In collaboration with Iñigo Bilbao Lopategui, Damien Gernay and Vincent Evrard
“Have we not always had the deep-seated phantasy of a world that would go on without us? The poetic temptation to see the world in our absence, free of any human, all-too-human will?” —Jean Baudrillard – Why hasn’t everything already disappeared
Jean Baudrillard – Why hasn’t everything already disappeared
Industrial robots are designed to perform repetitive tasks with near-perfect precision. They operate without hesitation, exhaustion or loss of concentration. This is the mastery of automation, a synchronised symphony.
From Taylorism to contemporary artificial intelligence, the utopia of automation has become increasingly prevalent. Having already transformed the world of industrial production, it has now taken hold of our thinking, judgement and memory.
This is the age of La Société Automatique (The Automatic Society), the title of a Bernard Stiegler lecture describing the total automation of our lives. All areas of existence are merging into an invisible network of computations; digital utilitarianism is supplanting human decisions, imposing efficiency-driven logic that reduces our scope for action. Technology is becoming the invisible architect of our lives. An already dystopian present, where education that critically engages with these opaque systems is key in securing the democratic reappropriation of technology.
The exhibition La Sociedad Automática depicts the anxiety of a post-anthropic world where in which humanity no longer occupies centre stage and machines – Sisyphuses devoid of weariness or rebellion – threaten to erase us. A universe of automatons carrying out their self-contained, cyclical work, with no human purpose.
La Sociedad Automática is a co-production by LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, iMAL, Art Center for Digital Cultures & Technology, Europalia and the Wallonia-Brussels Federation
Spatial design: Nel Verbeke
Graphic design: Lorena Poncela
Opening: 17 april at LABoral Centro de Arte
