Why Mesh?

When Palestine lost internet access, families couldn’t message loved ones three blocks away.
That moment exposed a brutal truth: the networks we rely on are centralised, fragile, and governed by powers we can’t control.

🧭 What is this project?

This project builds a self-organising, decentralised mesh network; one that doesn’t rely on corporations, satellites, or even the internet.

It’s a technical prototype.
It’s an art installation.
It’s a public provocation.

It asks:

What if we could talk to each other without permission?

🔥 Why now?

Because billionaires decide who gets Starlink in Ukraine.
Because governments shut down the internet during protest.
Because a single cable cut can isolate whole communities.

And yet, we’ve seen people find ways to resist:

Protesters in Hong Kong using Bluetooth mesh apps
Sneaker-net file sharing in Cuba
Community mesh movements like Guifi, Freifunk, and NYC Mesh
DIY satellite dishes, signal flags, even encrypted lasers

What they show is this:

Communication has never just been technical. It has always been political, poetic, and profoundly human.

💡 What are we trying to show?

That networks don’t have to be services we rent.
They can be spaces we share.
They can be run on local hardware, open tools, and collective care.

This isn’t about going offline.
It’s about reimagining online, on our own terms.

✨ What does the installation do?

At the Public Spaces conference, we’ve built a working local mesh network inside the venue. It allows you to:

Connect without internet
Access services like Etherpad and file sharing
Join a shared network that configures itself
Understand how infrastructure actually works
Imagine what digital public space could be

🌐 But it’s not just local

This project draws from, and gestures toward, a global movement:

Guifi.net in Catalonia: cooperative mesh with fibre links
Freifunk in Germany: citywide civic wireless
NYC Mesh: open, decentralised ISP alternative
Mesh and local-first experiments in Latin America, South Africa, and beyond

This isn’t design fiction.
It’s happening now, and it can happen here.

🧭 Our North Star

We want to:

Reclaim the internet as a commons
Reimagine infrastructure as public, not private
Reveal the hidden politics of digital life

Not just to resist collapse, but to spark joy, imagination, and new forms of connection.

🛑 What this is not

❌ A nostalgic retreat into “offline”
❌ A complete, finished system
❌ A tool only for crisis

✅ What it is

✅ A functioning mesh you can join today
✅ A public, local-first network you can understand
✅ A fragment of a better future, built with what we have now

🕊 Final thoughts

When a network is truly public, no one can switch it off.
Not a government. Not a company. Not even us.

This is an invitation.

To build something different.
To share it.
And to imagine what comes next.