Mechanical Kurds by Hito Steyerl, curated by Alice Labor, is one of the shows that opens the 2026 exhibition season at MACRO. Commissioned in 2025 by the Jeu de Paume in Paris and the New Museum in New York, and presented here for the first time in Italy, the work reflects on the relationships between digital labour, artificial intelligence, geopolitical conflict, and image production, combining a single-channel video with immersive spatial elements. Mechanical Kurds reveals the bodies, territories, and conflicts that remain invisible within the processes of AI creation, as well as the political violence concealed behind images and algorithms. The fragility of digital economy infrastructures, grounded in extractive monopolies of human and energy resources, emerges in the video, which moves between documentary and fiction.
 
The filmic narrative juxtaposes documentary footage from the Domiz refugee camp in Iraqi Kurdistan with generative imagery. The title refers to the “Mechanical Turk,” an 18th-century automaton in Ottoman dress capable of defeating any opponent at chess. In reality, Wolfgang von Kempelen’s invention concealed a human operator inside, already prompting audiences of the time to question the possibility of machine autonomy. In the early 2000s, Amazon adopted the automaton’s name for its crowdsourcing platform, which allows companies to outsource tasks, such as AI training, to digital workers. 

In Steyerl’s video, the voices of three Kurdish-Syrian refugees reveal the system of “ghost workers” essential to automation through their labour of image classification using so-called bounding boxes, framing tools for object recognition commonly used in computer vision systems and echoed in the exhibition design. The connection between images and political violence unfolds in a circular narrative in which these same workers become targets of automated drones during attacks carried out by Turkey in the region as part of its anti-Kurdish offensive. In the artist’s investigation, political conflicts themselves become exploitable resources, both geographically and in human terms, for major technology corporations. 

Mechanical Kurds is the latest chapter in Hito Steyerl’s ongoing research into the global relationship between labour, images, and power. For over a decade, the artist has examined the social, political, and ecological implications of artificial intelligence and the technologies that sustain it. In her work, “documentary fiction”, to borrow a term from philosopher Jacques Rancière, becomes a tool for constructing and sharing critical thought that challenges dominant narratives and offers an alternative perspective on reality. 

“Instead of denying these challenges, we should face up to them. We should face up to the complete unhinging of reality by reintroducing checks and balances, by renegotiating value and information, by insisting on representation and human solidarity. This also includes acknowledging and opposing real existing fascism and its countless derivatives and franchises. Denying its existence means surrendering to a newly emerging paradigm of post-politics and post-democracy; to a complete turning-away from reality.” 

Hito Steyerl, Duty Free Art, 2017, 133 

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HITO STEYERL (Munich, 1966) is a German artist, filmmaker, and theorist based in Berlin, whose work examines the relationships between images, power, and contemporary technologies. She studied documentary filmmaking at the Academy of Visual Arts in Tokyo and the University of Television and Film Munich, and holds a PhD in philosophy from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She is Professor of Emergent Digital Media at the Munich Art Academy. Since the early 2000s, she has developed a practice that merges essay film, video installation, and critical speculation. Her work explores the circulation of images in the digital age, automation, the militarization of technology, and the invisible infrastructures that shape perception. Her research has been presented internationally at numerous institutions, from the Venice Biennale (2019) to the Centre Pompidou in Paris (2020), the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul (2022), the MAK Contemporary in Vienna (2025), and the New Museum in New York (2026). Steyerl is widely regarded as one of the most influential voices in contemporary art and was awarded the Erich Fromm Prize in 2025. Her works are held in major collections, including the Centre national des arts plastiques, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate, London; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.