Hopes and Deliveries (Survival Creativity)

Thousands of videos that were produced by gig workers for their clients have been downloaded from Fiverr.com, exploiting the gig platform’s missing security precautions. From this archive a selection is shown on two smartphones that are strapped to an empty sweatshirt, using cellphone armbands. In the videos, mass entrepreneurship and mass innovation become visible as a performance of survival creativity: coming up with whatever idea it takes to survive in a competitive field.

At the same time, Hopes and Deliveries addresses voyeurism on two levels: on the one hand it makes visible the people ordering such videos on Fiverr (through photos or texts that are part of the videos, or more indirectly by revealing the desires of those ordering the videos) while on the other hand offering a glimpse into the more intimate corners of the gig economy.

(Fiverr.com is a global online marketplace for gig work, each task and service beginning at a cost of $5 per job performed)