A metroZones project within the exhibition ‘Silent Works. The Hidden Labor in AI-Capitalism’ reemerging under lockdown as the Berliner Gazette Winter School 2020, Haus der Statistik, Berlin, 7-28 November 2020.
Mapping along Amazon.
Around Berlin, but also in the city itself, the Internet-based shipping service provider Amazon is steadily expanding its network of delivery centers. South of Berlin, BER8 was recently opened, right next to the Schönefeld motorway junction between the airport, Cottbus, Poland and Potsdam, but so far difficult to reach via village roads. A large, fenced-in logistics hall stands in the middle of a field, secured with a kind of moat like a castle fortress. Waiting in front of the entrance, but also in the more distant motorway service areas, truck cabs with Polish and Baltic license plates are ready to deliver their blue Amazon-Prime trailers with Krefeld license plates for unloading, or to pick up newly loaded trailers.
Sneaking around
There are two of us on the road, via WhatsApp in voice mail contact with our home office in Mecklenburg, where drawings are made after the stories and descriptions. These drawings, together with sound files, photographs and memories, result in a ‚Mapping along Amazon‘.