Window Projections
"Worker's Forum“ by Pilvi Takala

n.b.k. Video-Forum | Window Projections

Mon, 10/23/2023 -
Sun, 10/29/2023
Goethe-Institut Montreal

The Goethe-Institut Montreal, in cooperation with the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.), presents a screening programme of 20 video works from n.b.k Video-Forum’s extensive video art collection, curated by Anna Lena Seiser (Head of Collection n.b.k. Video-Forum).

The individual films will be shown for a week at a time sunset to 2:00 a.m. on the display windows of the Goethe-Institut at 1626 Boul. St-Laurent, Montréal, Québec, H2X 2T1, Canada and can be viewed on an indoor screen during the Goethe-Institut's opening hours:

Worker's Forum

Pilvi Takala
2015
31:55 Min.
Collection Video-Forum, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.)

Workers’ Forum is an animated message conversation based on the experiences made by Pilvi Takala (*1981 in Helsinki, lives and works in Berlin and Helsinki) as a microtasker in the United States. Microtaskers are low-cost, part-time workers paid by online enterprises to perform small chunks of large jobs without special training or prior knowledge. Depending on the task, a group or a mass of individuals is recruited to complete the work. Takala worked for a service where users pay for a pretend girlfriend or boyfriend to text them. The task to be performed was: “Write a text message that is positive, engaging, and convincingly written in the voice of someone texting a significant other.” The video is based on conversations in a discussion forum between the microtaskers trying to figure out how to be an invisible partner. The workers express genuine concern about the users, even though they are underpaid and working within a system designed to minimize and hinder human connection and care.

Pilvi Takala (*1981 in Helsinki, lives and works in Berlin and Helsinki) uses performative interventions as a means to process social structures, questioning normative rules and truths of our behavior in different cultural contexts. Pushing the boundaries of various genres – including documentary film and performance –, Takala’s works shed light on the implicit rules of social situations which often only become visible through their disruption.