Ministry of the Fourth World
By the nineteen nineties, humanity entered the cyber age. Although the cyber age is relatively new to human development, some ominous occurrences have started alluding to the fact that technology is not only positive. For instance, In December 2015, more than 230 000 people in Ukraine were left without power when the power grid was pawned by hackers.i(Zetter, 2016). In another event, in January 2010, the P-1 uranium enrichment plant in Natanz, Iran, was attacked by the malicious computer worm called Stuxnet.
ii (Zetter, 2011) as a way to collapse their nuclear programme. These examples, although not exhaustive, illustrate the intractable connection between the digital world and the real world: the digital and the real are no longer inseparable and each has real implications on the other. Similarly, our own personalities have become bound up with our digital lives: what we do online has implications in our real lives. |
"We see space as scripted, not tabula rasa. Space is inherited and is always attached to geographies, histories and policies.”
Rachel Hann What would happen if the geographical relationship between France and Reunion had to dissolve entirely? In the same way that technology has allowed human-beings multiple personalities online and in the real-world, countries have similarly developed reputations that are unrelated to their physical size, geography, history and territory. States no longer conform to value based on physical spatial laws borne out from their scale, proximity and distance but instead have their value formed in digital space through their online reputation. For instance, when one imagines travel, they usually imagine the destinations as they are presented in tourism advertorials. This has the effect of producing a territory that transcends the real destination: the country is reduced to the spectacle and everything else is omitted. |
What I intend to draw attention to, through this statement, is the ability of technology to not only make us imagine space, but also facilitate how we occupy it.
Réunion Island is a region of France, yet it is 9,201 kilometres away from France. It is a department of France and therefore is presided over by France. In this Major Design Project I will produce a middle territory that speculates on new territory formed from the political relationship that exists between France and Reunion Island but also the rest of the world. Through the use of a website, accessible to anyone, I will build a political, social and cultural landscape that will reflect the imagined form of the citizens living in both geographic locations. The project serves as a polemic of the political idea of another France located outside of the real France. It is a test of the limits of the real and what it means to be French in a world that is independent of geography. |