Plug in, power up, hit play. We inhabit networks beyond our selves; systems that are failing us, programmes that need to be rebooted. This week's dispatch considers the ways in which we can modify what doesn't work.

Under the theme 'Systems' Hack', the 2026 OBEL Award recognises the Baleriac Social Housing Model which addresses housing shortage in the Baleriac region by means of plugging-in environmental policy into public administration. Thinking through systems—how we inhabit them, how they work and who they

serve—is to also acknowledge who these don't serve. Featuring feminist art across decades, the show 'Women on the Edge of Time' highlights those voices. The opinion relays how turning up the volume is to direct our senses towards what is unseen and unconsidered.

Negotiating with the networks that bind us—to fit into, or to resist; should we be a mere plug-in or frame systems anew?