(Poland)
2018–2021

In December 2018, Tytus Szabelski worked on the assembly line at an Amazon fulfilment centre near Poznań, Poland, where parcels are selected, packed and shipped. In the series AMZN, the artist conducts a micro-scale examination of operations at one of the largest companies in the world.

The video Lights-Out Factory exposes an Amazon myth – that work at the fulfilment centre is machine- assisted and effortless – by highlighting the reality of heavy, repetitive human labour. It presents the stories of both successful and failed attempts by workers to support one another, against a backdrop of packages gliding across the screen.

Local authorities support multinational corporations investing in their areas by not only giving them tax exemptions, but also naming streets after them – elevating companies to the level of local heroes. Szabelski perceives this practice as a form of self- colonisation. In his work Amazon Street (Process of Self-De-Colonization) he counters this tendency symbolically by removing the Amazon Street sign from its location in Kobierzyce (south-western Poland) and presenting it in the gallery space.

The third part of the work included in this exhibition is the online archive AMZN.vnlab.org.

Lights-Out Factory
Video, 8 minutes 20 seconds
Music: Hubert Karmiński; voice-over: Anna Niestatek

Amazon Street (Process of Self-De-Colonization)
Street sign, found object

AMZN.vnlab.org
Online archive
UX & development: Rytm Digital; produced by Visual Narratives
Laboratory (vnLab); created in cooperation with Katarzyna Boratyn and
Krzysztof Pijarsk