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How can infrastructure be criminal? How does a road, a prison, a suburban neighbourhood or a dam become a perpetrator of violence and insecurity? Material Crimes answers these questions. Each episode investigates a different piece of infrastructure, tracing its global, colonial connections across time and space. The series shows us how physical sites of everyday life are linked to networks of private and public actors who profit from violence inflicted on spaces and communities on the margins. The series also shines a spotlight on the people-powered movements exposing and challenging the many crimes of infrastructure.

Season 1
 Season 2
Season 3

︎︎︎ About the Project
︎︎︎ Listening Station at Whitechapel Gallery
︎︎︎ A Guide to Making an Episode


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Welcome to Surviving Society Presents:
Material Crimes Season 2

In this episode series producers - Chantelle Lewis, Maia Holtermann Entwistle , Sharri Plonski and the inimitable George ‘Adders’ Ofori-Addo - reflect on the evolution of season two of ‘Surviving Society Presents: Material Crimes.’ We discuss the incredible work of contributors, the arc of infrastructural violence across the episodes and the powerful struggles at the centre of these stories. Season two delves even deeper into the “true crimes” of infrastructure, with upcoming episodes on both the visible, tangible violence of military complexes, broken dams and drive-by shootings and the more insidious yet no less deadly infrastructural violence of bureaucratic welfare, environmental degradation and the complex web of international arbitration. We also discuss how Palestine haunts this season, asking what it means to produce creative and collaborative work during the ongoing genocide and how this year of acute traumas has shaped our thinking about Material Crimes.