While the forests are burning, the Plants of Instagram, far from their (sub)tropical motherland, persevere in offices, homes and shopping malls. We turn to these green entities, so well adapted to postfordist realities, to help us cope with surveillance capitalism in times of ecological cataclysm.

In place of human bodies, ‘Vegetariat: Work Zero’ considers eye-catching potted plants as the bioworker=commodity that can satisfy the gluttonous data brokers with their cellular labor.

Through an electro-mechanical interface, the plants are connected to smart watches, which continuously report on their activity to mobile apps. The data then disappears into the dark minds of prediction algorithms.

And after a while, when Facebook insists we look into air humidifiers, we can’t tell whether the desire the algorithms recognized came from our green allies or us.

Vegetariat Rising: Plants of Instagram Perform Ecosystem Services

The term ‘vegetariat’ describes a collection of bodies, human and other-than-human alike, which find themselves in the gaze of the algorithm. The vegetariat is the stuff of social and financial credit scores, carbon offsets, smart watches, biometric passports, Monsanto GMOs, and Google street views. While surveillance capitalism flourishes by mining every possible aspect of the vegetariat’s being, essentially equating biopolitics with (bio)labour, these bodies are waking up to an alien landscape and asking themselves not only how to survive, but how to thrive under these totalizing circumstances. Through this installation, the vegetariat begins to explore its contours and probe avenues of resistance.

Witness the Plants of Instagram perform ecosystem services.

The neuron-like excitation signals, which travel along stems and transmit sensations through plants’ bodies, are in this case split with a minimally invasive plant-machine juncture. Here the organically generated voltage transitions into its amplified metallic double, which finally operates the mechanical trigger of the drill machine.

Attached to each drill machine is a smart watch, diligently noting every step and turn of the user-laborer and transmitting it as an endless stream of data to the gluttonous Big Others in China and USA.

Despite their predominantly subtropical origin, the Plants of Instagram have an extraordinary capacity to become invisible within contemporary indoor environments, while they withstand poor light conditions, inconsistent watering regimes and general neglect. Given the opportunity, these faculties make them great workers towards persistent, low-key, low-maintenance representation of other-than-human entities in the sphere of total body surveillance.

In a flattened ontology established through the gaze of the algorithm, the vegetariat has the prerogative to choose allies regardless of their color, race, size, systematic classification or feeding habits.

Obfuscate human behavior and supplant it with your plant’s. Join the resilience today.