Mechanical Kurds

Über die Hintergründe des Auftrags - der die Bilderkennungssysteme der KI verbessern sollte - wurden sie im Unklaren gelassen. Als die KI die Aufgabe erledigen konnte, waren die Microworker Geschichte. Um diesen Prozess geht es in den rund ein Dutzend Gesprächen, die Steyerl mit solchen Datenarbeitern geführt hat, nachdem sie es geschafft hatte, 2023 eine Einreisegenehmigung für den Irak zu ergattern. (…) Steyerl findet mit rhythmisierter Musik und Hall unterlegte Bilder, die das Elend des Lagers mit einer von Drohnen kontrollierten Phantasiewelt samt den Feuerbällen explodierender Tuk-Tuks und jungen Männern kontrastiert, die um brennende Autos herumtanzen.

trans.They were left in the dark about the background of the commission — which was meant to improve the image-recognition systems of AI. Once the AI could do the job itself, the microworkers were history. That process is the subject of the roughly a dozen conversations Steyerl conducted with such data workers, after she had managed to obtain an entry permit for Iraq in 2023. (…) Steyerl finds images, underlaid with rhythmic music and reverb, that contrast the misery of the camp with a drone-controlled fantasy world, complete with the fireballs of exploding tuk-tuks and young men dancing around burning cars.

Hannes Hintermeier, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 2025-07 · in German · read the full text

The most notable exception is Hito Steyerl’s 2025 video installation Mechanical Kurds, a visually arresting commentary on human labor and AI warfare. In Steyerl’s single-screen video, we learn of Kurdish refugees in Northern Iraq training AI by image-tagging and labeling work that eventually benefits automated drone warfare. The people whose invisibilized labor trains these systems can themselves end up being made visible as the killing machines’ targets. Using AI to produce her AI-critical video, Steyerl’s work carries one of the exhibition’s main propositions: The critiqued tool can be utilized as a tool for critique.

Yazan Ashqar, Public Seminar, 2026-07-15 · read the full text

Hito Steyerl’s video installation Mechanical Kurds (2025) shows us Kurdish workers categorising objects in images that have been taken by drones; their classification then trains AI as part of Amazon’s ‘Mechanical Turk’ programme, which allows you to outsource menial tasks to overseas labour. Steyerl explicitly compares this painstaking work for poverty wages with its namesake: the 18th-century automaton that could apparently beat anyone in chess until it was revealed that a human was secretly operating it from the inside.

Zachary Ginsberg, Apollo Magazine, 2026-06-24 · read the full text