Infrastructures Series
edited by Geoffrey C. Bowker and Paul N. Edwards
Paul N. Edwards, A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming
Lawrence M. Busch, Standards: Recipes for Reality
Lisa Gitelman, ed., “Raw Data” Is an Oxymoron
Finn Brunton, Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet
Nil Disco and Eda Kranakis, eds., Cosmopolitan Commons: Sharing Resources and Risks across Borders
Casper Bruun Jensen and Brit Ross Winthereik, Monitoring Movements in Development Aid: Recursive Partnerships and Infrastructures
James Leach and Lee Wilson, eds., Subversion, Conversion, Development: Cross-Cultural Knowledge Exchange and the Politics of Design
Olga Kuchinskaya, The Politics of Invisibility: Public Knowledge about Radiation Health Effects after Chernobyl
Ashley Carse, Beyond the Big Ditch: Politics, Ecology, and Infrastructure at the Panama Canal
Alexander Klose, translated by Charles Marcrum II, The Container Principle: How a Box Changes the Way We Think
Eric T. Meyer and Ralph Schroeder, Knowledge Machines: Digital Transformations of the Sciences and Humanities
Sebastián Ureta, Assembling Policy: Transantiago, Human Devices, and the Dream of a World-Class Society
Geoffrey C. Bowker, Stefan Timmermans, Adele E. Clarke, and Ellen Balka, eds., Boundary Objects and Beyond: Working with Leigh Star
Clifford Siskin, System: The Shaping of Modern Knowledge
Lawrence Busch, Knowledge for Sale: The Neoliberal Takeover of Higher Education
Bill Maurer and Lana Swartz, Paid: Tales of Dongles, Checks, and Other Money Stuff
Dietmar Offenhuber, Waste Is Information: Infrastructure Legibility and Governance
Katayoun Shafiee, Machineries of Oil: An Infrastructural History of BP in Iran
Megan Finn, Documenting Aftermath: Information Infrastructures in the Wake of Disasters
Laura Watts, Energy at the End of the World: An Orkney Islands Saga
Ann M. Pendleton-Jullian and John Seely Brown, Design Unbound: Designing for Emergence in a White Water World, Volume 1: Designing for Emergence
Ann M. Pendleton-Jullian and John Seely Brown, Design Unbound: Designing for Emergence in a White Water World, Volume 2: Ecologies of Change
Jordan Frith, A Billion Little Pieces: RFID and Infrastructures of Identification
Morgan G. Ames, The Charisma Machine: The Life, Death, and Legacy of One Laptop Per Child
Mario Biagioli and Alexandra Lippman, eds., Gaming the Metrics: Misconduct and Manipulation in Academic Research
Malcolm McCullough, Downtime on the Microgrid: Architecture, Electricity, and Smart City Islands
Emmanuel Didier, translated by Priya Vari Sen, America by the Numbers: Quantification, Democracy, and the Birth of National Statistics
Ryan Ellis, Letters, Power Lines, and Other Dangerous Things: The Politics of Infrastructure Security
Michael Truscello, Infrastructural Brutalism: Art and the Necropolitics of Infrastructure
Michael Truscello
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
© 2020 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
This work is subject to a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND license. Subject to such license, all rights are reserved.
The open access edition of this book was made possible by generous funding from Arcadia—a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin.
This book was set in ITC Stone Serif Std and ITC Stone Sans Std by New Best-set Typesetters Ltd.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Truscello, Michael, author.
Title: Infrastructural brutalism : art and the necropolitics of infrastructure / Michael Truscello.
Description: Cambridge : The MIT Press, 2020. | Series: Infrastructures | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019041455 | ISBN 9780262539043 (paperback)
Subjects: LCSH: Landscapes in art. | Landscapes—Symbolic aspects. | Infrastructure (Economics) | Arts and society.
Classification: LCC NX650.L34 T78 | DDC 704.9/436—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019041455
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
d_r0