Mesh

Mesh is an app for communicating without the internet. Instead of relying on servers, platforms, or central infrastructure, it allows devices to connect directly to each other through mesh, ad-hoc, and peer-to-peer networks. Messages move from device to device, carried by the people using it.

It works across different forms of connection, including Bluetooth Low Energy, LoRa, Wi-Fi, LiFi, and QR codes. If devices can sense each other, they can communicate.

Mesh is not a backup version of the internet. It is a different model altogether: one built around direct connection, local autonomy, and shared infrastructure rather than dependence on central control.

Mesh uses whatever communication channels are available to create local, decentralised networks between nearby devices. Rather than routing everything through distant servers owned by companies or states, it lets messages travel across people, places, and devices directly.

The project is guided by a simple set of principles: use what exists, prioritise what works, and build systems that scale through connection rather than control. That means working with open tools, local resources, and practical forms of resilience instead of waiting for perfect infrastructure to arrive.

Mesh builds on a long history of alternative communication systems developed under censorship, dictatorship, occupation, and collapse. From community-run networks to hand-carried data and protest-zone mesh systems, the project learns from forms of communication created when official infrastructure could not be trusted.

A public prototype was presented at the PublicSpaces Conference 2025 in Amsterdam, and the project is now developing its first mesh network in Aruba with local collaborators.

In 2023, when the internet was deliberately shut down in Gaza, people living only streets apart were cut off from each other. Communication did not fail because it was technically impossible. It failed because access was centrally controlled and politically withdrawn.

That is the problem Mesh responds to. Communication infrastructure is now a point of leverage. Governments shut it down during protests, war, and repression. Private companies control the systems people depend on, and can withdraw access when it suits political or economic interests. What is presented as neutral infrastructure is often just power with better branding.

Mesh pushes against that model. It treats communication not as a service to be granted from above, but as a public space that should be resilient, collective, and difficult to capture. It asks what becomes possible when people can stay connected without asking permission from platforms, telecoms, or states.

At its core, Mesh is about loosening the monopoly of the internet as we know it. Not to romanticise disconnection, but to make room for communication systems that are more democratic, more durable, and less vulnerable to control.

Mesh is part of the Arte Tracks documentary Off-grid Communication Networks.