Nestor Siré is a Cuban multimedia artist based in Havana whose transdisciplinary research explores how technological infrastructures shape – and are reshaped by – everyday social life. Drawing on anthropology, network studies, and critical media theory, Siré translates the informal circuits and vernacular hacks of the Global South into installations and interventions that foreground grassroots cultural production as a form of resistance, proposing parallel narratives of creativity that challenge dominant techno-economic paradigms.

In his presentation during Day 2 of TDA, titled "Offline Networks: Creativity Beyond the Internet", Siré will reflect on El Paquete Semanal as both a cultural and artistic phenomenon emerging from Cuba’s offline networks. In contexts where internet access is delayed, restricted, or unreliable, data circulates physically – hand to hand – through decentralised distribution systems. These “handmade” infrastructures function simultaneously as technological solutions and cultural ecosystems. Within them, copying, remixing, and redistribution become creative acts, reshaping authorship and circulation beyond the logic of corporate platforms.

Siré’s current curiosity centers on how creativity persists under technological constraint. Rather than focusing on innovation as defined by dominant centers of production, he turns to informal practices operating in grey zones – what in Cuba are sometimes described as a-legal practices, navigating gaps between legality and illegality. In these margins, he identifies forms of technological imagination often absent from hegemonic media-art discourse. His work approaches media not as neutral tools, but as contested terrains shaped by inequality, scarcity, and collective ingenuity.

What’s sparking your curiosity in media art right now, and what journey might your talk take us on?

I am particularly intrigued by how creativity finds its way forward when technologies impose limits. By this, I refer to unofficial methods of circulating information and cultural goods, to parallel economies of cultural production, and to everyday gestures of social ingenuity – from piracy to what we call a-legal practices in Cuba, those that operate in the grey zone between legality and illegality by exploiting gaps in the system. It is in these margins that I encounter forms of technological imagination rarely present in hegemonic media-art narratives, yet essential for understanding how the digital is lived and reinvented from elsewhere.

My curiosity has always been closer to social practices and the capacity to modify technology than to technology itself. I am drawn to the friction where media reshape social dynamics and, in turn, communities transform, adapt, hack, and reinvent media according to their needs. I see this tension as fertile ground for thinking about art from a decolonial perspective, as it forces us to look beyond centers of innovation and to recognise forms of knowledge born from urgency, precarity, and collaboration.

The idiosyncrasies of Cuban digital culture are central to my practice. Largely absent from global technological narratives – or reduced to simplifications – Cuba nonetheless offers a unique lens for understanding how digital ecosystems emerge from scarcity. In contexts of limited access, creativity becomes a form of technological adaptation: a collective response in which people reuse, repair, and reimagine everyday tools to build their own channels of cultural circulation. This produces a distinct sensitivity toward technology – one grounded not in constant updates, but in making what is available work.

My talk traces a journey through these experiences, while also reflecting – without romanticising precarity – on how practices emerging from the technological periphery can function as community-scaled alternatives. I propose a walk through handmade infrastructures sustained by collaboration and collective inventiveness, to reconsider what media art can be when it grows from scarcity, shared creativity, and the desire not to be excluded from the global conversation.

From your perspective, what role does LI-MA play in the long-term preservation of digital art in the Netherlands and internationally – and why do you think this kind of infrastructure matters at this moment?

Media art has always existed alongside obsolescence, shifting formats, and platform fragility; for this reason, any attempt at preservation must begin by acknowledging that we are working on unstable ground. In this context, having spaces that take this vulnerability seriously becomes essential.

When I arrived in the Netherlands, LI-MA was a welcome surprise. Within an ecosystem that is still learning how to care for the digital, it operates in a field that often remains in the background: digital preservation as a sustained and reflective practice. At a time when an increasing share of cultural life unfolds in digital environments, having an institution that actively considers how to accompany artworks over the long term provides a necessary sense of stability. Artists and technical communities alike understand that the digital is fragile and volatile, no less delicate than any work housed in the Rijksmuseum, and this awareness must be embedded in preservation work.

On a personal level, one of the aspects I value most about LI-MA is its role as a node within a broader network. Rather than functioning as an isolated archive, it shares methodologies, questions, and forms of knowledge with artists, researchers, and other institutions. This logic of distributed infrastructure resonates strongly with the practices I have encountered in peripheral contexts: ways of sustaining the digital through collaboration, documentation, and continuous adaptation.

Why are trust-based infrastructures essential right now, particularly in a field shaped by technological precarity and platform dependency?

Trust-based infrastructures become essential when technology is precarious and access is mediated by centralised platforms. In such contexts, informal networks often emerge in tension with official systems, sustained precisely through trust and collaboration among their members. Cuba offers a clear example: phenomena such as the Paquete Semanal or SNET are often framed merely as responses to technological or economic scarcity, yet they function as highly localised solutions tailored to real, everyday needs. Within them, human infrastructures based on mutual trust take shape. One can observe their internal power dynamics and community “economic pyramids” which, in the case of El Paquete, ultimately operate in a horizontal and distributed manner. Trust becomes the social glue: from those who compile and circulate digital media to those who maintain the equipment, each participant acts in the interest of the network because everyone depends on everyone else.

In a field shaped by technological precarity, these trust-based networks generate resilience. When platforms access fails or tools become obsolete, communities mobilise local solutions, share resources and knowledge, and keep information flowing. They also offer an alternative to dependence on corporate platforms. While global platforms position users as passive subjects of opaque algorithms and external policies, community-managed infrastructures turn users into active agents. In the case of SNET, an entirely offline mesh network in Havana largely centered on gaming, young people had to learn how to configure networks and manage pirate game servers. This collective infrastructure effectively forces the acquisition of skills, granting its members greater control over connectivity and a strong sense of belonging. Similarly, El Paquete Semanal, sustained by a decentralised economy and a human distribution system operating fully offline, demonstrates the collective capacity to build alternatives to streaming platforms, data centralisation, and the algorithmic bubbles that dominate the global digital ecosystem today. 

Both SNET and El Paquete demonstrate that decentralised and democratic sociotechnical dynamics can scale to thousands or even millions of users, operating in parallel to conventional online services.

Growing up in Cuba taught me early on that technology is not a universal destiny, but a terrain shaped by inequality, political decisions, and power relations. For this reason, networks built on trust and collaboration are not precarious substitutes; they are expressions of autonomy. They are systems organised from below, more horizontal, and more attuned to the lived needs of their users. Within these collective gestures lies a profound lesson on how technology can be decolonised through everyday practice.

Without giving too much away, what’s one question or idea you hope continues to resonate after your talk?

I would like the talk to leave behind a simple but uncomfortable question: what can we learn from these alternative, “handmade” networks when rethinking our own digital ecosystems? They are not peripheral curiosities, but invitations to look at technology without its aura of inevitability – to understand that access and stability are always contested. In each talk, I try to gently unsettle the idea of the digital as something given, and instead frame it as a space that is collectively built, negotiated, and cared for.

I also hope another concern lingers, one tied more closely to the geopolitical landscape: what does it mean to depend on infrastructures and services that can be blocked, restricted, or suddenly rendered unprofitable or inconvenient? In Europe, in the Netherlands, and even at the scale of cities and neighborhoods, the question of technological sovereignty is no longer abstract. In the current climate, technological independence is not a marginal concern but a strategic necessity. Phenomena such as El Paquete Semanal or SNET demonstrate that other ways of organising the digital are possible – ways more attuned to the needs of their users and less exposed to geopolitical shifts that do not always work in our favour.

Header: Nestor Siré