Rerouting is a video installation by Alicja Rogalska that emerges from long-term collaboration with Berlin-based bicycle couriers working within platform economies. Developed as part of the I-CLAIM research project and commissioned by Centrala Space (Birmingham, UK), the work examines how migration, algorithmic management, and speculative imagination intersect in contemporary urban labour.
The installation centres on couriers — predominantly migrants from India and Pakistan and other third-country nationals — whose everyday work sustains the logistical infrastructure of the city. Operating within AI-managed systems that calculate routes, allocate orders, and evaluate performance, these workers navigate precarious conditions shaped by fluctuating demand, limited labour protections, and uncertain legal status. Their labour unfolds in what might be described as the “cracks” of existing systems: visible in public space yet structurally marginalised within economic and political discourse.
Rather than presenting couriers solely as subjects of exploitation, Rerouting repositions them as agents of analysis and imagination. Through collaborative workshops and filmed conversations, participants articulate not only their experiences of precarity but also their critiques of platform capitalism and their visions for alternative futures. The work foregrounds speculative economies: proposals for cooperative logistics networks, fairer compensation structures, and forms of collective ownership that challenge extractive models of digital labour.
The title, Rerouting, gestures both to the GPS logic that governs delivery work and to the possibility of redirecting economic and social trajectories. In the context of algorithmic management — where routes are optimised for efficiency and human agency is constrained by opaque systems — the act of rerouting becomes metaphorical. It signals a shift from compliance toward collective redesign; from reactive survival within exploitative infrastructures toward proactive reimagining of economic life.
Situated within I-CLAIM, the work dialogues with research investigating the living and working conditions of irregularised migrant households across Europe. In Germany, particular attention has been given to platform labour and the ways migration governance intersects with deregulated employment structures. Legal precarity, racialised labour segmentation, and the rise of app-based management systems form a complex assemblage that shapes both economic vulnerability and political visibility. Rerouting translates these structural concerns into an artistic framework that privileges lived knowledge and shared authorship.
Rogalska’s research-led practice consistently explores the political dimensions of everyday life through collaborative methods. Here, collaboration is not merely a methodological choice but a political one. By inviting couriers to co-create speculative visions, the work resists narratives that reduce migrant workers to passive victims of global capitalism. Instead, it foregrounds their intellectual and imaginative capacities, positioning them as thinkers capable of articulating systemic critique.
The installation operates in a space between documentation and proposition. It neither romanticises precarious labour nor confines itself to exposé. Instead, it constructs a collective thought experiment: what would it mean to reorganise urban logistics around care, cooperation, and dignity? What alternative infrastructures might emerge if those currently navigating the system were empowered to redesign it?
In doing so, Rerouting invites viewers to reconsider the invisible networks that sustain contemporary cities — and to imagine how these networks might be redirected toward more equitable futures.
This Exhibition will be presented in collaboration with: DAAD-gallerie, Oranienstraße 161, 10117 Berlin, Germany
About the artist:
Alicja Rogalska is a Polish-British interdisciplinary artist based in Berlin and London. Her practice is research-led and focuses on social structures and the political subtext of the everyday; she mostly works in specific contexts making situations, performances, videos and installations in collaboration with other people to collectively search for emancipatory ideas for the future. She recently presented her work at Zachęta National Art Gallery (Warsaw, 2025-26), n.b.k. (Berlin, 2024-25), Biennale Matter of Art (Prague, 2024), Kunsthalle Recklinghausen (2024), Biennial Videobrasil (São Paulo, 2023-24), Jogja Biennale (Yogyakarta, 2023), Urbane Künste Ruhr (Essen, 2023), Scherben/Berlin Prize (2022, main prize), Manifesta 14 Prishtina (2022), Temporary Gallery (2021-22), Kunsthalle Wien (2020-21) and OFF Biennale (2020-21). Rogalska is currently a PhD researcher in the Art Department at Goldsmiths College. She was a fellow of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin program in 2020-21, and an artist in residence at Villa Kamogawa, Goethe Institute (Kyoto, 2025), the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Seoul, 2023), Faculty of Social Sciences at Essex University (2019-22), City of Women Festival (Ljubljana, 2019) and The Stuart Hall Library (London, 2019), amongst others.
