Marietta Schwarz befragt in der Sendung FAZIT von Deutschlandfunk Kultur am 3. Oktober 2021 Carsten Probst zur Eöffnung der "Ausstellung Post Capital Art im MUDAM"
Für Menschen, die mit Interesse auf diese Ausstellung schauen wollen, bietet sich in den Sprachen Französisch, Englisch und Deutsch eine Einführung auf Soundcloud an
In seinem Radio-Beitrag geht Probst, wenn auch nur kurz, auf dieses Exponat von Simon Denny ein: Den Nachbau einer nicht zum Patent erteilten Konstruktion zur Kontrolle von Amazon-Arbeitskräften in den Lagerhallen:
Mehr dazu in diesem Auszug aus einem Text von Lucia Longhi vom 1. März 2021 auf BerlinArtLink: The Mine as Metaphor: An Interview with Simon Denny
LL: Can you expand on the Amazon “worker cage” piece you mentioned? I think it summarizes quite well the essence of the ‘Mine’ exhibition, and maybe also your research and position towards the above-mentioned topics.
SD: It’s a very economic work, perhaps due to the results of some highly effective collective labour. I came across the form of the cage patent drawing through Kate Crawford and Vladen Joler’s research—they identified and foregrounded that patent design in a text and diagram called ‘Anatomy of an AI System.’ Making a “life-sized” model of the cage, including remnants of its patent-drawing origins (scale errors, reference numbers, etc.), made this function and structure imagined by this very powerful corporation much more tangible.
Being in the same haptic space as that object is truly confronting. It feels very heavy and awkward but also menacing and material. And then seeing this very convincing animation of this poor little Thornbill bird—a very modest-looking, small, plain, sub-species, of which there might be less than 30 flying around in the world—really contrasts the overbearing and theoretical design of a massive human cage. It’s also a work that does something when you view others interacting with it. A visitor uses their phone to view the augmented-reality bird. So, as you approach the sculpture, you see other viewers surrounding the cage and looking into it, empty, through their phones. And you hear the sound of the Thornbill, originally captured by researchers at the Australian National University, coming out of their phones. If there are a bunch of people interacting with the piece, then there’s likely more bird sounds coming out of those phones than in the Thornbill’s natural habitat, which is devastating.
The use of the phones—with the manufacturing and running, with all the energy and minerals and extractive processes that go into making these objects—is now the tool to experience and remind us of the way these animals are de-prioritised by our lifestyles and values. It’s just like all the other undervalued things, including the life of the person who was supposed to go into that cage at an Amazon Fulfillment Center, and so many others forced into service and maintenance for the systems of some person that looks like me.
Carsten Probst, anmoderiert von Sigrid Brinkmann, berichtet dann heute, am 4. Oktober 2021, in der Sendung FAZIT im Deutschlandfunk Kultur erneut aus Luxembourg, dieses Mal von der Eröffnung der Kunsthalle in Esch: