12th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art

Messy Glossary

Term

Nonhuman Labor

Texts

Proposed by Vladen Joler 

Nonhuman labor is the production happening outside the human/anthropocentric realm. We can zoom out into deep time and consider the labor of prehistoric plants and animals embedded in the formation of carbon that is being burned as a fuel for the data centers, infrastructure and our devices. Nevertheless, we do not need to go so far into the past, and we can try to observe all the labor existing within the microbiome of our bodies.

Source: Glossary Open Secret