Using animations, testimonies, and archival materials, the short film, Amazon, entangles present-day Amazon Mechanical Turk (known as MTurk) employees with historical accounts of employee actions and events at Fordlandia. The continuities and discontinuities—of labor resistance, technological subversions, and ecological devastation—are eerie. People came from all over the Amazon region to get work at Fordlandia, a failed rubber plantation in the rainforest that Ford tried to set up. The workers were controlled and mistreated, there were whistleblowers and riots, and ultimately it failed and is now in ruin. From generating historical content for the story from Ford archives, performers from MTurk will perform the story as if happening now. The piece will be a sort of travel movie or adventure story—MTurk workers come together from all over the world to recount and perform the historical narrative along with their own story. Shot like a drama, the characters work from their homes where they do MTurk work, but it will be implied through the fiction they are in the Amazon forest and worksite camp. The events of Fordlandia are weaved into participants’ stories and reactions within this history and their context, all developed through workshops. Amazon considers the effects of mass production and the potential of solidarity in an otherwise isolated present and future.

Amazon premiered at the group exhibition This Land at The Contemporary Austin, Austin, TX from September 28, 2023–January 28, 2024.