Art Against the Machine

Cyborgs, hyperobjects and Spaceship Earth popularised the idea that the distinction between nature and culture should no longer be made. The book Art Against the Machine examines what this implies and argues for distinguishing intensifying automation from what we need to live well, as part of a living earth. Join us this afternoon for the launch of this book. With: Miriam Meissner, Jeff Diamanti, Sruti Bala, Monique Peperkamp.

From a position of concern with ecological breakdown, the book Art Against the Machine: Untrapping Life from Profit-Driven Tech Dependency 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 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.

At the launch, Monique Peperkamp will give a lecture about the book’s thesis. We will then have a panel discussion and Q&A about the usefulness of more structural critique of technology in support of practices of contestation and of social and ecological regeneration.

Speakers

Miriam Meissner is an Assistant Professor of Culture and Political Ecology (Maastricht University) and currently a Visiting Professor at the School of Arts and Humanities, Royal College of Art, London.

Jeff Diamanti teaches Philosophy and Cultural Analysis (UvA) and is Professor of Global History of Sustainable Development (VU)

Sruti Bala is Associate Professor in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Amsterdam.

Monique Peperkamp is an art historian and cultural researcher and obtained her doctorate at the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analyses in June 2025 (UvA). She has worked as an artist, mentor, lecturer and teacher in art history and cultural theory (e.g. ArtEZ University of the Arts).

Marjanne van Helvert (moderator) is a designer, writer, teacher at Rietveld & Design Academy.