Art Against the Machine Untrapping Life from Profit-Driven Tech Dependency

By Monique Peperkamp

How sublime is the expansion of technology, exploding in a split second when seen from the space perspective of planetary time! The exclamation mark could also be a question, as the impact of accelerating automation weighs down as a burden on the biosphere, increasing scarcity for most earthy beings, while surveillance and dependency on technologies deepens. As we seem stuck in this mode of progress, is there a way to change this situation?

From a position of concern with ecological breakdown, this book inquires into the role of art and theory in relation to the hybridist idea that a distinction between nature and culture, between humans and technologies, and between nature and technologies should not be made. It relates the demise of critique of technology to the rise of space perspectives on Earth, the internet and the network economy. This history unfolds a genealogy of the Anthropocene discourse and the proposed aesthetics of an ecology without nature as a naturalisation of technologisation which does not contest, but instead intensifies, the domination of nature inherent in the nature-culture dualism.

The interrogation of artworks—by melanie bonajo, Ralf Sander and Regina José Galindo—shows that both theory and art that understands the need to disentangle humans and nature from the machine(s) is vital to how we create futures in the present.

Specifications
2025, English ISBN 9789491444920 NUR
Author(s) Monique Peperkamp
Design Studio Tofe Al-Obaidi, Arnhem
Pages 192 p.
Dimensions 17 × 24 cm
Binding Exposed Spine Binding