Politics of the Grid

Politics of the Grid is a new dance-theatre work by Jessica Rajko, a Knight New Work Detroit grant recipient. The immersive performance fuses dance, devised theatre, and digital sound/touch technologies, to immerse audiences in a surrealist depiction of today's AI-driven world. The production follows five people contained within a room. The only way to communicate with those outside the room is through a red phone connected to a useless automated help line. As the dancers struggle with their contained coexistence, they uncover the truth about who or what controls their small world. They uncover The Grid. Politics of the Grid explores AI as the unseen interlocutor between the people we do and do not know—a new form of human relationship in which distance not only represents physical proximity, but the chasms of understanding built upon algorithms, user agreements, and data permissions. Politics of the Grid is inspired by scholars such as Ruha Benjamin (algorithmic bias), Wendy Chun (digital democracies), Simone Browne (Black surveillance) & Alexis Pauline Gumbs (Black feminism). The work's compositional structures are inspired by Peeping Tom's "Triptych," Jean-Paul Sartre's "No Exit" & Samuel Beckett's "Ghost Trio."