LOCATIONS
of users break open the ‘jail’ of their devices to self-determine what use they put their devices to. Information networks are appropriated and abandoned when no longer useful. Informational corporate giants arise seemingly overnight (Google), but can just as easily disappear within the shortest space of time (compare Facebook and myspace in the social networking world for instance). The crucial question here is that of public agency in hybrid space. In 2006 we compiled a special issue of Open, Journal for Arty and the Public Domain*, that explored this question in depth. The issue highlights the contradictory and often confusing nature of the intersections of mediated flows and embodied (public) space. But it clearly shows how the volatility and indeterminacy of hybrid space opens up an energising perspective for artistic, cultural and political intervention. *Articles available for download at: www.skor.nl/eng/publications/item/open11-hybrid-space-how-wireless-media-are-mobilizing-public-space?single=1
The Urban Context
Local contexts are by no means neutral, nor are they powerless. The ceaseless interrogation of the emerging conditions of globalisation by sociologist Saskia Sassen points out the crucial role that specific localities play in producing and maintaining the new global constellations. In the 1990s she developed here now famous analysis of global cities and their role in the international financial system, focussing specifically on London, Tokyo and New York*. In Sassen’s analysis it becomes clear that only in certain highly condensed urban concentration zones can the capabilities, knowledge, expertise (technological, financial, economic) and the concentration of power be found that can produce the new systems of global economic and financial exchange. *Saskia Sassen, The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo, Princeton University Press, 1991/2001
As a result these new global financial and economic systems are deeply rooted in these localities and depend on them for their survival. These new globalised economic constellation are equally dependent on the proliferation of network technologies and constant informational flows to expand their reach and control over distant territories. Rather than decentralising economic flows and possibilities the expan131