We wish you a safe ride–organizing delivery riders
Ana Mikadze
state of matter is a Vienna-based artistic collective and registered association, founded in 2024 by Fabio Hofer and Ana Mikadze. Rooted in industrial design, our collective harnesses this foundation to critically engage with and intervene in complex sociotechnical systems. We investigate the intricate entanglements of infrastructures, economies, and materialities by blending artistic practice with rigorous fieldwork, aiming to uncover and reflect on the often invisible forces shaping contemporary urban life.
Our ongoing project We wish you a safe ride, first presented during the WIENWOCHE Festival for Art and Activism, emerged from an in-depth engagement with the lived realities of platform delivery workers navigating the cityscape of Vienna. Building on this work, in 2025 we exhibited Zwischen Pick-up und Drop-off at the Wien Museum, weaving together documentary video and research on Vienna’s delivery infrastructure. The exhibition marked a vital public engagement, inviting audiences to confront the social, economic, and spatial dimensions of labor and urban logistics in contemporary cities.
Ana Mikadze, originally from Georgia, brings a distinctive research-driven design approach, employs investigative methodologies, open-source technologies and installations to probe the intersections of labor, environmental extractivism and postcolonial legacies. Fabio Hofer, a Vienna-based designer and artist, contributes a critical design perspective characterized by spatial interventions and experiential installations. His practice seeks to make visible the socio-political dynamics embedded in everyday environments.
Together, within the framework of state of matter, we cultivate a dynamic where each of us contributes our expertise context-specifically and project-specifically. Our collective practice uses design not merely as a tool for creation but as a mode of inquiry, where material sensitivity underscores the tangible realities of political and economic processes.
We wish you a safe ride, realized at WIENWOCHE 2024, was a site-specific intervention addressing the ethical, spatial, and social dimensions of algorithmic labor infrastructures. Initiated by state of matter, the project stemmed from a critical inquiry into the precarity of gig economy workers, particularly food delivery riders who navigate city spaces under extractive, opaque platform logics. These workers are often rendered invisible in public discourse, despite their constant physical and digital presence in urban life. Grounded in the legal mechanism of substitution rights embedded in many gig economy contracts, we developed a system where festival visitors were trained to temporarily take over the delivery shifts of migrant riders on a solidarity basis. These riders, often working under precarious conditions, were granted paid time off while their stand-ins did their deliveries, with full consent and under carefully prepared agreements. Rather than simply raising awareness, the project redistributed labor in real time. While stand-ins experienced the bodily toll of app-mediated work, the riders participated in workshops on labor rights, healthcare and collective organizing. The artistic programme included walking tours mapping Vienna’s hidden food delivery infrastructures exploring gig labor’s spatial logics and architectural traces. Riders also hosted artistic performances, embodying their onboarding experiences. Co-directed video portraits, shown in intimate screenings centering self-representation, captured labor histories, migration paths and aspirations. The project challenged dominant narratives of flexibility and entrepreneurship by revealing the deeply networked and uneven nature of gig labor. It created a rare time for riders to rest, reflect, and organize while inviting audiences into acts of active solidarity.