Proportionality (2022)

This work addresses the structural lack of independent oversight of police violence. Incidents of police brutality are frequently concealed, and internal investigations rarely lead to consequences. As a result, the assessment of whether force was appropriate is effectively left to those who exercised it.

Proportionality adopts this logic and turns it against itself. The work evaluates documented acts of violence according to their supposed proportionality, following the same criteria used in police procedures. An artificial intelligence trained on data from boxing and combat sports analyzes videos of police violence and delivers judgments on their proportionality.

By transferring questions of control, objectivity, and the legitimacy of force into an algorithmic framework, the work exposes the contradictions embedded within such systems of evaluation.