This episode focuses on our online obsessions, the digital realm, and how technology and commerce have changed the urban landscape and public life. It is a part of our 2023–2024 research theme: On the Ground.

Poet and artist Benjamin Krusling layers and collages audio textures to explore structures of dispossession and the constitution of public space. Architect Jesse LeCavalier reads NYC Local Law 166, a local law established in 2021 in relation to micro-distribution centers for distributing goods from ecommerce platforms otherwise known as microhubs. Artist Danielle Dean talks about post-Fordism, Amazon Mechanical Turk workers, and specifically how capitalistic structures are maintained through specific forms of labor organization and data collection. Artists Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme’s 4-channel video and live performance titled At Those Terrifying Frontiers Where the Existence and Disappearance of People Fade into Each Other. Writer and technologist Sophia Tareen brings together Claudia Irizarry Aponte, senior reporter covering labor and work issues for THE CITY and AI researcher Ria Kalluri to discuss contemporary labor movements and digital technology. Architect and curator Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli reads an excerpt from his research project Riders not Heroes, introducing us and setting the foundation for his video essay of the same name which we listen to next, that investigates the precarious conditions of food delivery riders in Milan. Artist David L. Johnson meets sociologist Sharon Zukin about their shared ongoing interest in the transformation of New York City and the increasing privatization of civic infrastructure. Artist Cao Fei’s documentary 11:11, recorded the work overload of the entire JD.com logistics sectors before and after the Double Eleven Shopping Day in China which is the equivalent of the Black Friday, sketches out the landscape of consumption driven by the powerful Internet economy and asks how this situation will lead us into a future social ecosystem. Curator and researcher Camila Palomino reads from her recent essay on artist Emily Jacir and unpacks her 2000 work, My America (I am still here).

This episode was originally published through Montez Press Radio.

SOUND CREDITS:

2050+ & -orama (Directors). (2021). Riders Not Heroes: Anatomy of a Delivery

Fei, Cao (Director). (2018).

Mauriès-Rinfret, Emmanuel (Director). (2022) Retail Apocalypse: The Epilogue | SSENSE x CCA

Julmud (2023). Tuqoos | ط ُ ق ُ و س