The Satellite Coast: SpaceX, Vandenberg Space Force Base, and Relations of Infrastructural Adjacency
International scholars are gathering in Norrk枚ping for a workshop exploring how media infrastructures can be studied, from cables and data centres to satellite networks and digital platforms. The workshop examines how research on digital infrastructures can contribute to knowledge, public engagement, and social change beyond academia.聽Everyone is welcome. The lecture will be followed by mingle.
13.15-14.30 Keynote lecture,聽Prof. Lisa Parks, UCSB
Title:
The Satellite Coast: SpaceX, Vandenberg Space Force Base, and Relations of Infrastructural Adjacency
Speaker:
Lisa Parks, Distinguished Professor of Film and Media, University of California, Santa Barbara. .
Abstract:
This lecture explores the material effects of intensified commercial satellite launching from Vandenberg Space Force Base on the central coast of California over the past ten years. The 鈥渟atellite coast鈥� is conceptualized as a zone of technological, economic, and socio-cultural activity where agriculture, aerospace, and prison industries converge on the traditional lands of Indigenous Chumash communities. This is an area inhabited by generations of fishermen, fruit pickers, and ranchers, military personnel and space engineers, housing developers and incarcerated persons. It is a zone of skyward trajectories, speculative futures, and broken promises. Drawing on archival research, trade research, and community-based fieldwork, the lecture historicizes and analyzes material conditions faced by communities who work and live adjacent to satellite launch complexes, including environmental and public health-related concerns caused by noise and emissions, impacts on cultural resources and spiritual practices of communities indigenous to the area, and socio-economic effects on nearby towns. The research is focused on understanding the local effects of global satellite constellations that are owned and operated by US private companies such as SpaceX and Blue Origin.
A networking reception will follow the lecture
For further information, see the invitation:聽
The event is organised by "the Division of Culture, Society, Design and Media" as part of the newly initiated research track on Digital Society, Infrastructure, Legacies, and in collaboration with the Global Media Technologies and Cultures Lab at the University of California, Santa Barbara.