Marina Otero Verzier

In this episode of Future Form with Lauren Franco, I speak with architect, researcher, and curator Marina Otero Verzier about the hidden infrastructures shaping our digital world.Marina’s work reveals the material, environmental, and political costs behind technologies we often think of as immaterial, from data centers and cables to mineral extraction, and how these systems reshape landscapes, labor, and ecology.We discuss the myth of “the cloud,” and how its smooth, frictionless experience conceals systems that are, in reality, “noisy, heavy, and polluting,” as well as how labor is redistributed and often made invisible.The conversation expands into questions of extraction and so-called green energy, and reflects on memory, data, and why we store so much, asking what it might mean to rethink these systems more collectively.Theme song by Yuzeren.