On Friday, February 27 at 6:00 PM, a talk titled “The War Pipeline” by cultural researcher and writer Svitlana Matviyenko will take place in the reading room of the Contemporary Art Centre (CAC).
This talk examines the transformation of gas infrastructure from an instrument of geopolitical pressure into a material medium of warfare. Building on the concept of Russia’s dual-track gas diplomacy, it argues that strategies once designed to coerce, signal, and extract leverage have crossed into the domain of direct military violence. Focusing on recent cases from the war in Ukraine, the talk analyses Russian infiltration operations that repurposed industrial pipelines and drainage systems as covert military corridors, literalising a shift from the circulation of gas to the circulation of soldiers’ bodies through energy infrastructure.
Event will be held in English. Participation in the event is free of charge.
SVITLANA MATVIYENKO is an Associate Professor of Critical Media Analysis in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. Her research and teaching, informed by science and technology studies and the history of science, focus on information and cyberwar, media and the environment, critical infrastructure studies, and postcolonial theory. Matviyenko’s current work on nuclear cultures and heritage investigates practices of nuclear terror, the weaponisation of pollution, and technogenic catastrophes during Russia’s war in Ukraine. She is co-editor of The Imaginary App (MIT Press, 2014) and Lacan and the Posthuman (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), and co-author of Cyberwar and Revolution: Digital Subterfuge in Global Capitalism (University of Minnesota Press, 2019).
The exhibition is part of the project ‘Aspects of Presence’, co-organised by the Contemporary Art Centre, the Goethe-Institut in Lithuania, and the Akademie der Künste
Photography and/or filming may take place during the event. Photographs and/or video recordings may be used to promote the event on social media, websites, in the media, and elsewhere.