Robots Today

Directed by Hito Steyerl

The film uses footage from south-eastern Turkey of the Kurdish town of Cizre on the Syrian border, which now resembles a ghost town following numerous skirmishes of escalating intensity between the government and the PKK footage from south-eastern Turkey of the Kurdish town of Cizre on the Syrian border, which now resembles a ghost town following numerous skirmishes of escalating intensity between the government and the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party). It is the hometown of Ismail al-Jazari, the Arab polymath (he was a scholar, inventor, mathematician, engineer and artist) who wrote a book about mechanical apparatuses in 1205 to convey knowledge about ingenious devices. He described a hundred mechanical devices, some 80 of which are trick vessels of various kinds, along with instructions on how to construct them. Steyerl combines the pictures of the town with questions addressed to Siri, the software installed in iPhones: What role does computer technology play in war?