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Sophie Zermatten

The Edgelands Institute Social Media

I provided the copywriting for nearly all posts in this feed.

edgelands.institute

We study the increasing digitalization of security in cities, create conversation spaces, & reimagine social contracts that work for people & cities.

What happens to a network when the institution tha

What happens to a network when the institution that built it closes?

That's the question Sara Arango Franco (@paraconsistenta) explores in this reflection on the Edgelands network. Connections don't disappear when an institute pops down. They move, transform, and feed other networks. We wanted to see where ours might go...

Read the full blog post: https://f.mtr.cool/xmqhcpkjmc

Join us and register now for the Edgelands Network: https://f.mtr.cool/vttkfuerxj

After six years of pop-up research across Geneva,

After six years of pop-up research across Geneva, Nairobi, Houston, Medellín and Cúcuta, the Edgelands Institute has officially popped down and its work lives on in a new form. The Edgelands Archive brings together hundreds of documents produced by the Institute and its fellows: texts, artworks, videos, podcasts, public events, and data showcases, structured around six series that reflect the core dimensions of our pop-up methodology. More than a repository, it's designed to inspire future action and new structures.

Explore it at edgelands.institute !

May 14th and 15th, we have gathered our brilliant

May 14th and 15th, we have gathered our brilliant Edgelanders to close our five year pop-up.

It was a beautiful moment of reflection, exchange and collective envisioning, marking not only the conclusion of the pop-down, but the beginning of imagining what lies beyond.

Deep gratitude to everyone who has been a part of this journey over the past five years. Your curiosity, care and commitment has made this possible.

Stay tuned for our final steps: the Edgelands Archive and the Network.

And remember: keep edgelanding!

Digital spaces were built to connect us, but for m

Digital spaces were built to connect us, but for many communities, safety hasn't kept pace with scale.

In her latest blog, Vanessa Gathecha unpacks what's broken across platforms, governments and communities, and introduces a practical toolkit co-created with researchers, artists and communities from around the world.

Read it at edgelands.institute (link in bio)

How safe is your digital space? 🚩 These red flags

How safe is your digital space? 🚩

These red flags come from our toolkit 'Designing Digital Safe Spaces with Empathy'.

Check it out and learn about better practices at edgelands.institute/outcomes (link in bio)

We Are All Cyborgs Now, by Luca Forcucci (@lucafor

We Are All Cyborgs Now, by Luca Forcucci (@lucaforcucci), is an outcome of the Edgelands Artist Residency exploring digital spaces and alternative urban social contracts through art.

The work identifies dance floors and collective rituals as spaces where non-verbal communication still escapes the reach of surveillance… for now. Through voice cut-ups, moving image, and text fragments gathered during research on surveillance, the artist builds an experience that blurs the boundary between the digital and the embodied.

The piece is a call to decolonize and decentralize digital worlds — to treat them not merely as infrastructure, but as extensions of ourselves and our communities.

Discover the artwork at edgelands.institute/outcomes (link in bio)

Our Toolkit on Designing Digital Safe Spaces with

Our Toolkit on Designing Digital Safe Spaces with Empathy is now available !

This toolkit serves as both a practical guide and a call to reimagine digital spaces as community-governed environments where safety is co-created by those who inhabit them, rather than imposed by corporate architectures optimized for engagement over wellbeing.

Check it out now at edgelands.institute/outcomes (link in bio)

Enlightened, by Anthony Muisyo (@nafsi.yake), is a

Enlightened, by Anthony Muisyo (@nafsi.yake), is an outcome of the Edgelands Artist Residency exploring digital spaces and alternative urban social contracts through art.

The work reflects on the growing gap between the rapid adoption of large language models and their cultural implications. As these systems scale, they carry embedded values that can subtly reshape how people write, communicate, and relate to language.

Using Nairobi’s street signage as a visual anchor, Enlightened points to culture as something layered, situated, and collectively built over time.

As language becomes more standardized, the question is not only what we gain, but what we risk losing.

Watch the video at edgelands.institute/outcomes (🔗 in bio)

Artbook II was conceived in Medellín, during the E

Artbook II was conceived in Medellín, during the Edgelands Symposium in 2024. Rather than emerging from a residency or research project, this edition began with a simple observation: the Virgin Mary is everywhere in the city.

Since 1996, representations of the Virgin have been installed across the city's metro stations as part of the Metro Culture project. Placed alongside surveillance cameras, they introduce another form of gaze into the public space.

This coexistence reveals how faith and surveillance intersect in shaping collective life in the city.

Discover our Artbook II at edgelands.institute/outcomes

Text by @aude.py
Design by @s_a_m_i_b_o__y

The Legend of Oko, envisioned by Omid Milani, is a

The Legend of Oko, envisioned by Omid Milani, is an art book that serves as a pocket guide to rekindling the spirit of bond in cities. Through storytelling, it explores how trust, connection, and collective life evolve in a changing urban landscape.

Discover it at edgelands.institutes/outcomes (link in bio)

Trust Scripts by Brunni Corsato explores how safet

Trust Scripts by Brunni Corsato explores how safety and trust are felt in the body, and how those feelings shift when technology enters the picture.

Fifteen anonymous contributors shared fragments of their inner worlds: warm coffee cups, yoga rooms without screens, suspicion, data control, exhaustion, hope.

The result is a zine weaving these voices into a collective reflection on digital trust, and on what a better relationship with technology might feel like.

Discover it at edgelands.institute/outcomes (link in bio)

The Art Books bring together art and research to e

The Art Books bring together art and research to examine how the digitalization of security reshapes cities and everyday life.

Across Medellín, Cúcuta, Nairobi, Geneva, and Houston, they connect local realities to global infrastructures of surveillance.

They do not offer answers.
They ask who defines safety, who consents, and who lives with the consequences.

Link in bio 🔗

@aude.py
@s_a_m_i_b_o__y

#digitalintegrity #surveillance #artandresearch #edgelands

The Friend necklace is designed to be an always-on

The Friend necklace is designed to be an always-on AI companion — but its arrival has sparked public debate.

The device is marketed as a “friend” at a time when social isolation is widespread, prompting questions about whether AI companions risk deepening emotional reliance on systems that continuously collect personal data.

Many people are drawing comparisons to dystopian fiction like Black Mirror, highlighting ethical questions about privacy and intimacy.

#friendnecklace #surveillance #ai

The artists from our Research Sprint shared some o

The artists from our Research Sprint shared some of the books, sounds, films, and references that are shaping their thinking and practice ✨

@nafsi.yake
@brunnicorsato
@lucaforcucci

Our third Edgelands Art Book turns its focus to Ho

Our third Edgelands Art Book turns its focus to Houston, examining how surveillance and control have become woven into everyday life in one of the most diverse cities in the United States.

Through a photographic series by Yael Martínez (@yaelmtzv), the book explores Houston as a testing ground for security technologies deployed in the name of safety, particularly within public schools.

Discover the Art Book, along with a newly redesigned Diagnostic Report, at edgelands.institute/outcomes/houston-art-book 📸 (link in bio)

An amazing conversation bringing together artists,

An amazing conversation bringing together artists, researchers and our global team to reflect on the possibilities (and limits) of artistic practice as a method of research.

This event if part of our current pop-down movement, in which we define what remains of Edgelands once our project comes to an end. Stay connected through our social media channels and newsletter as these questions continue to unfold.

Thank you for participating and shaping the conversation @sarangof, @flaviablozano, @billiontekleab, @chelsea.barabas, @lucaforcucci, Omid Milani, @emre_altindag, Laura Garcia Vargas, @yvesdaccord, @nafsi.yake, @aude.py, and Betsy Campbell

Safety cannot be engineered into platforms. It is

Safety cannot be engineered into platforms.

It is negotiated, lived, and co-created across digital and urban spaces.

These reflections emerged from our Research Sprint on Digital Safe Spaces, exploring what an urban-digital social contract could look like when communities lead the way.

We had the pleasure of engaging in conversations with six inspiring experts— Eriol Fox, Anhxela Maloku, Suzie Dunn, Qingyi Ren, Cade Diehm, and Caroline Sinders—whose experience and insight guided our collective inquiry.

@erioldoesdesign
@anxhima
@vincent_rqy
@carolinesinders

Read our latest blog post by Laura García Vargas for more insights ! (link in bio)

In September, the UK government proposed plans for

In September, the UK government proposed plans for a unified Digital ID system, reopening a long-running debate on privacy, surveillance and state power.

Swipe right to unpack why people are pushing back ➡️

Photo credit: Carlos von der Heyde (@soulsofamovement)

In Border Prayer, Glitch Lab resident artist Billi

In Border Prayer, Glitch Lab resident artist Billion Tekleab traces the layered surveillance surrounding Eritrean migrants across Houston and Eritrea. Through sound, moving image, and cartographic study, she explores how Black migrant liveness shifts between visibility and opacity, belonging and escape, in search of sacred spaces where community can breathe.

She presented this work during the Glitch Lab Art Show at Friends Gallery in Houston. The show is over, but the work lives on. ✨

As surveillance reshaped Houston schools, No DATA

As surveillance reshaped Houston schools, No DATA About Us Without Us fellows began to rethink what resistance could look like.

This essay follows their turn toward cultural organizing as a shared response, highlighting the perspectives of student advocate Christianna Thomas (@nooowayitschris) and educator Jeremy Eugene (@jeremy_eugene).

Visit edgelands.institute to read the full essay by Clarence Okoh and Chelsea Barabas (link in bio)

The No Data About Us Without Us Fellowship is a program of the No Tech Criminalization in Education (NOTICE) Coalition and the Edgelands Institute.

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