Kinshasa is a vivid example of how the punctual high-tech infrastructure of mobiles phones is starting to revolutionize the unfitted cities of the South. Tiny antenna footprints, weak electricity needs and the fractioned marketing of prepay trigger a leap forward in equipping vast areas marked by the absence of public infrastructure.
The light physicality of transmitters, handsets and SIM-card hardware is combined with complex bottom-up orgwares: dispersive patterns of sharing, copying and portioning facilitated by the widespread maison de communication – the (para-) architectural equivalent of this system. “Call me HERE”, written on any of the shops, means more than homey chats: sending airtime has become a currency of its own. What if the success of the cellular system is imagined as a strategy for sustainable urbanization from within and towards the global?
BraKin-Mobile Phones is part of the “BRAKIN, Visualizing the Visible”, research project initiated by the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht.