Irawo Ajasin

Reaching for the Cloud is a time-based installation that reflects on the abstraction of our data infrastructure into the metaphorical "cloud". Powered by a growing network of data centers developed around weak zoning laws and cheap land, the hidden infrastructure behind the "cloud" comes at the cost of ecological sovereignty, particularly that of Black folks in the South. By revealing the hidden infrastructure and local struggles with it from the perspective of the clouds in the sky, we may interrogate the roles that cloudy metaphors and human ecologies play in our everyday technologies.

Irawo ‘Star’ Ajasin (they/them) is a designer, technologist, and research-based artist from Atlanta, GA, based in Brooklyn, NY. Their work investigates the poetry and politics of digital infrastructure, seeking to design counter-imaginaries of the internet rooted in resilience. Experimenting across a range of media, including cyberethnography, web-based works, interactive installations, workshops, and print-making, Star aims to encourage collective inquiry around how technology as a socio-political object mediates our modern lives.