Clean Sentience is an animated video showing AI-powered robots cleaning up after three public gatherings: a Trump rally, a climate protest and a union strike.

Each event points toward a different idea of the future. The Trump rally is shaped by a misguided longing for an imagined past. The climate protest is asking for a future that is still livable, while the union strike is concerned with work, fairness and dignity in the present.

Once the people are gone, the robots arrive. They collect signs, barriers, garbage and other traces left behind. They do not understand the difference between the events, and they do not need to. To them, everything has become the same kind of problem: a mess that needs to be cleaned up.

I am interested in cleaning as a form of editing. When a place is cleaned, decisions are made about what matters, what is waste and what should disappear. The robots remove the physical evidence that people gathered, disagreed and tried to change something.

A greeting card is left on the ground. On the front is a broken robot with the words “Feel Better.” Inside, it says “or else,” beside an image of the robot in the garbage. It is signed “Mom” in handwriting. For me, the card is about the pressure people feel to remain useful, productive and able to adapt, especially in the age of AI. Care becomes mixed with threat. You are expected to recover, improve and keep working, or risk being left behind.

The robots are not cruel and they do not have an ideology. They are simply carrying out the task they were given. The work asks what happens when systems become more capable without becoming more thoughtful, and when political conflict, memory and human value are treated as problems of efficiency.