Infrastructure Critical: Sacrifice at Toronto's G8/G20 Conference

Much public debate ensued after the violence and police brutality that gripped Toronto in June 2010 during the G8/G20 Summit. It is now being revealed how the Conservative government's stimulus package was funnelled into "infrastructure" projects aimed at policing Canadians who wished to protest the summit. Renzi and Elmer argue that the Canadian state cultivated an image of the city's financial district as a zone at risk from domestic or "embedded" threats. The rationale for "policing" protestors, both peaceful ones and the so-called "black bloc," relied on new forms of state infrastructure redefined through financial, legal, and bio-political frameworks.Infrastructure Critical reveals more than the thin line between security and massive infringement on civil rights; it argues that progressive responses need to understand the logic of state governance in a global economic context.

Alessandra Renzi is a post-doctoral fellow at Infoscape Centre for the Study of Social Media where she conducts research on the criminalization of dissent, and on the design and use of FOSS platforms for collaborative media-making. Her work focuses on the development of research methodologies and collaborative creative practices that foster productive connections between academia and activism. She is involved in various media projects, such as Insu^tv in Naples, Italy, the Institute for Community Inquiry, and Activism Beyond the Interface in Toronto.

Greg Elmer (PhD, University of Massachusetts Amherst) is associate professor of Communication and Culture and Radio TV Arts at Ryerson University. Greg's research and teaching focus on new media and politics, information and communication technologies, computer networks, and media globalization. Greg has published a number of books, including Preempting Dissent: The Politics of an Inevitable Future, Andy Opel co-author (ARP), Profiling Machines: Mapping the Personal Information Economy (MIT Press), Critical Perspectives on the Internet (Rowman and Littlefield), and Locating Migrating Media (Lexington Press).