Bike Messenger culture (which has a distinct international history and community) has always in a way embraced the intense danger, exhaustion, marginal-status, constant state of being-in-motion (in many more ways then one) and hyper-precarity of the job. Not to legitimize those modes, but to circumvent them towards the construction of friendship, play, specific knowledges and love of intensity — a reclaimed intensity, on our own terms. Often done through the rejecting/reclaiming the game-ization of work, by turning the job into a literal game, (our own game, not their evaluative job metrics game) through ‘alleycat’ races, and a mode of care based on aspects of delay. Delay in the sense of prolonged standby, with your friends, at the square, drinking on the job, for fun and for ourselves. A disrupting of pace, and an embrace of community — not disobedient without cause however, but accumulating and sharing specific knowledges of the many logistics of package delivery, bikes and exploitative mechanics of distribution, through disobedience. A disobedience to separate job and community; a creating of community and international networks (of shared housing and worker-run collectives) around the job and our specific knowledges of it. Not to idolize the job, and the shit we deliver, but to turn it into something else, or more than.
Intentionally incomplete documentation here, and the anonymised messenger log here on the right side of the page..
Across and around the city of Rotterdam, 2020–2021
With Tomi Hilsee & +++
WORKNOT! 