SIL ENT - Berliner Gazette

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SIL ENT - Berliner Gazette
SIL
ENT
Editors
Magdalena Taube                 The Hidden Labor
Krystian Woznicki
Artists
                                in AI-Capitalism

                                WO
Benjamin Heisenberg
Diego de la Vega Coffee Co-op
eeefff
Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze
Into the Black Box
Melanie Gilligan
metroZones
NoCyberValley

                                RKS
oddviz
Peng!
Petero Kalulé/AM Kanngieser
Shinseungback Kimyonghun
Tekla Aslanishvili
University of the Phoenix

                                Mi2
Contents
Silent Works
or: The Hidden Labor in AI-Capitalism
An Introduction · 5

Benjamin Heisenberg · 7

Diego de la Vega Coffee Co-op · 10

eeefff · 13

Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze · 15

Into the Black Box · 17

Melanie Gilligan · 19

metroZones · 21

NoCyberValley · 23

oddviz · 26

Peng! · 28

Petero Kalulé/AM Kanngieser · 30

Shinseungback Kimyonghun · 32

Tekla Aslanishvili · 34

University of the Phoenix · 36

Imprint · 38
Silent Works                           friendly’ privatization and ‘market-
                                       transformative’ disruption.
or: The Hidden                         Meanwhile, AI-capitalism
                                       impacts an increasing number of
Labor in AI-                           fields (logistics, manufacturing,
                                       services, etc.) and, last but not
Capitalism                             least, the design, valorization, and
                                       perception of labor.
Before artificial intelligence (AI)
was invented as a technology,          At first glance, the most urgent
capitalism in the West was             problem is that under AI-
driven by what could be called a       capitalism labor seems – across
fantasy of AI. This means that         classes and contexts – to be
the most important economic            gradually becoming extinct, although
processes – from decision making       labor is in fact undergoing deep
to production – were gradually         transformations. Thus, at the end of
delegated to some higher,              the day the task is to deconstruct
magically autonomous intelligence,     the extinction narrative and
imagined as, for instance, an          explore how it conceals the large-
“invisible hand” steering the          scale restructuring of labor. In
“self-regulating market.” In the       other words, rather than buying
neoliberal age, this fantasy of AI     into the narrative of labor as a
has paved the way for the rise of      fading reality, it is necessary to
actual AI technology. Ultimately,      look at labor as a buried reality
something was born at the very         that needs to be excavated from
intersection of AI as a fantasy of     beneath dominant discourses and
capitalism and AI as a technology      power structures.
of capital – and that something
could be called AI-driven              It is at this juncture that the
capitalism, in short: AI-capitalism.   SILENT WORKS exhibition
                                       launches its intervention. It brings
Today, this far-reaching               together fourteen positions that
commingling of capitalist fantasy      explore the imperceptibilization
and capitalist technology is           of labor processes as the basis
underlying processes of ‘market-       for coding, controlling, and
5
conditioning social reality. This     laborers in social reproduction
inquiry into the politics of making   and infrastructure, are being
labor im/perceptible sheds light      romanticized as ‘heroes’ and thus
on the ongoing restructuring of       pressured to sacrifice themselves
work, and enables a recasting of      for the system; factories and
what labor means in the context       other sites of production make
of media and art.                     workers continue robota – e.g.,
                                      on assembly lines where they are
Most of the contributions to the required to stand directly next to
exhibition were conceived in a        each other, while compelled to
time when, following the example obey social distancing rules during
of China, extensive Covid-19          breaks. Meanwhile, AI-savvy tech
containment measures were also        companies such as Amazon have
introduced in the West and the        emerged as major profiteers from
world at large. In this critical      the crisis, celebrating a historic
period it was no longer possible      expansion of their ostensibly
to uphold the aforementioned          fully automated businesses and
extinction narrative. After all, even an equally historic rise in profits.
if governments were quick to          All this is based on the hard and
foreground AI-driven systems as precarious labor of their workers,
key to protecting societies (tracing who are nonetheless denied higher
apps, etc.), crisis management        pay, stronger rights, and better
has predominantly been about          (social and health) security.
supporting economic life and,
ultimately, saving capitalism. In     Responding to these revelatory
other words, from the outset the contradictions, some of the
primary objective has been to         contributions to the exhibition
maintain the population as a fit      address the underlying social,
and healthy pool of workers.          political, and economic issues in
                                      quite a direct fashion, while others
Revealing the system’s far-           express their commentary through
reaching reliance on labor, office poetic layers. On the following
workers are being turned into         pages, each contribution is
home office workers; health
and care workers, as well as
6
described with a focus on its links
to the overall theme of the hidden
                                       Benjamin
labor in AI-capitalism.                Heisenberg
Complementary to this collection
of texts presenting the fourteen       Benjamin Heisenberg’s
positions, the second publication      contribution to the SILENT
published in conjunction with          WORKS exhibition is based
the SILENT WORKS exhibition            on the Alfred Hitchcock film
– entitled “Invisible Hand(s)” –       “The Birds” (1963). Hitchcock’s
contains interviews we conducted       reworking of London’s bombing
between March and June 2020            during the Second World War as a
with the researchers and activists     critique of capitalism through the
Dario Azzellini, Christine             lens of war and the construction
Braunersreuther, Niccolò               of new war machines anticipates
Cuppini, Kerstin Guhlemann,            the trajectory from cold war
Tom Holert, Angela Mitropoulos,        paranoia to the digital sublime
and Katja Schwaller. Intended          of ‘global mass surveillance.’
as a companion volume to the           Heisenberg’s work focuses on a
SILENT WORKS exhibition and            segment in which this critique
the accompanying publication           comes to a head – a segment that
of the same name that you are          is discussed in media theory as the
reading now, “Invisible Hand(s)”       “impossible image.”
enables a historical as well as
socio-political contextualization of   This image shows the people
the contributions to the exhibition    of the small coastal town of
within the framework of the            Bodega Bay from a bird’s eye
Covid-19 pandemic.                     view. The people are running
                                       around like startled ants trying
Magdalena Taube and Krystian           to save their world in the
Woznicki, Berlin, October 2020         face of an unpredictable and
                                       unfathomable threat: birds. In
                                       a complicated copying process,
                                       Hitchcock assembled this
                                       image from real footage and a
7
rendered matte painting. The       labor. As important as artificial
filmed streets populated with      intelligence is in generating
people complement the painted      digital spaces and textures, a
image of the fictional Bodega      large number of work processes
Bay. The birds that are copied     are in fact more or less secretly
into the composition destroy       delegated to contractors in India
it unrelentingly. Heisenberg’s     and China. In halls the size of a
adaptation “Birds Clone Stamp”     football field, a huge number of
continues the collage-like         image editors manually create 3D
production process of the original.processes, character animations,
                                   and other CGI effects. Thus, as in
After dividing it into its individual
images, Heisenberg edits the       the past, the human being is both
sequence by hand, in Photoshop,    the creative beginning and the
using the Clone Stamp tool.        necessary final link of an artistic-
Seemingly randomly copied image    industrial process. Historically, this
parts ‘destroy’ the image, instead has been automation’s “last mile.”
of the birds doing so.             In the age of AI this last mile is
                                   being pushed ever further again,
Through further processing, the    recalibrating what is perceived as
image artificially assembled by    labor, what labor eventually will
humans seems to be quasi directed be, and what it could be.
against itself, thus alluding to
an out-of-control intelligence     The restructuring of labor taking
inherent in the image, as we       place in this context is addressed
already find today in AI-driven    in Heisenberg’s work even more
image production. At the same      poignantly at the level of looking.
time, this work refers back to the To reiterate, in the bird’s eye
classic single image processing    view the camera eye seems to
in the age of celluloid. Here,     rest far above the city suspended
too, there is a parallel to the    in chaos, allowing ‘the viewer’
cinematic present determined       to observe the processes as if
by CGI effects. Contrary to        represented through the eye of a
expectations, a large part of the  god-like surveillance camera that
effects in the fictional realm     automatically records whenever
are also dependent on human        motion is detected. Standing still
8
in the sky, Hitchcock’s “impossible     In short, in addressing the
image” is de facto impossible           labor of looking in AI-capitalism,
because at the time of its making       Heisenberg’s work challenges
cranes were not high enough and         the widespread assumption that
helicopters were not still enough       man is no longer key to the
to actually enable the realization      inner workings of the capitalist
of such a shot. Thus, it is a shot      world, which is ostensibly run by
without both a camera capable of        the high-tech version of Adam
capturing it and a camera operator      Smith’s “invisible hand.” Instead,
behind it. In this way it anticipates   his work challenges the visitor
the drone as an image machine,          to think how we as laborers can
and hence the omnipresence of           reposition ourselves in the face of
AI-driven aerial monitoring today.      an invisible hand that needs us to
                                        develop its power.
Heisenberg’s work – in
decomposing and recomposing             Benjamin Heisenberg lives in
this moment and in scattering           Lucerne as director, author and
the image into a myriad of              visual artist. After receiving his
‘outsourced’ pieces of work             degree in sculpture, Heisenberg
– raises the questions: Who is          studied film making at the HFF
working when monitoring staff           in Munich, graduating with the
looks through the surveillance          screenplay for his feature film
camera? Is a person or an AI-           Schläfer. Heisenberg’s films
based machine ‘looking’? Does the       have been invited to the Cannes
human see through the eyes of the       International Film Festival and the
machine or does the machine see         Berlinale Film Festival, and have
through the eyes of the human?          won the Bavarian Film Prize in the
Even more to the point: Who             Best Newcomer Director category
watches from under the clouds           and the first Austrian Film Prize
after all humans have evacuated         in 2011. Together with Christoph
the control room? Who valorizes         Hochhäusler and Sebastian Kutli,
the invisible hand and its very         he founded the film magazine
power?                                  Revolver in 1998; he is still its co-
                                        editor today.

9
Diego de la Vega Awesome    has had an enormous
                 impact on the restaurant industry
Coffee Co-op     and megamarket chains in cities
                 like Chicago and Los Angeles.
                                     This impact tends to be clouded
January 16, 2020 – 7:56 p.m.:        by claims that it is ‘merely’ a food
“The content of the work that        distribution network facilitating
we’re developing for the SILENT food deliveries in large cities.
WORKS exhibition will address        Under this mantle, Awesome’s
the conflicting perspectives         predatory practices have created
of workers, activists, and           huge amounts of wealth by
communities regarding the case of centralizing food processing into
the opening of Awesome in NYC. shopping centers repurposed as
Based on our group’s organizing enormous food courts. Unable
of sustainable alternatives to       to pay for its overpriced services
contemporary capitalism, we’ll       (rent, points of sale, security, and
connect our experiences with         memberships), nearly 45% of
systematically invisibilized labor   restaurateurs have gone out of
struggles inside the Awesome         business.
empire.”
                                     Moreover, the Safety Employment
After Awesome’s expansion into Agency (SEA) has registered
New York City was announced          below-standard working
at the beginning of this year,       conditions in Awesome’s food
officials representing parts         processing, including high
of Brooklyn, such as their           temperatures, poor ventilation, and
representative congressperson X., a lack of protection equipment
expressed concern that Awesome for workers who have schedules
would receive tax breaks while       of 10+ hours under an algorithm-
critical infrastructure, such as     regulated pace of labor that
the New York City Subway, was        demands the production of up to
deteriorating, and the city’s public 20 orders per hour.
school and health care systems
were underfunded.

10
Against this backdrop, it was not     public infrastructure Awesome
a big surprise that Awesome’s         is turning its logistics empire
expansion into New York City was      into “critical infrastructure”
met with a torrent of opposition      only underlines its frictionless
that was supported and vitalized      functioning.
by a vast network of activists.
As a consequence of only two          May 26, 2020 – 5:12 a.m.: “Things
weeks of intense protesting and       are looking a little different
campaigning, Awesome canceled         here in NYC since restrictions
its plans to open in New York         have loosened. Within the
City, and the local resistance        Covid-19 pandemic that we
became a model for other cities       are experiencing, perspectives
and communities struggling            regarding labor issues and
against similar plans.                corporate activity are even
                                      more relevant for a number of
The Covid-19 pandemic – during        reasons pertaining to the specific
which New York City emerged as        conditions that this emergency has
the first epicenter in the US – has   created. Against this backdrop,
changed the mood. Reportedly, in      Diego De la Vega’s contribution
the first ten days of the pandemic    to SILENT WORKS will focus
Awesome’s founder Andrea Banks        on the perspectives of workers,
gained 10 billion Euro in personal    consumers and activists regarding
wealth, while her corporation         Awesome’s potential to open
gained 100 billion Euro in market     in NYC after its controversial
value. With its success celebrated    withdrawal at the beginning
as a miracle, people seem dazzled     of the year. Our contribution
– especially in the face of           will be comprised of narrative
countless businesses that are going   (from interviews and other
bankrupt in the crisis. Suddenly,     audio sources) and images in
all the labor struggles (also read:   video format. As you already
friction) underlying this newest of   know, Diego De la Vega Coffee
magical tricks performed by AI-       Co-op has created a number
capitalism’s model company have       of projects in NYC that deal
been forgotten. And the fact that     mainly with economy and social
in times of abandoned and rotten
11
movements. Therefore it is an           needs to pass the background,
excellent platform to develop such credit, and drug tests. Awesome
conversations.”                         is three hours away from home.
                                        But in a really cool place called
July 12, 2020 – 9:09 p.m.: “Things Cyberspace, a duty-free zone that
are really really difficult with        exists outside of NAFTA and the
evictions in NYC right now.             TPP, it’s sort of like an offshore
There’s people all over the city        space, but on-shore. It’s a data
sitting around with their carry-        island in the cloud, but still in the
ons, but you know they are              midst of the city right next to the
not tourists waiting for their          projects, where most immigrants
reservation at a neighborhood           and people of color live. If it
B&B. They are really right there, works out, we will be able afford
with all their possessions in their to move into the Bronx in 2-3
hands, unless they have been able months. Anyway, we will let you
to afford to pay a warehouse.           know once D. is in.”
Then you see lots of bedrooms
on the sidewalks, people who            Diego de la Vega Coffee Co-op
literally continue their life after     is an experimental platform for
being evicted, rebuilding their         grassroots interventions into
apartment with their furniture and contemporary capitalism run by
things right in the street, living      the artists Gabriela Ceja and Fran
life as if they were still inside their Ilich. It aims to connect social
apartment. Those are the most           projects in New York City with
scary ones.”                            equivalent efforts in Chiapas,
                                        creating a horizontal financial
September 17, 2020 – 3:29 p.m.:         flow between them. Inspired by
“D. will start working in about         rebel Mayan coffee producers, this
two weeks at Awesome, half-             performative homage to activists
day shifts! After six months of         who serve Mayan coffee in cities
unemployment! It was the best           across the world is complemented
of options, also money-wise. D.         by exercises in experimental
already signed a contract (although economies.
there’s the catch that it can be
canceled on a whim), but still
12
eeefff                                 and through the possibility of
                                       “algorithmic solidarity” under
                                       these conditions.
“We hired random people
from a post-Soviet headhunter          eeefff ’s contribution to the
platform whose labor is usually        SILENT WORKS exhibition
rendered invisible; they work          creates a place where the
for the machinery of micro-            aforementioned vectors of their
tasking, crowdsourcing, stress,        curiosity intersect. The piece aims
A/B testing, and do all the work       to create optics for the perception
that is hidden at the end. And         of the infrastructure of collective
we have created a fictional space      cognitive work, leisure, romantic
for them to talk and live through      relationships and algorithmically
this alienated work. Visitors are      modifiable intimacy. This optic
invited to reinvent themselves as      is helping build situational
workers by becoming ‘deformers’        knowledge, making it possible to
of AI-driven capitalism’s logistical   go beyond the limits of binary
processes.”                            issues like acceleration/escapism
                                       (or utopia/dystopia, techno-
Platform economies (and more           pessimism/techno-optimism, etc.).
broadly, economies supported by
computation) create a geographical     Focusing on the figure of an
gradient in the distribution of        outsourcer and “deformer” of
labor in the post-Soviet space.        interfaces (his or her “algorithmic
eeefff is interested in actualizing    production drama,” his/her
the complex structure of the           workplace, etc.), eeefff shifts
present moment, captured through       the focus from the user’s figure
the perspective of interweaving        to the figure of the operator,
various types of alienation. The       meaning: to the one who produces
artists work with the translocality    contemporary algorithmic reality,
of the post-Soviet space,              while he/she is hidden behind all
which they understand through          the machinery of micro-tasking.
terms such as “materiality of
outsourcing,” “digital proletariat,”

13
To this end, eeefff has developed    Offering a “breakdown” or
the computerized online service      “add-on” over the existing web
“Outsourcing paradise(parasite),”    world, eeefff draws attention to
where online and offline             the material infrastructure and
temporalities of scrolling,          human labor behind it, which
communicating and working, as        keeps afloat everything we see on
well as the “preemptive” affect      the front of our devices’ glowing
of users, are put to the test.       screens. The videos reveal how
Counteracting the imperative of      material and non-material work
activity, free-floating interfaces   are being recalibrated in the new
emerge in the gaps of online         circumstances.
actions and gestures, stretching
transitioning annexations into      eeefff is a cooperation between
autonomous interactions beyond      Nicolay Spesivtsev (artist,
the extractive online economy.      computer scientist) and Dzina
                                    Zhuk (artist, sci-fi writer). Active
The videos of this contribution     from 2013, based in Minsk and
show workers who are performing Moscow, they are working with
micro-tasks. The micro-tasks        the emotional effects of the
include modifying the working       new economic regimes driven
interfaces of other users,          by computation, materiality of
singing algorithmic lullabies, and sensibility, affects within creative
developing imaginations related     industries, frictions between user
to algorithmically supported        interfaces and protocols, test
infrastructure. The videos appear settings for collective imaginaries.
on the top of different platform The methods of eeefff are:
aggregators’ websites. Here, an     making public actions and
intervention takes place inside the situations, online interventions,
web-space of platforms, that is, an performative seminars, software
erosion of website elements.        and hardware hacks, framing
                                    environments and settings.
In this context, it is important to
remember the key characteristic
of the infrastructure: when it
stops working, it becomes visible.
14
Giorgi Gago                          floats like a spirit over his retired
                                     life in the Caucasian mountains,
Gagoshidze                           reminding viewers of ever-
                                     changing economic landscapes,
                                     from the collapse of the Soviet
“The source for this film is         Union to the 2008 global financial
the personal life of my father,      crisis. In the course of this, it
Nugzari, and his right hand. His     comes to symbolize the hand
hand has been playing a crucial      of the market that took over
role in his economic and social life the worker’s hand, but also the
and has always ensured his family’s invisible hand of social welfare,
financial stability. The film traces enabling the disabled man a self-
a physical and symbolic transition sustained life in the mountains,
of his right hand: how the           where he grows wine and
transition has been affecting his    vegetables without the burden of
socio-economic life in his journey wage labor.
throughout different political
ideologies that are represented and “Working through humor was the
governed by symbolic hands.”         only approach I could take.”

Combining hand-held camera,            The tenderness of the father, the
drone footage, and 3D animation,       joy of his retirement garden back
Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze’s               home, and the irony of his escape
contribution to SILENT WORKS           from market labor is a bittersweet
portrays the artist’s father, a        assessment of Adam Smith’s
former contractor in the USSR,         “invisible hand of the market,”
and a refugee after the dissolution    and a reminder that leisure has its
of the Soviet Union. Just when his     socio-political costs.
working status had changed from
illegal to legal, he lost his right    Today, as AI-capitalism is
hand in a cement mixer in a work-      enforcing the belief in the high-
related accident in Portugal.          tech version of Adam Smith’s
In the film, entitled “The Invisible   “invisible hand,” it fosters the
Hand of My Father,” the phantom        invisibilization of hands essential to
limb develops a life of its own: it    upholding the system, such as laborers
15
in basic supply (people in logistics,   is systemically dependent on the
delivery, and tech work) and            devaluation, decomposition, and,
social reproduction work (people        ultimately, dehumanization of
in childcare, elder care, and           labor – thereby highlighting its
healthcare on the one hand, and in      unique political quality.
cleaning, maintenance, and repair
on the other).                          Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze is an
                                        artist and filmmaker. His practice
In other words, while AI is             centers around the moving
nowadays being promoted and             image: the political aspects of its
mystified, old and new forms of         production and its socio-political
what we call “hidden labor” are         contexts. He lives and works in
thriving. In fact, unrecognized,        Berlin.
underacknowledged, undervalued,
unwaged, illegalized, and,
ultimately, unhumaned labor is
increasing and diversifying. And
the underlying structures of
subjugation are becoming ever
more elusive hybrids of old and
new forms of power.

However, through the film’s
playful DIY aesthetic riddled
with tenderness, a brutal story
becomes porous and sticky.
A sense of hope emerges for
thinking and acting against and
beyond the Western phantasm
of “capitalism as a self-running
machine” that ostensibly functions
independent of human labor.
Crucially, Gagoshidze’s film shows
that this phantasm of capitalism

16
Into the Black                        shown at earlier stages – is shifting
                                      the balance from production to
Box                                   logistics (and finance) in order
                                      to survive. Thus, if Amazon’s
                                      expansion of its logistics empire
Silicon Valley companies have         is a symptom of a systemic crisis,
been using the Covid-19 pandemic then the question is: How can
to take over various regions of the workers – that is, how can we –
world, including Northern Italy.      join forces within, against, and
Amazon, for instance, one of the beyond this crisis?
biggest profiteers of the crisis, has
been turning its logistics empire     Taking this question as a starting
into “critical infrastructure.”       point for their contribution to
Meanwhile, workers are being          the SILENT WORKS exhibition,
romanticized as an essential labor the research collective initiated
force in order to suppress their      a broad, cooperative project of
bargaining power: “heroes” are        participatory cartography around
expected to sacrifice themselves      how one of the most “advanced”
for “the greater good” rather than enterprises of contemporary
go on strike. This neo-feudalism is capitalism is transforming work.
fostered by the fact that Northern First, they launched a call for
Italy is at the forefront of the      a collective and participatory
global neoliberal transformation – mapping on the presence of
including a large-scale privatization the multinational company
of health care services – and         Amazon in Northern Italy and
hence, not coincidentally, emerged the working conditions within
as one of the first epicenters of     it, asking for contributions
the pandemic.                         (videos, photographs, design
                                      ideas, newspaper clippings, audio
The work of the Into the              recordings, articles, etc.) to create
Black Box research collective         a polyphonic narrative about
in this context is based on the       Amazon’s presence there. The
assumption that the present           questions raised by the collective
system of production is in crisis     are: What is inside the Amazon
and that it – as history has already warehouses that can be seen
17
next to the highways? How does        and their mutual connection via
an Amazon Locker located in a         digitalization in 4.0 industries,
supermarket work? How does            using logistics as the lens for
a delivery girl, a truck driver, a    analyzing them. This mobile
picker, an Amazon technician          interpretative machine creates a
work? How does Amazon                 productive prism through which it
promote its services as Amazon        is possible to analyze the ongoing
Prime?                                transformations of labor and
                                      develop new political imaginaries
This inquiry is representative of     and tools for action.
the collective’s agenda, which
is mirrored in turn in its name.      Following their objective of
It derives from the symbolism         reconstructing the transformations
of contemporary management            that Amazon is spearheading in
techniques and devices that hide      the world of work, Into the Black
the entire logic of the system        Box’s visual cartography not only
from external viewers. Similar        enables an elaborate critique
black boxes are all around us:        of the Amazon model and its
in platform capitalism, in urban      restructuring of labor, but also
planning, in labor organization,      offers a glimpse into the potential
and in state governance. One          for labor struggles yet to come.
way to penetrate the opacity of
the system is to analyze inputs       Into the Black Box is a research
and outputs, operations and           collective that adopts logistics as
consequences, procedures and          a point of view on contemporary
resistances. Thus, the collective’s   political, economic and social
multidisciplinary approach            transformations. It started in 2013
provides a flexible tool to gain      with a research project at the
deeper understanding of the           University of Bologna on supply
contemporary world.                   chain development and conflicts in
                                      North Italy. Today, it hosts a blog,
The specific aim of the research      organizes events, and participates
collective is to merge labor          in grassroots mobilizations.
transformations, urban change

18
Melanie Gilligan                        Before the Covid-19 pandemic,
                                        various governments encouraged
                                        businesses to develop nursing care
Mass media in countries as diverse      robots. This development was
as India, China, and Japan co-          met with criticism, challenging
produced the meme of “robots            the robot as a care worker, saying,
as heroes in the war on corona.”        e.g., “the elderly deserve to be
Here, ground robots come to the         cared for by humans; after all,
fore as immune and contagion-           a robot cannot care for people
free workers that deliver medicine,     like a human could.” In addition,
serve meals, take temperatures,         the underlying rationale has been
disinfect rooms, and handle             under critique, along the lines of:
communications. Meanwhile, aerial       “Replacing humans with robots
robots (also read: drones) are safely   is the technocratic dream of
transporting medical and other          efficiency. It transforms the care
supplies from disease control           system into a game of market
centers to hospitals without            dynamics, and ignores ethical
exposing humans to infection in         questions.”
doing so.
                                    Tellingly, the reality of labor
Moreover, with the web becoming struggles in the face of
the main site of social interaction rationalization, privatization, and
and web-ready smartphones new robotization is blocked out in this
family members, an increasing       critical discourse. This is all the
number of web robots have also      more symptomatic since, parallel
come to the fore in the cycles      to – yet somehow disconnected
of care: so-called “bots,” widely   from – the discourse on the
known as today’s most common        robotization of care work, there
form of AI. In sum, all these       is also an ongoing debate about
different applications of semi-     a labor shortage. Predictably,
autonomous robots seem to be        industrialized and increasingly
replacing care workers.             aging societies all over the world
                                    will need a great number of
                                    additional care workers in the
                                    years to come. Migrant laborers
19
are being recruited to this end. In   care and their experiences in long-
the course of this, a vast realm      term care homes; the other with
of underwaged, unstable, and          Catherine Dougherty, who works
often rightless labor conditions is   in retirement living and long-term
created.                              care.

Against this background, the          “Meeting with a person who
“robotization of care work”           researches health equity and
appears to be an ideology that        social determinants of health,
enables glossing over system          I learn that in Ontario, Canada,
errors, such as the systematic        aging immigrants do not receive
precarization of labor in general,    adequate support for their health
and care and social reproduction      and well-being. Meeting with a
work in particular. Viewed from       person who works in retirement
this angle, the promotion of          living and long-term care, I hear
robots is revealed to be less about   what it is like to provide support
the replacement of workers            to older people. It becomes clear
and more about the devaluation        that care work is often given by
of workers and suspension of          people who should be paid much
their bargaining power. After         more, and by some who are not
all, the invocation of robots can     paid at all. Despite this context,
signal: “Human workers are not        important relationships are built
indispensable. Therefore, they’d      and sustained through the work of
better be quiet and submissive.”      caring for older people.”

Melanie Gilligan’s contribution to    Composed as a documentary
the SILENT WORKS exhibition           video, the narrative touches on
intervenes in this discourse by       various aspects of care work
constructing a counter-narrative      for older people, including the
centered around two interviews:       tasks involved in the work and
one with Seong-gee Um, a              the stresses that result, from,
researcher in Toronto who studies     for instance, being on the job
home care and long-term care for      24/7. It also sheds light on the
seniors, particularly focusing on     relationships that develop with the
immigrant seniors’ access to home     seniors who are cared for.
20
Gilligan’s work subverts and
recodes the status quo that
                                        metroZones
defines care workers as part of
the system’s infrastructure, and        The expansion of the Internet
that – so long as this infrastructure   economy in San Francisco and
functions in a frictionless fashion     Seattle has caused real estate
– literally invisibilizes these very    prices to skyrocket, accelerating
workers. In contrast to that, the       gentrification and social division.
artist presents care workers as         AI-savvy tech companies are
an integral but neglected part of       acting as urban developers,
(social) infrastructure, prompting      offering municipalities to
viewers to think about how              provide and manage their basic
societies could ensure that they        infrastructure services as a
remain visible, recognized, and         solution in times of budgetary
valued for the indispensable work       constraints.
they do.
                                        Berlin’s digital economy is
Melanie Gilligan works in a             also booming. After years of
variety of media, including video,      deindustrialization, start-ups, fin-
performance, text, installation and     tech companies, e-commerce and
music. Her practice reconceives         logistics companies are bringing
television drama and its links to       entirely new industrial sectors to
various forms of non-fictional          the inner city. The protests against
moving images in order to discuss       the Amazon Tower on Warschauer
contemporary political conditions.      Straße, the Google campus on the
One of the major themes is labor        Paul Lincke Ufer, the new Zalando
in contemporary capitalism. Her         building on the Cuvry wasteland,
art has been exhibited in galleries,    the Rocket Internet purchase on
museums, and festivals all over the     Skalitzer Straße, Silicon Görli with
world.                                  Factory or B:Hub, and the wildcat
                                        strikes by the riders of Foodora or
                                        Deliveroo reveal new urban and
                                        social conflicts.

21
Entitled “City as Byte. Mapping        sharing platforms for all kinds of
Tech Work & Tech Urbanism              services are transforming urban
between Amazon Tower Berlin            spaces of social reproduction
and Amazon Fulfillment                 work; co-working spaces –
Center Poznan,” metroZones’            promising even better rates of
contribution to the SILENT             return than standard office real
WORKS exhibition brings                estate – are catalyzing new forms
together the perspectives of           of precariousness; and a milieu of
diverse laborers (including those      young, well-educated, and often
active in tech). Addressing            well-paid international workers is
their work environment, living         emerging in central city locations.
conditions, and the right to the       The members of this pseudo-
city, the following questions are      avantgarde provide the humus and
raised: What does the tech-driven      resources for the growth strategies
transformation of the city mean        of local tech entrepreneurship.
for working and living conditions,     Tellingly, they are supplied
for urban participation and            according to digital-urban lifestyle
social rights? What processes of       norms: with food by couriers
revaluation and devaluation are        from AI-driven delivery service
set in motion or reinforced by         platforms like Deliveroo, Foodora
it? What new spaces are created,       and Lieferando, and with other
and what political intervention is     services by the underwaged
required?                              laborers of Helpling and co.

The “Big Five” (Amazon, Apple,         It is claimed that tech-driven
Google, Facebook, and Microsoft)       urbanism generates social and
as well as the start-up scene of the   cultural added value in the
“creative cities” grouped around       form of creativity, diversity, and
them, also stand for a fundamental     community. A closer look reveals
change in urban working                scenes of expulsion, images of
conditions. This transformation is     culturally, socially, and habitually
more complex than AI-capitalism’s      comparatively homogeneous
often-cited “ghost work army”          workforces, an ethos of
might suggest. In this rising          performance characterized
ecosystem of labor extraction          by extreme competition, the
22
polarization of employment
relationships, and, last but not
                                        NoCyberValley
least, the monotonization of
neighborhoods.                          “Cyber Valley is Europe’s largest
                                        research consortium in the field of
For this reason, metroZones’            artificial intelligence with partners
contribution focuses on the             from science and industry. The
economic, geographic, or social         state of Baden-Württemberg, the
peripheries – be it the suburbs         Max Planck Society with the Max
that are being transformed into         Planck Institute for Intelligent
a logistics hinterland, or the          Systems, the Universities of
invisibilized multitude of bogus        Stuttgart and Tübingen, as well
self-employed laborers who              as Amazon, BMW AG, Daimler
continuously process all kinds          AG, IAV GmbH, Porsche AG,
of online orders or drive them          Robert Bosch GmbH, and ZF
through the city.                       Friedrichshafen AG are the
                                        founding partners of this initiative.
metroZones – Center for Urban           [...]
Affairs was founded in Berlin
in 2007 as an independent               “Creating a breeding ground for
association at the intersection of      start-ups is another key goal.
research, knowledge production,         Cyber Valley aims to build bridges
cultural practice, and political        between curiosity-driven basic
intervention. Focusing on               research and applied research,
international, interdisciplinary, and   thus facilitating a lively exchange
inter-institutional collaboration,      between academic and industrial
its current members are Jochen          partners and providing an ideal
Becker, Christian Hanussek, Anne        environment for spin-offs.”
Huffschmid, Stephan Lanz, Diana
Lucas-Drogan, Oliver Pohlisch,          NoCyberValley’s contribution to
Katja Reichard, Erwin Riedmann,         the SILENT WORKS exhibition
and Kathrin Wildner.                    is structured in three thematic
                                        sections: “Hidden Labor/
                                        The Killing of Animals in AI
                                        Production,” “The Penetration
23
and Preparation of Geographical          or other applications as input (e.g.,
Space Through Production,” and           satellite images, traffic situations,
“The Protest Against the Rising          crowds of people). Displayed on
AI-Science-Industry-Complex              the other side of the mouse are
as a Struggle to Make Ourselves          research theories and technical
Heard.” The three sections               interpretations of the prevalent
are connected with each other            white male gaze of nature research
playfully, withholding overly easy       that extracts ‘circuit diagrams’
access to a ‘bigger picture’ and         or ‘thought algorithms’ from the
instead inviting visitors to establish   mouse’s brain. (In Cyber Valley,
their own connections.                   this is called ‘application-oriented
                                         basic research.’)
The first section is intended
to render visible the hidden             The second section deals with
labor of laboratory mice in the          the geographical transformation
development of AI. This is               of Tübingen. Excavating the
related to a research project in         restructuring of life and labor,
Tübingen developed by IARPA              numerous pictures of common
(an organization within the Office       places in Tübingen are on display.
of the Director of National              The visitors are invited to think
Intelligence “responsible for            creatively: What is hidden behind
leading research to overcome             these places in terms of the
difficult challenges relevant to         penetration of the city by the
the United States Intelligence           AI sector? You can also flip the
Community”), which is intended           images at any time. On the back
to improve automatic image               of each picture there is a story,
recognition, among other                 unearthing what is happening at
objectives. Reworking this research      the place depicted and highlighting
project’s examination apparatus          how the overall reconstruction
and its reliance on hidden labor,        of the city into a center of AI
the NoCyberValley installation           development is impacting it.
places a toy mouse at its center.        Interesting facts, including their
On one side of it, you can see           classification in their overall
examples of image data that have         contexts, as well as stories of
been altered by military, economic
24
significant events are shown or         and the knowledge” took place
presented as to be ‘discovered’ in      on July 6, 2018. It was the starting
Tübingen.                               point for a lively public discussion
                                        in Tübingen about the intersection
The third section deals with the        between politics, science and
protest against the democratically      industry. As AI became physical
uncontrolled penetration of life        and even tangible as a mode of
and labor through socio-technical       transformation and dispossession,
applications and the redesign of        more and more people felt able
the city as an AI production site.      and motivated to join the debate.
Based on protesters’ experiences,
and responding to the theme
of the SILENT WORKS
exhibition as a whole, the protest
is seen as a constant struggle
to make ourselves heard. In a
discursive environment, which
corresponds to the imperative
of the economic-technological
transformation, any criticism of
it becomes an integral part of the
resistance against the silencing of
protest and labor struggles.

NoCyberValley is a loose alliance
of activists who has initiated
various forms of protest against
the emergence of the Cyber Valley.
The idea that the alliance will
always remain open to interested
parties was always central. As
a prelude to a first publicly
formulated critique of Cyber
Valley, a rally entitled “Against the
sell-out of the city, the university
25
oddviz                                visitors to a surreal space where
                                      the question of perceptual and
                                      political agency as such arises.
As assembly line work is being
transformed in AI-capitalism, it      In “Inventory: Kreuzberg” –
also morphs into the everyday         their first contribution to the
and into the homes of laborers        SILENT WORKS exhibition –
recruited by platforms such           they captured nearly 200 facades,
as Amazon Mechanical Turk.            emphasizing the district’s street
Subjected to a new variety and        art culture; they then reorganized
intensity of repetitive work,         them according to an entirely
various political and aesthetic       new architectural structure. In
strategies experiment with the        “Kreuzberg Shedding” – their
interruption and disruption of        second contribution – this aspect
capitalist everyday life, engaging    comes to the fore in the night labor
with the extraordinary and the        of graffiti writers in Berlin. Based
excessive – such as the night-        on thousands of photographs
long assembly at Occupy Wall          manually taken of wildly designed
Street that also included phases of   walls, the animated images are
collective sleep.                     gradually dissolved and torn off,
                                      leaving behind a grey, indistinct
It is in this context that oddviz’s   surface: the drawing board of
two contributions to the SILENT computerized 3D modeling.
WORKS exhibition can be read
as an exploration of the role         Amassing look-alike objects,
of dreaming and sleeping as           arraying them next to each other
productive acts that challenge        to create patterned landscapes
the status quo of AI-capitalism.      – this is how the art collective
Rather than mobilizing the notion mimics the work of machine
of a “society of sleepers,” with its learning algorithms that crawl,
inherent implication of impaired scan, order and reorganize the
perceptual and political capabilities digitized world according to their
– people as passive automatons        more or less self-defined principles
in states of mass somnambulance of what is supposed to belong into
– the art collective transports       a given target category. However,
26
their work actually hinges upon     “Symmetry Drawing” (1948)
huge amounts of labor, namely       to Thomas Bayrle’s “The City”
taking thousands of photos and      (1976), and from Will Wright’s
feeding algorithms with them.       “Sim City” (1989) to Hiroshi
Thus, their work can be said to     Sugimoto’s “Sea of Buddha”
intervene in the discourse on the   (1997) – the art collective prompts
hidden labor of AI-driven systems   far-reaching questions about the
at two different levels.            role of human and machine labor
                                    in compositions of artworks.
Firstly, their faux AI surrealism
is less an autonomous product       Rethinking the role of repetitive
of intelligent machines, and        labor, exploring sleep as a
more a product of human-            productive process, and expanding
machine symbiosis akin to early     upon the political dimension
experiments with so-called          of unconscious labor, Jonathan
“écriture automatique,” whereby     Crary reminds us in his book
the (sleeping) worker turns into    “24/7” (2013) that it was André
a writing machine navigated by      Breton who, in “Les Vases
an uncensored stream of (un)        communicants” (1932), imagines
consciousness. Secondly, the        Paris being viewed at the break
human-machine symbiosis             of dawn from the hilltop of the
presents a challenge to account     Sacré-Coeur. In Crary’s reading,
for labor on aesthetic terms: if    Breton manages “an extraordinary
the human body turns into a         evocation of the latent desires and
machine of sorts – as it turned     collective powers of a multitude
into a typewriter of sorts in       of sleepers. He conjures up in the
écriture automatique, and into      liminal moment between darkness
an extension of the camera in       and light, between the restoration
oddviz’s work – then what is the    of sleep and the working day,
artistic labor value of the human   a collaboration yet to come
body as machine?                    between work and dreams that will
                                    animate ‘the sweeping away of the
Echoing intersections between       capitalist world’.”
surrealism, constructivism, and
pop culture – from M.C. Escher’s
27
oddviz is an art collective based
in İstanbul focusing on scanning
                                       Peng!
objects and locations using
photogrammetry technique,              Who do you work for when your
producing 3D digital replicas.         “boss” is an app? How can you
The collective presents                organize when the app makes sure
digitized commodities in virtual       you never meet your colleagues?
environments in the form of            How do you go about demanding
installations. Çağrı Taşkın is         sick leave, minimum wage and a
an architect who works on 3D           safe job environment when a self-
modeling, visuals and visualization.   learning algorithm is in control?
Serkan Kaptan studied
engineering and did his masters in     Workers in the food delivery
environmental studies. He works        sector are deemed essential –
in digital arts, performance art       especially during the Covid-19
and political ecology. Erdal İnci      pandemic. Yet, their working
studied painting and works in          conditions remain precarious and
photography and digital arts. The      often dangerous. On top of that
oddviz collective has been working     they don’t even get symbolical
with their dear friend Gurur           recognition. Was anyone clapping
Gelen aka Pullahs for all audio        for them during the shutdown?
compositions used in their videos.
                                       While Deliveroo and UberEats
                                       customers are supposed to
                                       believe that their food is brought
                                       to them directly by the app
                                       – that is, without the risk of
                                       inter-human contagion – the
                                       work of drivers and bike riders
                                       is rendered invisible, despite
                                       their neon-colored jackets and
                                       huge backpacks. It seems that
                                       the Western phantasm of AI-
                                       capitalism is about just that:
                                       invisibilizing its own workforce
28
and consolidating the myth that      biggest player in the German
labor disappears into the cracks     food delivery market, infamous
and gears of intelligent machines.   for their union busting attitude. In
                                     Peng!’s multimedia piece visitors
So, how can this workforce           can listen to their prank phone
organize and strike back? In         call with Lieferando and get to
2016, Deliveroo riders went on       hear and see a Lieferando driver
strike in Great Britain; in 2019,    who is a member of the workers
workers in France protested          union. If Lieferando is somewhat
against new payment structures;      representative of today’s AI-driven
in March 2020, Amazon and            capitalism, then these voices
Instacart workers in the US were prompt us to think how we as
resisting their bosses. Against this workers can act within, against,
backdrop, Peng!’s contribution       and beyond this dehumanizing
to SILENT WORKS takes the            system of exploitation, extraction,
Covid-19 pandemic as a starting      and control.
point to question capitalism itself.
                                     Peng! or Peng Collective is a group
The multimedia piece contributed of artists, activists, craftspeople,
by the Berlin-based collective       and scientists based in Berlin. The
presents the results of a series     collective develops subversive
of activist pranks. Disguised as     art with the aim of encouraging
Bundesamt für Krisenschutz           civil society to engage in more
und Wirtschaftshilfe (Federal        courageous campaigns. Using false
Office for Crisis Protection and     identities, Peng! has infiltrated
Economic Assistance), they           events several times as an act of
approached ten of Germany’s          civil disobedience. Their work
largest companies, asking            “Call a Spy” was also shown at the
them how they feel about             Danish State Museum Kunsthal
“commoning”, “eco-sufficiency,” Charlottenborg; their exhibition
and “de-privatization.”              “Pretty Good Privacy” was shown
                                     at the MuseumsQuartier Wien.
One of the companies they
focused on was Takeaway – the
owner of Lieferando and the
29
Petero Kalulé/                         Western man, as Sylvia Wynter
                                       might call it. Combining prose,
AM Kanngieser                          narrative and musical composition,
                                       as well as excerpts from interviews
                                       and lectures, their audio essay
The fear of AI taking over the         unfolds how AI, like so many
world, stealing and automating         other kinds of intelligence and
jobs, and eradicating humanity         knowledge that the west has
has always been driven by an           tried but failed to grasp, calls into
apprehension of the unknown: AI question who can be designated
exposes us to what is beyond and human. The white anthropocentric
outside of human comprehension. framing of intelligence means
In the desire to predetermine,         that the knowledges designated
calculate or program AI, we are        as non-human are situated as
faced with the failure of human        dangerous and incommensurable –
intelligence to decode what AI         particularly Black and Indigenous
knows and can do, what AI can          knowledge. This has consequences
be. It is perhaps for this reason      for who and what comes to be
that AI is being deployed on           recognized as the subject who
issues related to risk and human       thinks, lives and labors.
insecurity, and as such is being
put to the task of making itself       Crucially, Kalulé and Kanngieser
knowable. Standing in for the          link the question of labor to the
absence of human control are           question of intelligence and racial
AI ethics – a set of human ethical capitalism (Cedric Robinson), that
principles designed into AI that       is, they view labor as an “artificial”
cannot program outside of the          imperial project that is hinged
Western individualist capitalist self. on hierarchies that emphasize
                                       the centrality and dominance
In their contribution to the           of Western knowledge. Which
SILENT WORKS exhibition                is to say, they look at how AI
Petero Kalulé and AM Kanngieser ethics and design as a modality
think through the foundation of        of precalculation pre-programs
AI in Western ethics that rely on hierarchies of class, cognition and
the overrepresentation of the          intelligence that overrepresent
30
Western white bourgeois                 the knowledge or intelligence
ethno class (Wynter) ideals of          that drives these systems and the
knowledge. These categorical            assumptions and delineations that
stratifications of “dialectical         they carry. Crucially, one needs
difference,” as Robinson might          to start with the assumption of
say, are also feudal, racialized and    who is human, because this is the
anthropocentric and therefore           very foundation upon which the
affect who gets to own AI, design       discourse of human rights – and
AI, and pre-determine its present       indeed labor rights – is built. It is
and future functions (see, e.g.,        also a foundation that determines
the bourgeois merchant capitalist       whose or what “intelligence” is
figures of Elon Musk or Mark            liable to be expropriated. Thus,
Zuckerberg) as well as what             a critical analysis of the human
knowledges, intelligences, and          involves an undoing of the project
labor get expropriated and deemed       that always violently disavows
threatening and dangerous. Thus,        those (racialized, under-classed,
they suggest that this imposition       and unhumaned) outside of it. For
of hierarchical categories onto AI      without interrogating the racial
through AI ethics and design is an      capitalism inherent in the Western
ongoing auto-transmission of the        concept of the human, the human
Western global capitalist imaginary.    will always remain hidden – this
                                        hidden problem then becomes
Expanding the critical discourse        transmitted (unavoidably) on to
on underpaid and undervalued            the question of labor.
workers and the working
conditions of click farms, logistics,   With regard to concrete AI labor
warehouses, the Mechanical              practices, Kalulé and Kanngieser
Turk, and so forth, Kalulé and          tackle the teaching, training,
Kanngieser focus on what is less        and supervising of AI and how
discussed in discussions of labor:      they are circumscribed under an
the question of who is even             AI design and ethics program.
deemed human in the first place.        They look at examples of
This question then demands that         training, teaching, regulation, and
one probe the programming of            supervision, e.g., online platform
knowledge, i.e., that one probe         content moderators and how
31
their knowledge as subjects of
labor is programmed, classed, and
                                     Shinseungback
unhumaned on an ongoing basis        Kimyonghun
as a part of a global capitalist
imaginary.
                                     One of the most troubling aspects
Petero Kalulé, a Ugandan             of the Covid-19 pandemic is the
poet, composer and multi-            liberating effect it has had on AI-
instrumentalist, holds a PhD in      based monitoring technologies
law at Queen Mary University         and policies. Clouded by vague
of London, and is a lecturer at      but authoritative crisis solution
London South Bank University;        propaganda, this effect has often
their debut collection is entitled   gone unnoticed.
“Kalimba.” AM Kanngieser
is a sound artist and political      Suddenly the playing field
geographer, and is a Research        widens, providing unprecedented
Fellow at University of              opportunities for data-capitalizing
Wollongong, Australia.               tech giants to expand their reach
                                     and power. Perhaps the clearest
                                     indicator of this trend is the
                                     devices to track the infection that
                                     invade and control individual
                                     and group behavior by analyzing
                                     datarized landscapes for signs
                                     of symptoms, such as fever
                                     or breathing problems. Facial
                                     recognition is one of the most
                                     advanced calculative devices at
                                     play in this context.

                                     Clearview AI, for instance, is the
                                     Benthamian name of a company
                                     that, according to the New York
                                     Times, deploys shady, privacy-
                                     violating facial recognition
32
software in attempts to control      (and by implication “criminal”)
the virus. Here, self-learning       person on the other. As many AI
algorithms are ostensibly capable    critics point out, deploying facial
of “reading” faces as indicators     recognition technologies in crisis
for subsequent movement control      management during the pandemic
and quarantine measures.             not only fosters a thoroughly
                                     phantasmagorical solutionism, but
Such tech initiatives are presenting also amplifies structural racism.
AI as an infallible and efficient
technology by catering to the        However, the Covid-19 pandemic
misleading fantasy that one can      not only functions as a catalyst
detect the state of people’s health for this trend, but also presents
from their faces – as well as even an opportunity for questioning
the proliferation of the virus.      it. After all, in their desperation
While entire populations are         for armor during the Covid-19
subjected to a speculative gamble, pandemic, cities are turning
questions of privacy violation,      to masks and consequently
discrimination, and racism are       initiating a retreat into “solitary
blocked out. This is justified by    facelessness,” as Fionnuala
the claim that “it is all being done McHugh writes in the South
in the name of protecting the        China Morning Post. Such
population.”                         “solitary facelessness” confounds
                                     the very grounds on which
What remains hidden in this          facial recognition systems rest.
context is the labor that goes       Obviously, the systems only work
into training algorithms to          with faces. Now that people are
recognize faces. Based on existing covering their faces with masks
data, this training reproduces       in public (also read: monitored)
underlying presumptions. Hence, spaces, they present a disruption
the result of AI labor in this       to the systems’ very order. Is
context enforces biases related to this leading to the systems’
socially constructed categories:     deterioration or even collapse?
the face of a “healthy” (and
by implication “law-abiding”)
person and the face of a “sick”
33
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