The Balkanization Of The Cloud

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The Balkanization of the Cloud refers to the fragmentation of the cloud into national sovereignties, regulating its data-flows and infrastructure. Various media outlets have used Balkanization here as a derogative catch-all for the encroachment of supposed nationalism into the dream, or, ideological delusion, of a liberal, globalized cloud. The Balkans become not just the glitch to the EUropean idea, but also to the idea of a global internet regulated only by market economics and free of the geopolitics of nationstates. While the fragmentation of the Balkans into a multiplicity of nationstates and sovereignties is framed as the result of local ethnic conflicts, this notion obscures geopolitical underpinnings and imperialist influence and interests in this process. Ehrenstein satirically appropriates the notion of Balkanization for the exhibition to explore how the interests of nationstates and nationalism seep into our web not only through national jurisdiction over data-flows, but the instrumentalization of contemporary cultural production on the web by state-actors.