Le Rêve des Machines

Le Rêve des Machines is a mobile installation that stages public space — the street. It is composed of several elements: a bicycle (Agent), a bus shelter (Dispatcher), and a series of twelve digital paintings (RH).

France is the European champion of fatal workplace accidents (2022). When I was a bike courier, accidents around me were frequent, and systematically raised the question of our status — that of self-employed workers doing a bullshit job as dangerous as it was poorly paid. Le Rêve des Machines (Agent) is a prototype of an armored bicycle adapted to the working conditions of the delivery rider. I drew inspiration from improvised fighting vehicles used in numerous wars, particularly the SVBIEDs used in Syria. I draw a parallel here between worker and martyr, both being offered a promise of emancipation conditioned on their merit, meant to legitimize total subjugation.

Delivery platforms, in place of a manager, use an automated algorithm to distribute orders to riders: the dispatcher. In his eponymous letter, Günther Anders raises the question of what machines consider as being. He supposes that for a machine, "only that which betrays an aptitude to become a piece of apparatus will be catalogued and recognized." Consequently, the dispatcher could only consider riders as its extensions.