LAUSANNE.- Salvatore Vitale presents an exploration of how the gig economy is reshaping labor and revealing the contradictions of digital capitalism.

Through film, photography and installation, he documents the everyday realities of people whose lives are increasingly governed by algorithmic control and explores a form of resistance.

His work with South African freelancers highlights both the vulnerability and resilience of digital workers, revealing that human labor – even when invisible – remains central to digital economies.

SALVATORE VITALE

Salvatore Vitale (b. 1986) is an Italian artist who has lived and worked in Switzerland for the past two decades. His practice centers on structures of power and surveillance, and on how technology is shaping contemporary society. His project How to Secure a Country (2014–2019), an investigation into Switzerland’s security apparatus, was shown at Fotostiftung Schweiz (Winterthur) in 2019, with an accompanying book later released by Lars Müller Publishers. The work also earned Vitale a PhMuseum Photography Grant in 2017 and a place in the Foam Talent program in 2018.

Vitale, former co-founder and editor-in-chief of YET magazine, won a Swiss Design Award in the research and design category in 2023. His work has been shown at prominent venues including Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation (Eschborn), CAMERA – Centro Italiano per la Fotografia (Turin), Foam (Amsterdam) and MAST (Bologna), as well as at the Fotofestiwal Łódź. SABOTAGE is his first exhibition in French- speaking Switzerland.

Vitale teaches at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSLU), where he heads the Transmedia Storytelling program. He also serves as artistic director of the FUTURES European Photography Platform, and was formerly the artistic director of the EXPOSED Torino Foto festival.

EXHIBITION

For the first time, SABOTAGE presents the entire Death by GPS project (2022–2026) through an immersive experience. The exhibition unfolds as a journey, beginning with a corridor that evokes a corporate space, progressing through fragmented workspaces, and culminating in an e-waste scene.

This transition mirrors the cycle of digital labor, from promise and productivity to exhaustion and disposal.

Through film, photography, archives and both textile and graphical works, the exhibition explores the notion of sabotage as a form of resistance.

The first exhibit is Work Without Work (2023), a video performance in which Vitale stages a fictional job interview with a South African freelancer. The interviewee’s sarcastic responses reveal how digital work promises freedom but delivers insecurity and scant recognition.

Next to feature is Listen All Y’all, It’s a Sabotage, a six-video installation in which the destruction of office equipment becomes a symbolic act of rebellion against digital labor and algorithmic control. At the center of the exhibition are two short films, each shown in a separate space:

I Am a Human (2023) is a collaborative piece that draws invisible parallels between platform work and the extractive industries in South Africa, offering an intimate view of what it means to remain human in systems that continuously test the limits of that very idea.

Automated Refusal (2025), meanwhile, explores the fragile realities of gig work, where surveillance, rankings and long hours blur the boundaries between life and labor.

The photographic works of the Death by GPS project (2022 - 2026) serve as the exhibition’s central thread. Setting the impersonal world of the open-plan office against the mining landscapes of South Africa, the images expose the fragile foundations of today’s digital systems and shine a spotlight on the often overlooked human labor that underpins them.

The final exhibit, Enduring Fragments, is a site- specific installation composed of discarded parts from electronic devices. The work examines the notion of planned obsolescence and touches on the social and environmental implications of digital capitalism.

Through its exploration of themes ranging from large technocratic companies to invisible labor, SABOTAGE prompts a critical examination of the hidden power structures behind the digital economy.