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Couriers’ Bag Theory of Fiction

An interview with Alicja Rogalska on her latest work “Terms and Conditions”.

  • Jan 28 2025
  • Dalia Maini
    is a writer, editor and urban mermaid.

In our late capitalist society, labor conditions are constantly diverted by geopolitical tensions, climate and health crises, as well as the rapid pace of digital transformation. With the transition to digital platform-based work, we increasingly see how technologies have played a faceless managerial role for the increasingly racialized migrant workers class. The two-part video work Terms and Conditions (2024) by Alicja Rogalska queries our world of work, where platform gig workers are left alone to grapple with systemic racism and combat the pervasive lack of rights and fairness, who nevertheless together seize their narrative and project their labor struggles into the future.


Can you introduce us to the genesis of your latest work Terms and Conditions, and what drew you to the gig economy?

When I moved to Berlin in 2020, I reconnected with an old friend from university who had just started working as a bike courier – a job well below his qualifications but the only one he could find during the lockdown without speaking German. He was subsequently sacked for taking part in worker organizing. He went to court, won, got reinstated, and continued activism. Coincidentally, I also collaborated with European Alternatives running several workshops on using art strategies in worker organizing, protests, and campaigns for migrant workers and activists, including self-organised groups of bike couriers. In 2023 I invited the Lieferando Workers’ Collective to join my workshop at n.b.k. as part of the mediation program for the If The Berlin Wind Blows My Flag exhibition. Last year I was invited by another friend to join a group of bike couriers to make a short film, one which we are currently working on. Through these meetings and networks, I have become a friend and an ally of several bike couriers and started wondering how I could support their struggles through my work.

I have focused on the topic of labor (and precarious labor specifically) in several past projects such as The Monument to Precarious Workers (2015), Tear Dealer (2014), and The Royals (2018), and collaborated with workers in fields such as agriculture, care work, and hospitality. Terms and Conditions is my first project addressing the gig economy directly. The platform economy, with its algorithmically controlled labor, was already one of my theoretical research interests. However, I never develop my projects based on the theory itself, I always strive to connect with and learn from the people who are at the receiving end of the various injustices and abuses of late capitalism, in a "nothing about us without us" spirit.

So when Krisztina Hunya from n.b.k. invited me to work on a solo exhibition, I decided to give voice to the couriers I have met along the way who have vast experience in the sector, most of whom have also taken part in workers’ organizing. 

 

How did you structure the video installation?

Terms and Conditions is a two-channel video that uses temporal shifts to expand on the idea of what is politically possible and acceptable. In the first video, we see the couriers dismantling thermal food bags resembling the backpacks that are part of their workwear. As they cut the bags open they talk about the systemic exploitation they are subjected to, using the past tense as though these were memories of a distant past. The second video shows them discussing various improvements in their working conditions and the wider economy and society. They use the present tense [here] making the viewer believe these are the current reality until the increasingly less plausible scenarios reveal themselves as sci-fi-like expressions of their political desires.

Hopefully, by setting out from the couriers' desires, the work helps people realize how class, race, gender, and nationality or migration status play an important role in maintaining the matrix of inequality in the global division of labor. Through the specific lens of the food delivery industry, we can observe how the structures of exploitation are built around these axes by multinational corporations and how the state is often an enabler of that, even if only through being slow to act. The few cases that make it to court take a very long time to be resolved, and the legal changes that would fix the loopholes that the companies take advantage of are even slower. 

Fig.1


In
Terms and Conditions, the relationship between capitalism and structural racism manifests itself in the contractual features of the terms and conditions. Which legal constraints do workers experience in the framework of the gig economy, and how is it addressed in the work?

When listening to workers' stories, it soon becomes clear that their situation is very different depending on where they are from, what their visa status is, and whether they can speak the local language or understand their rights. There’s an obvious correlation between the ethnic profile of the workers and how they are treated, with those coming from the global majority facing a lot more difficulties than their white counterparts. This creates a multi-tier exploitation situation where the companies know that some workers will be more scared than others to complain or report unlawful or illegal practices. 

The actual terms and conditions of the bike courier work vary across the different platforms and also depend on whether the company directly employs one or works under a subcontractor. The workers in the video mention a lack of breaks, working at night and on the weekends for the same pay, not receiving tips, being forced to be on standby (unpaid time waiting for orders to come in), as well as either the lack of health insurance or difficulty receiving statutory sick leave pay, as well as temporary contracts and being fired when delivery work demand is low then hired again when it peaks. They share their experiences of the gig economy work and their insights into the systemic structures that enable the kind of exploitation they face. This includes how the companies find loopholes to operate beyond German labor law through subcontractors and outsourcing responsibility. Just like the companies that hire them, the participants in the video know that the abuses in their workplaces also are possible because of a lack of awareness of the majority of migrant workers about their rights. The participants in the video also share their personal feelings of feeling invisible or even disrespected by society at large.


In the video installation, we see workers sitting and talking to each other while dismantling their thermal backpacks. What does this gesture of narrating and unmaking the tools of their labor entail for you? What meaning do you feel it carries for the workers?  

Gig economy workers are completely alienated from one another, and this alienation deepens the precarity experienced by so many. That's why I wanted them to gather around in a common activity and collectively speak about their experience as well as the strategies they use to resist.

The backpacks in the video are both a narrative tool (telling a story is often easier when your hands are busy) and a symbol of sector-specific oppression – they represent a kind of physical and metaphorical weighing down of the workers.  Bike couriers might well be the most visible of the gig economy workers, but they, and their stories, remain invisible to most people. The act of dismantling the bags is a catalyst for unraveling the stories hidden within and also for trying to reassemble the metaphorical pieces into a speculative reality: a courier bag theory of fiction of a kind, to paraphrase Ursula Le Guin.

The backpack represents to the workers, as one of the participants explains in the video, a double burden. First of all, it’s a physical burden: the riders are not allowed to attach or fix the backpack onto their bike, they are instructed to always carry it on their back. Then there’s also the symbolic aspect, how it symbolizes a low social and economic status and evokes feelings of contempt or pity, which the workers resent. Destroying the backpacks, according to the participants in the video, had an almost therapeutic effect and helped release some of this tension. 

The act of dismantling the backpacks, on the one hand, references sabotage and other acts of disobedience, and, on the other, provides the riders with an opportunity to “work” on a common task together, which stands in stark contrast to the isolation they face on the streets. The action of deconstructing the bags mirrors what's spoken about: the unveiling of layers and structures of systemic oppression that the workers experience, against which they are already organizing, and protesting while supporting one another.

Fig.2


While the workers narrate their stories, some post-capitalist ideas such as universal basic income (UBI) or free access to legal representation are posed. To what extent do you see artistic practices such as yours playing a role in empowering workers to shape their labor environment and rights?




The workers in the video don’t indulge so much in “post-work” scenarios. Their dreams are rather modest. Even the mention of universal basic income is not about removing work altogether but about the ability to choose a profession that is a calling rather than a dead-end job, and having the time and the means to engage in creative activities.

What is important to me when thinking of empowerment is the question of individual and collective political desires and how they shape our actions. To engage with post-capitalist visions there is a temporal shift at play in how the work is organized. This creates the illusion that the current situation is in the past and the future is already here, pushing the boundaries of what is possible to imagine. 

Imagination alone is not enough to change the status quo, especially when one’s material conditions limit the ability to construct and articulate alternatives – the ability to imagine alternative futures is unevenly distributed due to unequal access to resources and power. 

The Indian cultural anthropologist Arjun Appadurai, amongst others, highlights the need for disadvantaged groups to foster this capacity as a form of critique, a means of resistance, and a way to reclaim their agency. Understanding our current situation, and knowing what kind of society and world we want to live in, are crucial to planning actions that are needed to achieve these goals. My role in the project was that of an instigator and a facilitator of the collective exercise, first articulating the current issues and then coming up with concrete solutions that could alleviate them.

In my current research I’m particularly interested in prefiguration, that is, future narratives that are linked to concrete social and political struggles and which are rooted in everyday practices, as well as the relationship between strategies used for social change and the visions of people involved in these struggles. That’s why I decided to work with bike couriers who are already actively involved in creating a different kind of future through self-organizing and campaigning. In many ways, they are already empowered, but in the video, they also speak about those of them who aren’t. Hopefully, the project can also be inspiring for others.

Fig.3


Couriers are workers, and so are you. What are the tools that you adopt in your work to create points of contact between workers across different categories?  

In the last few years, as part of my Ph.D. in artistic practice at Goldsmiths, I have been investigating how using future imaginaries as a method can expand the horizons of political possibility, especially in the context of environmental collapse. My research aims to create and reflect on alternatives to the prevailing end-of-world narratives, building on the premise that a prerequisite to change is active hope and a belief that a change for the better is possible. I have previously used progressive hypnosis when working with activists to try and stimulate radical imagination (Dreamed Revolution, (2014-15), and in my other projects such as NOVA (2024) and The Feast (2022), I turned to methods such as LARP and improvisation to explore queer-feminist and post-fossil fuel futures. Terms and Conditions is a continuation of this line of research, this time focusing on the economy. I have been reading a lot of writing on speculative political economy, looking into economic systems in sci-fi books, and so on, wondering how we can speculate our way out of the worst cases of the gig and platform economy and then make this vision a reality. This is just the beginning of a longer-term project.

In terms of the connection between workers across different categories, by trying to disrupt the capitalist realist framework and using verbatim storytelling I try to highlight the moments of solidarity – both between me and my collaborators, and amongst them. I don’t come from a place of financial privilege and I have a lot of work experience in different fields, so I can relate to people from many walks of life. As a freelance artist, I also face extreme precarity, I’ve never had an unlimited job contract or been on sick leave. I faced a lot of migration-related stress and bureaucracy and as a mother of young children, I often work late into the night, so I can relate to a lot of what’s being expressed in Terms and Conditions, even if the field of work is very different.

I aim to also evoke a sense of empathy and understanding for other people’s struggles in the viewers. In today’s fragmented society, where algorithms affect more and more who we speak to, or even encounter, I think it’s very important to try and connect across the various divides.


With the economic crisis looming in Europe, and the dire budget cuts to culture in Germany, your work could offer an archive of workers’ stories, from which to learn how to re-organize. If you could leave a message to the workers of the future, which would it be?

I guess: “Workers of the future unite.”? As long as we are divided it will be difficult to achieve anything. But, more seriously, unless there is radical social and political solidarity, there won’t be any workers in the future; they will all be dead on a dead planet. I think, especially in the current context, connecting the different struggles: labor, feminist, anti-racist, anti-fascist, and environmental struggles, and building even the most improbable alliances and solidarity networks are crucial.

//

 

Alicja Rogalska is an interdisciplinary artist based in Berlin and London and working internationally. Her practice is research-led and focuses on social structures and the political subtext of the everyday. She mostly works in specific contexts making situations, performances, videos, and installations in collaboration with other people to collectively search for emancipatory ideas for the future. 







  • Image Captions

    Cover, Fig.1-2-3 Alicja Rogalska. Terms and Conditions, 2024, exhibition view Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.), 2024. Photo: © n.b.k. / Jens Ziehe

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