Most of the recent debate around AI has been situated at the human-computer interface, glossing over not only the massive impact of computational technologies on the environment, but also the pervasiveness of tech in the sectors of society, which take care of-maintain-cultivate living bodies. The Performative Ethnographies are a series of site-specific participatory actions aimed at exploring advanced automation in spaces usually hidden from view, even though – or precisely because – they maintain society as we know it. With the help of a local guide(s) the participants enter the infrastructural backbones of medical centers, railway stations, greenhouses, plastic pellet factories, etc. to experience the algorithms of care put in place to sustain, control, facilitate, police and nurture human and other-than-human bodies.
The field-notes and images captured by the participants serve as the raw material for the ethnography that ensues, revealing not only the materiality of (advanced) automation but also the presuppositions that frame the way we consume it.
