Island in the Net – Emergent Digital Culture and its Social Impacts in Post-Castro Cuba
Final Report Abstract
"Island in the Net" has explored how Cubans' increasing access to digital technologies and the Internet has fundamentally reconfigured power dynamics between the citizenry and the government. By enabling greater autonomy from state structures, this shift marks a significant change in Cuban society. Historically, the Cuban state restricted internet access to control freedom of information and expression, making Cuba one of the least connected countries in the world until recent years. Despite persistent challenges like slow speeds, high costs, and inadequate infrastructure, Cuban citizens have ingeniously adapted. They have created massive vernacular infrastructures, such as grassroots community computer networks and "sneakernets," where information is transferred physically via portable hard drives and USB memory sticks. Additionally, with their gradually expanding internet access, Cubans have established thriving digital black markets and new spaces for political debate. This project examined these ongoing changes, detailing how citizens harness digital technology to create alternative support infrastructures, trade scarce consumer goods and foreign currency in digital black markets, and foster public debate. Based on participant observation and interviews with various key figures in Cuba's emergent digital culture— including novice netizens, connection brokers at public Wi-Fi parks, admins and users of vernacular technological infrastructures, social media personalities, content creators, and software developers—the study offers a comprehensive look at the evolving digital landscape in Cuba. The findings contribute to the interdisciplinary literature on the social impacts of digital technologies, engaging with the infrastructural turn in the social sciences to offer fresh insights into how people-embedded alternative infrastructures can become grounds for political contestation. The Cuban case enhances our understanding of the complex consequences of the Internet on citizen-state relationships in authoritarian settings. It advances a nuanced comprehension of the possibilities and limitations of networked technologies for citizens of autocratic states A key conceptual and methodological innovation of this project is its production of several multimodal anthropology projects, - an educational video game, two interactive installations, a single-channel video art piece, an ethnographic documentary, and an expanded cinema installation-, collaboratively created with research participants. These works invite audiences into the complex media worlds of the participants and have been presented at art biennials, museum exhibitions, film festivals, as well as digital society conferences.
Publications
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Basic Necessities, Real-Time-Video installation. Comissioned by The Photographers’ Gallery London.
Köhn, Steffen & Siré, Nestor
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PakeTown, Mobile Video Game, Android und iOS. Exhibitions: The Wrong Net Art Biennial, various presentations in Cuba in Joven Clubs de Computacíon.
Köhn, Steffen & Siré, Nestor
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Dinamita, Ethnographic Documentary, 25 min.Screenings u.a.: Malaga International Film Festival, Internationale Hofer Filmtage, DocHouse London, Taiwan International Ethnographic Film Festival.
Köhn, Steffen & Calvo, Paola
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Fragile Connections, Interactive Installation. Exhibitions: Warsaw Biennial, Osmo/za Ljubljana, re:publica Berlin
Köhn, Steffen & Siré, Nestor
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Fragile connections: Community computer networks, human infrastructures, and the consequences of their breakdown in Havana. American Anthropologist, 124(2), 383-398.
Köhn, Steffen & Siré, Nestor
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Screen Walks: Conducting ‘Research in Motion’ in Digital Environments. American Anthropologis website, April 16.
Köhn, Steffen & Siré, Nestor
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Sneakernets and Copyhouses, Videoessay, Exhibitions: Art meets Radical Openness Festival Linz Fieldsights, Society for Cultural Anthropology Website.
Köhn, Steffen & Siré, Nestor
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Swap It on WhatsApp: The Moral Economy of Informal Online Exchange Networks in Contemporary Cuba. The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, 27(1-2), 80-100.
Köhn, Steffen & Siré, Nestor
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Memoria, 4-channel-video installation, 17 min. Exhibitions: Aksioma Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana. Hong-Gah Museum Taipei.
Köhn, Steffen & Mota, Eric J.
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Game design as multimodal intervention: Exploring Cuban media reality through the ethnographic video game PakeTown. Visual Anthropology Review, 41(1).
Köhn, Steffen & Siré, Nestor
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Island in the Net – Emergent Digital Culture and its Social Consequences in Post-Castro Cuba. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Köhn, Steffen
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The screen walk method. Empirical art. Manchester University Press.
Köhn, Steffen
