Joana Moll (ES)
The Hidden Life of an Amazon User
Browser-based installation, Projection, book and pile of sheets, 2019
The Hidden Life of an Amazon User aims to shed light on Amazon’s often unacknowledged but aggressive exploitation of their users, which is embedded at the core of the so-called internet companies’ business strategies. Such strategies rely on apparently neutral, personalized user experiences afforded by attractive interfaces. These interfaces obfuscate sophisticated business models embedded in endless pages of indecipherable code, all of which are activated by user labor. In turn, these strategies have a significant energy cost, part of which is involuntarily assumed by the user. To put it bluntly, the user is not just exploited by means of their free labor, but is also forced to assume the energy costs of such exploitation.
Joana Moll is a Barcelona/Berlin based artist and researcher. Her work critically explores the way technocapitalist narratives affect the alphabetization of machines, humans and ecosystems. Her main research topics include Internet materiality, surveillance, social profiling and interfaces. She has presented her work in renowned institutions, museums, universities and festivals around the world such as Venice Biennale, Art Basel, MAXXI, MMOMA, ZKM, Transmediale, CCCB or the Korean Cultural Foundation Center among many others. She is the co-founder of the Critical Interface Politics Research Group at HANGAR [Barcelona]. She’s been a research fellow at BBVA Foundation and a fellow at The Weizenbaum Institute in Berlin. She is currently a visiting lecturer at Escola Elisava in Barcelona and an artistic researcher in residence at the Critical Media Lab at HGK in Basel.
Joana Moll. The Hidden Life of an Amazon User, 2019. Crypto, Art and Climate exhibition, National Library of Latvia, Riga, 2023. Photo: Kristīne Madjare
