Dasha Ilina
Dasha’s Kitchen: My Magical Grilled Cheese Sandwich Recipe


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Part of Cooking and Repairing the Algorithm Talk.


A grilled cheese sandwich is sometimes used as a metaphor for an algorithm. Making a grilled cheese is so easy! Only a few simple steps, just like a basic algorithm.

Dasha's kitchen: My Magical Grilled Cheese Sandwich Recipe is a response to the recently adopted oppressive machine learning-based surveillance technology in France. In light of the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic games happening across France this summer and ending the same weekend as the 48×10 festival, the French government has put in place an algorithmic video surveillance which automatically detects “abnormal activity” - a category which is defined by the various private startups and tech firms providing this technology to the state.

This new and automatised form of surveillance puts in danger already marginalised groups, while limiting their access to the public space. This video work, inspired by the online trend of reviewing everything and everyone, gives an insight into the questionable processes behind algorithmic surveillance, as well as highlighting the issues behind implementing machine-learning systems on a large-scale through a humorous lens of review-based Youtube videos.


Dasha Ilina is participant in the Cooking and Repairing the Algorithm Talk.





Dasha Ilina is a Russian techno-critical artist based in Paris, France. Through the employment of low-tech and DIY approaches, her work questions the desire to incorporate modern technology into our daily lives by highlighting the implications of actually doing so. Her practice engages the public in order to facilitate a space for the development of critical thought regarding social imperatives for care of oneself and others, privacy in the digital age, and the reflexive contemporary urge to turn to technology for answers.