Technologies of Care

Creative Work

Author:: Elisa Giardina Papa
Year:: 2016
URL:
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Venue:: Exhibited at gallery or event; Installation
Record Status:: Approved record
Contributors:: <div class="page" title="Page 24"><div class="section"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span>Giardina Papa portrays workers who offer digital micro-services, fetish work or emotional support online, and gives them a voice. In </span><span>Technologies of Care</span><span>, we meet seven digital workers: an ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) artist, a virtual boyfriend, an online dating coach, a storyteller and video performer, a social media fan, a scientist working simultaneously as </span><span>fingernail designer, and a customer service representative. Papa has found </span><span>these freelancers in Brazil, Greece, the Philippines, Venezuela and the USA, where they offer their services anonymously via online platforms, which </span><span>make a profit from them. With the exception of the virtual boyfriend, all in- </span><span>terviews are interpreted by female-sounding voices. While the transcripts read like ethnographic research texts, the interviews in the video function like chamber plays on unfettered digital neoliberalism. (IA)</span></p><p>Technologies of Care documents new ways in which service and affective labor are being outsourced via internet platforms, exploring topics such as empathy, precarity, and immaterial labor.<br /><br />The video visualizes the invisible workforce of online caregivers. The workers interviewed in "Technologies of Care" include an ASMR artist, an online dating coach, a fetish video performer and fairytale author, a social media fan-for-hire, a nail wrap designer, and a customer service operator. Based in Brazil, Greece, the Philippines, Venezuela, and the United States, they work as anonymous freelancers, connected via third-party companies to customers around the globe. Through a variety of websites and apps, they provide clients with customized goods and experiences, erotic stimulation, companionship, and emotional support.<br /><br />The stories collected in Technologies of Care include those of non-human caregivers as well. One of its seven episodes, Worker 7 - Bot? Virtual Boyfriend/Girlfriend, documents the artist's three-month-long “affair” with an interactive chatbot.</p></div></div></div></div>

Tags:

Description (in English):

Video art installation critical of the precarious, racialised, and gendered labour going on through the internet, or born-digital.

Pull Quotes:

"- What are the benefits of presenting yourself as a male freelancer?
- I work in academia, I am no stranger to the wage gap and heteronormativity in our society. I am sure that women make less than their male counterparts for the same work and I am also Latin American. Being a Latino woman makes me more prone to receiving less for the same hard work
...
I have seen a difference between presenting oneself as a man in contrast with my daughter who presents herself as a woman: she does the same work and gets hired significantly less. She also has to use milder language and say 'please' and 'sorry' a lot more or she would come across as too bossy and difficult to work with." (Worker 1)

Title
Affirmative post-cinema

Screen shots:

The permanent URL of this page:: https://elmcip.net/node/15496
Record posted by:: Elisa Giardina Papa

Technologies of Care

Research Collection that references this work: