CTM 2026: Lecture by Svitlana Matviyenko

Das sagt der/die Veranstalter:in:

This talk examines how modern warfare operates as a form of environmental and atmospheric domination, intimidation, and control. Contemporary conflict can no longer be understood simply as the conquest of territory, yet it remains enclosed within heavily militarized spaces. Its destructive force is increasingly directed at populations trapped within necropolitical conditions in which war becomes a deliberate attack on the basic elements that support life: air, soil, water, and the infrastructures that enable survival.

Violence no longer appears only through direct armed confrontation; it infiltrates the very media that shape daily existence and permeates sensory, communicative, and ecological environments. Warfare now unfolds not only along horizontal fronts but also vertically, moving through atmospheric layers, geological formations, bodies of water, underground reservoirs, and digital data streams. In this context, the environment becomes both a weapon and a medium of harm. Even the most immediate aspects of experience such as breath, sound, vibration, shock waves, or bodily sensation can be turned into instruments of terror. Under these conditions, the fundamental questions we ask about war begin to shift in significant ways.