Description
Based on the increasing use of so called civil drones, the project examined new spatial formats that emerge through the development, testing and translation of new technical infrastructures in Africa. Although promoted as light off-grid technologies drones are complex technical systems that combine elements of remote logistics, mass audiovisual data recording and other smart technologies, thereby linking territorial and non-territorial spatial formats. The project explored how the increased use of and reliance on drone infrastructures is accompanied by a simultaneous increase and decrease in the socio-technical significance of specific localities. As a consequence, the emergence of air-space infrastructures in low-resource and humanitarian contexts was analyzed as a paradigm shift in the nexus of nation-building and infra-structuring, within which older notions of nation-state driven infrastructure development and penetration of national territories are partly abandoned.
Team members
René Umlauf
Research Scientist at Robert Koch Institute
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