Shabtai Pinchevsky

Info

I’m a photographer and digital media artist working at the intersection of architecture, archives, technology, and politics. In my works, I use 3D modeling, mapping, internet-based tools, and more to examine archival photographic materials and their relations to geographies of conflict and displacement, especially in Israel / Palestine. My practice is engaged with issues of social justice and human rights, and their application in art and media

Can a Self Driving Car Navigate an Apartheid Road?

Can a Self-Driving Car Navigate an Apartheid Road? is a [in-progress] multi-channel video essay examining how autonomous vehicles navigate politically contested infrastructures, focusing on the segregated Israeli road system in Palestine. The work treats the self-driving car as both a technology of inquiry and a series of conceptual parallels for understanding how people navigate systems of discrimination and control.

At the heart of the project is the concept of the autonomous vehicle as an "Archive on Wheels"—a traveling apparatus that continuously captures, processes, and acts upon images of its surroundings. Just as photography requires positioning oneself in relation to a subject, the car's primary function of "ego-localization" demands it determine where it stands before it can move. The work examines algorithmic processes—perception, attention, prediction, and decision-making—as frameworks for understanding how identity shapes navigation through segregated space.

The project investigates how machine learning systems attempt to model the nuanced knowledge required to navigate apartheid infrastructure—knowledge deeply tied to identity and learned through lived experience. It asks: what identity will an autonomous system embody when navigating segregated territories, and how will it model the incredibly nuanced strategies of movement tied to that identity? By examining self-driving technologies in the extreme political environment of the segregated Israeli road system in Palestine, the work reveals how systems of efficiency and safety encode and perpetuate patterns of discrimination and control.