■ LABOR

Liat Grayver, Dr. Danie Berio in collaboration with Prof. Inge Hermann, curated by Adrian Notz

CLB Berlin, transmidealle, 2025

Video editing - Marcus Nebe

Labor, explores the role of bodily intelligence and its relationship to the intellectual mind. In today’s society, embodied knowledge is often overlooked—not only in everyday practices that have shifted into the digital realm but also within social hierarchies, where the architect is valued over the builder. Yet, in the era of advanced AI, white-collar jobs are increasingly automated. At the same time, the adaptive, interactive, and intuitive nature of manual labor remains uniquely human, offering a neglected form of what we understand as intelligence.

Over four weeks, Labor functioned as a live human-robot painting installation and performance, combining generative graphics, robotic automation, and traditional painting techniques to explore embodied intelligence. The final work—a large-scale painting composed of individually painted tiles—is derived from an electron microscope image of a placenta, algorithmically processed into parametric brushstrokes using a differentiable vector graphics pipeline. 

The term labor holds dual meanings: industrial production and childbirth, both involving creation, effort, and physical strain. While industrial labor is widely studied, the embodied labor of childbirth remains under-researched, reflecting a broader neglect of women’s health. Labor examines bodily intelligence and its relationship to the intellectual mind, challenging a societal bias that values digital and conceptual work over physical craftsmanship. As AI automates white-collar jobs, the adaptive, intuitive nature of manual labor remains uniquely human, offering an often-overlooked form of intelligence.

Labor is a collaborative artwork supported by the EACVA (Embodied Agents in Contemporary Visual Art)  project and developed in partnership with the Nanoparticle Systems Engineering Lab Zurich, led by Prof. Inge Herrmann. This work was made possible through the AGORA Grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF). This work is developed as part of the EACVA group and framed within EACVA's first public symposium hosted by transmediale.

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About the Creation Process