Technical Lands: A Critical Primer

In a conversation and book launch, Charles Waldheim and Jeffrey Nesbit will present Technical Lands: A Critical Primer.

Technical lands are spaces united by their “exceptional” status—their remote location, delimited boundary, secured accessibility, and hyper-vigilant management. Designating land as “technical” is thus a political act. Doing so entails dividing, marginalizing, and rendering portions of the Earth inaccessible and (in)visible. An anti-visuality of technical lands enables forms of hyper-visibility and surveillance through the rhetorical veil of technology. Including the political and physical boundaries, technical lands are used in highly aestheticized geographies to resist debate surrounding production and governance. These critical sites and spaces range from disaster exclusion and demilitarized zones to prison yards, industrial extraction, and airports and spaceports. The delineation and instrumentalization of technical land have increased in scale and complexity since the rise of neo-liberalization. And yet, the precise empirical and theoretical contours that define these geographies remain unclear. Technical Lands: A Critical Primer (Berlin: Jovis, 2022) assembles authors from a diverse array of disciplines, geographical specializations, and epistemological traditions to interrogate and theorize the meaning and increasing significance of technical lands.

Design: Siena Scarff Design / Photo: Jennifer Holt