.