Nemo (Nobody)
an installation involving satellite surveillance by Paweł Janicki, 2020

"Nemo (Nobody)" is an installation by Paweł Janicki, a part of the "Point Nemo" solo show at the WRO Art Center (2020).

A small screen in the floor shows a satellite image of an Amazon logistic center near Wrocław. Both the perspective and the observation tool are well warranted, as Amazon is a global company which is powerful enough to start its own space program (Project Kuiper), and Jeff Bezos, its founder, main shareholder and CEO, is one of the wealthiest people on the planet.

The mechanisms of monitoring, efficiency assessment, and pay determination at this and other Amazon sites raise serious controversy. The organizers of last year’s fundraiser for the strike fund of Amazon’s Polish workers (the OZZ Inicjatywa Pracownicza/Workers’ Initiative Trade Union) listed the following factors as boosting Poland’s attractiveness to Amazon and, at the same time, as exacerbating global inequalities: geographical location, anti-employee legislation (e.g., constraints on the right to strike), cheap labor force, and pay determination based on the statistics of local blue-collar wages, rather than on the profit they produce.

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Video documentation by Mira Boczniowicz courtesy of the WRO Art Center.