“Snađi se, druže!” – “figure it out, comrade” – is a common phrase
used in former Yugoslavia. It originated during the WWII indicating that
partisans in action had to come up with solutions under extremely
unfavourable conditions. The question, when given instructions for an
impossible mission, would often be “but how do I do that?”, and the
answer would often be “figure it out, comrade”. Later during the
socialist period, this expression would be used for practices that
people were devising when encountering bureaucratic or material
constraints in everyday life. All periods and societies have such
practices of common lying, cheating and stealing and common phrases to
name them.FIO is a collective exploration of stories of ingenuity that people
with little or no power devise when systems fail them. The evening at
panke.gallery is focused on the inginuity of workers in the global gig
factory. Particularly on tactics the workers on platforms such as
Microwork, Amazon Turk or Upwork based in the Eastern Europe and the
Global South contrive to fake their location or presence to cirumvent
scant pay, surveillance and control that is frequently not expected from
the gig workers in the Western Europe and the Global North.The upcoming event features a talk by Aleksandra Lakić, introducing
her and Saša Savanović’s research on the socio-economic situation and
labor conditions in platform economy in South Eastern Europe. The talk
will also assess the impact of algorithmic management and surveillance
as factors contributing to declining quality of work on digital labour
platforms. A second presentation will be held by the researcher Max
Haiven, who has recently collaborated with rank-and-file Amazon workers
to write and publish short, speculative fiction stories about ‘the world
after Amazon.’The bonfire is an invitation to participate in a collective reading
of stories of such practices we have gathered and to contribute your own
first-hand or second-hand stories and thoughts. We intend the reading
to be convivial, spilling over into a shared meal.Event produced by Drugo More in collaboration with !Mediengruppe Bitnik.