<synthesis> SILENT WORKS · Winter School · Artworks · Online Access

Thu Nov 19 10:33:17 CET 2020

Hi INC folks,

the Berliner Gazette Winter School SILENT WORKS is making a significant
portion of its on-site exhibition available online, including video and
audio works. More to come. The idea is to create a sustainable public
archive of resources dealing with hidden labor in AI-capitalism.

Emerging at a critical juncture as world society is experiencing one of
its most severe crisis in recent years, the artworks not only reflect
this moment, but also provide timely impulses for emerging struggles.
Remaining accessible for years to come, future viewers and listeners
will be able to look back when likely still struggling to come to terms
with what happened in 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic caught us on the
wrong foot.

STORIES OF LABOR USUALLY INVISIBILIZED IN THE INFRASTRUCTURE OF
'ESSENTIAL SERVICES'

*Diego de la Vega Coffee Co-op* (Mexico/US)
"We are addressing the conflicting perspectives of workers, activists,
and communities regarding the case of the opening of Awesome in NYC.
Based on our group’s organizing of sustainable alternatives to
contemporary capitalism, we’ll connect our experiences with
systematically invisibilized labor struggles inside the Awesome empire."
https://vimeo.com/476295368

*eeefff* (Belarus/Russia)
"We hired random people from a post-Soviet headhunter platform whose
labor is usually rendered invisible; they work for the machinery of
micro-tasking, crowdsourcing, stress, A/B testing, and do all the work
that is hidden at the end. And we have created a fictional space for
them to talk and live through this alienated work."
https://vimeo.com/474958896

*Melanie Gilligan* (Canada)
"Gilligan’s work subverts and recodes the status quo that defines care
workers as part of the system’s infrastructure, and that – so long as
this infrastructure functions in a frictionless fashion – literally
invisibilizes these very workers. In contrast to that, the artist
presents care workers as an integral but neglected part of (social)
infrastructure, prompting viewers to think about how societies could
ensure that they remain visible, recognized, and valued for the
indispensable work they do."
https://vimeo.com/479369903

*Into the Black Box* (Italy)
"Following their objective of reconstructing the transformations that
Amazon is spearheading in the world of  work, Into the Black Box’s
visual cartography not only enables an elaborate critique of  the Amazon
model and its restructuring of  labor, but also offers a glimpse into
the potential for labor struggles yet to come."
https://berlinergazette.de/wp-content/uploads/Into-the-Amazon-Box.pdf

*Petero Kalulé* (Uganda/UK) and *AM Kanngieser* (Australia)
"With regard to concrete AI labor practices, Petero Kalulé (Uganda/UK)
and AM Kanngieser (Australia) tackle the teaching, training, and
supervising of AI and how they are circumscribed under an AI design and
ethics program. They look at examples of training, teaching, regulation,
and supervision, e.g., online platform content moderators and how their
knowledge as subjects of labor is programmed, classed, and unhumaned on
an ongoing basis as a part of a global capitalist imaginary."
https://soundcloud.com/berliner-gazette/ai-kanngieser-kalule

*Peng* (Germany)
"If Lieferando is somewhat representative of today’s AI-capitalism, then
Peng's action prompts us to think how we can act within, against, and
beyond this dehumanizing system of exploitation, extraction, and control."
https://vimeo.com/478833658

INTERVENTIONS INTO THE UNCONCIOUS AND UNWAGED 'LABOR OF LOOKING'

*Shinseungback Kimyonghun* (South Korea)
"Equipped with a facial recognition system enabling it to detect if a
face presents itself, the mirror questions our relationship to our face
as capital, and our looking as labor that AI technologies render into
value – or don’t."
https://vimeo.com/479338048

*Benjamin Heisenberg* (Swiss)
"In addressing the labor of looking in AI-capitalism, Heisenberg’s work
challenges the widespread assumption that man is no longer key to the
inner workings of the capitalist world, which is ostensibly run by the
high-tech version of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand.” Instead, his work
challenges the visitor to think how we as laborers can reposition
ourselves in the face of an invisible hand that needs us to develop its
power."
https://vimeo.com/479456176

MAKING AUDIBLE OTHERWISE SILENCED STRUGGLES AROUND 'RESEARCH LABOR' 

*NoCyberValley* (Germany)
"NoCyberValley is a loose alliance of activists who has initiated
various forms of protest against the emergence of the Cyber Valley –
'Europe’s largest research consortium in the field of artificial
intelligence with partners from science and industry.' The visual
impressions from the protest against Cyber Valley in the diary "unmuted"
– exhibited at SILENT WORKS – are supplemented by an audio-loop sampling
recordings from various moments of the protest. Sometimes pensive,
sometimes angry and loud, it is a document of common people arguing
about the future (of technology and the city)."
https://soundcloud.com/berliner-gazette/nocybervalley-silent-works