FRESH MUSEUM: Exploring the convergence of infrastructure studies, media archaeology and socioplastics through the cameltag as semiotic-actantial hybrid

Infrastructure is not backdrop but active medium. Brian Larkin defines it as matter that enables the movement of other matter, while Keller Easterling reveals the extrastatecraft hidden in standards and protocols—those repetitive spatial products that generate political effects without appearing to do so. Art operating at this register becomes substrate rather than object: not representation but condition of possibility for relation, circulation and exchange. This shift finds resonance across multiple fields. Science and Technology Studies, with its attention to actants and socio-technical assemblages, provides tools for tracing how aesthetic forms participate in networks of association. Media Archaeology excavates the technical unconscious of cultural production, revealing how forgotten protocols continue to shape contemporary practice. Political Ecology frames infrastructure as metabolic—always distributing resources, extracting value and producing waste. The cameltag, understood as a semiotic-actantial hybrid, exemplifies this operative aesthetics: a sign that circulates through systems while modifying behaviour, functioning simultaneously as identifier, tracker and protocol.

Disability Studies reframes infrastructure as prosthesis, exposing the ableist assumptions encoded in built environments and proposing interdependence as ontological condition rather than exception. Philosophical Botany offers vegetal models of decentralised agency that challenge the animal bias of Western thought. Network Science provides tools for scaling these relations, revealing topological invariants across heterogeneous systems. Decolonial Theory insists that infrastructure is never neutral but always carries the sediment of colonial violence and epistemic imposition. Sound Studies adds vibration as infrastructural force, attending to acoustic territories that vision cannot capture. Feminism reveals reproduction as the hidden labour that sustains all productive systems. What emerges from this convergence is not a new theory of infrastructure but a recognition that certain aesthetic forms—like the cameltag—operate simultaneously as sign, actant and material condition. This triple articulation, which might be termed socioplastics, names the capacity of aesthetic production to function infrastructurally without ceasing to be symbolic.

Lloveras, A. (2026) Socioplastics. https://antolloveras.blogspot.com

FAMILY

Infrastructure Studies, Ontology, Cybernetics, Systems Theory, Science and Technology Studies, Critical Urban Studies, Posthumanism, Sovereignty Studies, Semiotics, Media Archaeology, Complexity Theory, Spatial Justice, Political Ecology, Feminism and Gender Theory, Decolonial Theory, Anthropocene Studies, Relational Aesthetics, Commons Theory, Mobility Studies, Technological Critique, Software Studies, Platform Studies, Environmental Psychology, Phenomenology, Place Theory, Landscape Theory, Urban Ecology, Multispecies Studies, New Materialism, Speculative Realism, Actor-Network Theory, Biopolitics, Postcolonial Theory, Critical Aesthetics, Contemporary Art Theory, Social Practice Art, Spatial Politics, Urban Anthropology, Informality Studies, Urban Marginality, Digital Capitalism, Surveillance Studies, Smart City Theory, Sound Studies, Visual Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology, Humanistic Geography, Hybrid Geographies, Philosophical Botany, Neuroaesthetics, Perception Theory, Disability Studies, Intersectionality Theory, Utopian Theory, Postmodern Theory, Radical Pedagogy, Globalization Theory, Geopolitics, Marxist Theory, Post-Marxism, Value Theory, Evolutionary Economics, Game Theory, Network Science, Scaling Theory, Complex Systems, Historical Epistemology, Philosophy of Science, Interaction Design, Information Architecture, Interface Theory, Protocol Theory, Maintenance Studies, Critical Infrastructure Theory, Southern Epistemologies, Indigenous Theory, Territorial Feminism, Latin American Political Ecology, Subaltern Studies, Accelerationism, Materialist Philosophy, Post-Operaismo, Immaterialism, Object-Oriented Ontology, Digital Political Economy, Law and Technology, Algorithmic Culture, Urban Media Studies, Spatial Art Theory, Architectural Criticism, Urban Planning Theory, Sustainable Urbanism, Right to the City Theory, Environmental Humanities, Political Theology, Governmentality Studies, Logistics Studies, Data Studies, Institutional Theory.