Welcome to the brave new Internet economy of serfdom. Day after day, users here are serving their time on a handful of platforms that belong to the lords of the Internet, the vectoralist class, as McKenzie Wark calls them, and who have divided up the commercial Internet (Clearnet) among themselves. Regardless of whether we actively or passively pursue our hobbies, sidehustles or dayjobs on the platforms, we have long since mutated into both a product and a NetSlave. All the hours of screen time we put into creating our online avatars are nothing more than the result of free labor as Tiziana Terranova described it 23 years ago in her essay of the same name.
Clickworkers, Categorized [...] is a collection, categorization and mapping of real and speculative activities that countless people pursue on the Internet every day. Some of them have existed since the beginning of Web1.0, some have just emerged, and some are (still) purely imaginary. For some, they already represent the main source of income, while for others they are just an outlet to slip into a new online identity in their (supposed) leisure time, be it in the commercial or the non-commercial part of the world wide web.
Like nothing else, the two design classics, the USM-Haller shelf and Biella's classeur fédéral (Bundesordner), represent the obsessive Swiss sense of order. As a 2D model, recreated from paper – the ultimate antagonist of digital progress – it functions both as a speculative warehouse system of a career information center (e.g. Cité des métiers, OCOSP or BIZ) from the near future, and as an Excel bar chart broken out of the screen and stuck to the wall. Appropriately labeled with the Internet font par excellence, Impact.
THANK YOU FOR RETURNING ALL CONSULTED FOLDERS TO THEIR PROPER PLACE!
Colored paper, Ink-jet transparency film, Neodymium magnets, 158×196 cm & 310×55 cm
2023
*
Uniform of the Unknown Soldier of the War on Misinformation (2015 — 2020), Laundered
Flexoprint on polyester, LDPE film, PVC hanger, Size M
2022