Erstaufnahme examines how border regimes instrumentalize speech biometrics to exclude and control. In 2023, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees used the Dialect Identification Assistance System (DIAS) in 43,000 cases to classify asylum seekers’ origins by their dialects, influencing the decision of their application.

Erstaufnahme is an interactive audio-visual installation which, rather than assuming that scientific neutrality can be achieved through technological optimization, reveals the opaque processes and racializing logics the system perpetuates. By transforming another mystified object — the voice — the process taking place reflects on how classification systems strip the voice into its mechanical, disembodied form, detached from the speaker and its context. In doing so, it draws parallels to the mechanisms governments employ in the utilisation of AI, mystifying its operations and concealing its historical, political, and material implications.