A monstrous era of industrialisation is unfolding around and through us. It is beyond human comprehension, hyper-granular but opaque, ubiquitous and always somewhere else. It is multi-scalar, as its processes and bodies are capable of mobilising and intersecting multiple layers of human and non-human lives, from the nano to the planetary scale, from the molecular to the geopolitical, fostering novel interconnections and frictions, when not overt conflicts.
Emerging from an extensive process of extraction and transformation of planetary resources and intelligences, such an evolving landscape embodies both a material force and a powerful cultural engine. Networks of global logistics, real-time management, smart agents and automated feedback loops not only redefine production, supply chains, or the design of infrastructures, but also human intelligence and subjectivity, as well as a sense of agency and the functioning of democracy at scale.
All of a sudden, a strange similarity emerges with the old mining industry, a production machine lying beneath the earth’s surface perpetually cloaked in obscurity, whose only marks manifested either as its inconspicuous overground facilities or as the illnesses on workers’ skin and lungs. The current scenario poses a similar challenge, but at a rampant speed and intensity
What is the industry, when industrialization runs through data streams and convoluted decision-making processes? Where to look when there is apparently nothing to look at? When machines and sensors do the job of seeing and understanding instead of you? How can you orient yourself when you only get blurred shadows of what industrialisation is really setting in motion? How do you reclaim agency and redefine justice?
In this terrain crumbling beneath our feet, we are requested to imagine the unimaginable.
Spectres of the Geogothic
In the framework of the 5th Industrial Art Biennial, the aim is to expose the blind spots and explore the opportunities of this emerging landscape. We set out to tap into the current polycrisis and observe the social and technical apparatuses inherited from the 20th century, which provoked it. But that is not enough. In order to unleash alternative imaginations, we also need to forge an inventory of terms and artistic practices that may look strange and unstable, at times even dark and menacing to a human-centered order of things. They will turn out to be necessary to capture material and cultural transformations that are often faster than our ability to recognise and express them.
In the Istrian landscape, the specters of old infrastructures linger, echoing the instances of individuals that made, inhabited, and even questioned them. But specters also come from the present, as unheard voices or invisibilized realities; and from the future, disguised as promises and dreams. Specters of the accumulated knowledge required to design and operate machines of extraction, but also the knowledge necessary to destroy them, or take them over to imagine society. In a way, technologies are time machines that are capable of evoking, compressing, anticipating and preempting.
The curatorial rationale unfolds through the following main threads, taking their cues from artistic practices and projects that the 5th Industrial Art Biennial hosts.
Mythologies of Calculating Machines
The Vast Automaton is a shape-shifting myth that mutates and adapts to the new century. Today, from opposite corners of the same binary imaginary, both the idea of a god-like, charismatic and thaumaturgic superintelligence and the plagues of out-of-control zombie nanorobots can perfectly coexist. But is this the only way to imagine an alternative to the humanist project and its blind spots?
Ghosts in the Machine
The process of suppression of diversity escalates in the statistical operations that we call artificial intelligence, the building blocks of contemporary supply, production, distribution and consumer chains. They are made invisible by design. In the age of machine vision, human visual culture has become a special case of vision, often bypassed by artificial sensing apparatuses which in turn have become the cornerstone of automation, blurring boundaries between large-scale systems and user interfaces. What is the role of machine learning within these operational landscapes? What are their technical and social implications?
Infrastructures of Fear, Cruelty, and Collapse
The industrial revolution was always tied to control over land, people, animal and vegetal life. From climate change to war, from logistical revolution to indiscriminate exploitation. The notion of the uncanny valley refers to the moment of bewilderment when facing robots that look almost, but not quite, like human beings. What if AI and other examples of planetary-scale computation could work as machines that produce effects of inverse uncanny valley, as mirrors pointed at us and the uncanniness of our civilisation?
Inverse Gravity
Extraction has always been incited by the dream of infinite energy. Extractivism magnifies it into a systematic, all-encompassing endeavor. Extractivism is two-fold. Firstly, it is a strategic vision that is embedded in large-scale technologies of extraction. Secondly, it stands for the deployment of extraction into other realms, including the extraction of human and non-human intelligence for optimisation, control and exploitation. Now the ore fluctuates in the sky and in our cells, the weightlessness becomes heavy, water is instrumentalised, oxygen-based creatures plunge by proxy into the abyss of the sea.
Spells and Antidotes
The selection of art projects, newly commissioned installations, and films presents a vision of the industrial as a multi-faceted landscape, explored according to the main threads exposed above. The artists invited to exhibit in the 5th Industrial Art Biennial embrace a range of strategies aimed at mapping this elusive territory, tackling its dominant mythologies, conjuring up new ones, evoking its ghosts or exorcising its demons.
Our selection suggests creative possibilities rooted in synthetic storytelling, machine visualities, speculative fiction, counter-design, documentary, ethnography or performativity in the statistical underground of contemporary technological mediation. In one way or another, the artworks of the 5th Industrial Art Biennial inhabit the latent space of contemporary production and logistics and question the historical alignments of facts imposed by power, envisioning alternatives to the extractivist, dark and violent presents we live in.
A novel, monstrous era of industrialisation is unfolding around and through us. Beyond human comprehension, hyper-granular yet opaque, ubiquitous and always elsewhere. It operates on multiple scales, as its processes and bodies mobilise and intersect layers of human and non-human life, from the nano to the planetary, the molecular to the geopolitical, fostering new interconnections and frictions, if not overt conflicts.
Emerging from an extensive process of extraction and transformation of planetary resources and intelligences, this evolving landscape embodies both material force and cultural engine. Networks of global logistics, real-time management, smart agents, and automated feedback loops redefine not only production, supply chains, and infrastructure design, but also human intelligence and subjectivity, agency, and the functioning of democracy at scale.
Suddenly, a strange resemblance appears with the old mining industry. A production machine buried beneath the earth, perpetually cloaked in obscurity, visible only through inconspicuous overground facilities or the illnesses marked on workers’ skin and lungs. Today’s scenario presents a similar challenge, but at a vastly accelerated speed and intensity. What is the industrial, when industrialisation flows through data streams and convoluted decision-making systems? Where do we look when there is apparently nothing to see and when machines and sensors see and understand us? How do we orient ourselves when all we glimpse are blurred shadows of what this industrialisation is truly setting in motion? How do we reclaim agency and redefine justice? On this terrain crumbling
In the framework of the 5th Industrial Art Biennial, our aim is to expose the blind spots and explore the opportunities of this emerging landscape. We seek to tap into the current polycrisis and closely observe the socio-technical apparatuses inherited from the 20th century that provoked it. But observation alone is not enough. To unleash alternative imaginations, we must forge an inventory of terms and artistic practices that may appear strange and unstable, at times even dark and menacing, to a human-centred order. These will prove necessary to grasp material and cultural transformations that often outpace our capacity to recognise or articulate them.
In the Istrian landscape, the spectres of past infrastructures linger, echoing the experiences of individuals who made, inhabited, or questioned them. But spectres also rise from the present, as unheard voices or invisibilised realities, and from the future, disguised as promises or dreams. They are spectres of accumulated knowledge, needed to design and operate machines of extraction, but also to dismantle them, or reimagine their function toward a more just society. In a way, technologies are time machines: capable of evoking, compressing, anticipating, and preempting.
The Vast Automaton unfolds through a series of threads shaped by the artistic practices and projects we intend to host.
Practices that expose industrial processes designed to suppress anomalies, both contemporary and yet to come. This suppression of diversity intensifies in statistical operations we call artificial intelligence as foundational components of today’s supply, production, distribution, and consumption chains. In the era of machine vision, human visual culture becomes a special case of vision, frequently bypassed by artificial sensing systems that now form the backbone of automation. These systems blur the boundaries between large-scale infrastructures and user interfaces. What is the role of machine learning in these operational landscapes? What are the technical, aesthetic, and political implications?
Extraction has always been driven by the dream of infinite energy. Extractivism extends this into a systemic, all-encompassing drive. It is twofold: first, a strategic vision embedded in large-scale technologies of extraction; second, a logic deployed across other domains, including the extraction of human and non-human intelligence for optimisation, control, and exploitation.
Mythologies of Calculating Machines
The “vast automaton” is a shape-shifting myth that mutates with each new century. Today, we witness two sides of the same binary imaginary: on one end, a god-like, charismatic, thaumaturgic superintelligence; on the other, the spectre of out-of-control zombie nanorobots. But is this binary the only alternative to the humanist project and its blind spots?
Infrastructures of Fear, Cruelty, and Collapse
The industrial revolution was always bound to control over land, people, and animal and vegetal life. From climate change to war, from the logistics revolution to indiscriminate extraction. The uncanny valley refers to our discomfort when facing robots that look almost, but not quite, like humans. But what if AI and other planetary-scale computational systems acted instead as machines producing an inverse uncanny valley, mirrors reflecting not them, but the strangeness of our civilisation?
The selected artworks, newly commissioned installations, and films present a vision of the industrial as a multifaceted landscape, explored through the threads outlined above. The artists participating in The Vast Automaton embrace varied strategies, mapping this elusive terrain, deconstructing its dominant mythologies while proposing new ones, summoning its ghosts, or exorcising its demons.
By questioning the historical alignments of fact imposed by systems of power, inhabiting the latent space of big data models, or conjuring alternative presents and futures, the artists propose possibilities for new visualities, speculative frameworks, counter-design, documentarism, ethnography, and performativity, all rooted in the statistical underground of contemporary technological mediation.