Убежище / Suoja / Shelter

Outsourcing paradise (parasite)

eeefff is a collaboration of two people, Nicolay Spesivtsev (artist, computer scientist, researcher) and Dzina Zhuk (sci-fi writer, artist). Active from 2013. Based in Minsk and Moscow. In their practice, they are engaged in both the artistic research of polit-economy of work and leisure regimes that are computation-based, as well as the development of temporary zones and test environments for collective imaginaries that undermine the contemporary "stress economy" and shiny predefined user scenarios. Their artistic practice also focuses on synthetic game situations, collective knowledge production protocols, critical study of ways to imagine taken from the IT industry and its influence on other areas of society, leaks through holes in interfaces. The artists also co-organise the annual event Work Hard! Play Hard! in Belarus (2016-ongoing).

Outsourcing exhaustion, fatigue from self-management - and the suppressed desire for breaking down. With Outsourcing paradise(parasite), eeefff engages with internet users' wish for their online user experience to be modified, deformed, perplexed, or "wrinkled". Hiring random and anonymous implementers from a post-Soviet headhunter platform, the duo initiates a series of sessions where such desires go live through the embodiment of deforming algorithms. Platform economies (and more broadly, economies supported by computation) create a geographical gradient in the distribution of labor in the post-Soviet space. The group eeefff is interested in actualizing the complex structure of the present moment, captured through the perspective of interweaving of various types of alienation. The artists work a lot with the translocality of the post-Soviet space, which they understand through terms such as [materiality of outsourcing], [digital proletariat] and through the possibility of ["algorithmic solidarity"] under these conditions. Outsourcing paradise(parasite) is a place where the above-mentioned vectors of their curiosity intersect. The "paradise" aims to create optics for the perception of the infrastructure of collective cognitive work, leisure, romantic relationships and algorithmically modifiable intimacy. This optics is helping to build situational knowledge, allow to go beyond the limits of binary issues like acceleration / escapism (or utopia / dystopia, techno-pessimism / techno-optimism, etc.).

*For the Zoom meeting, please, keep your audio/ video on without turning off. Admission any time. Use the applicable pronoun and a real/ nick name in the Zoom profile (e.g. Newton's Binomial/ they).
Meeting ID: 816 6529 6104 Password: 917369

Workshop
June 13, 11:00 (CEST)