The Promise of Total Automation

Introduction: Nicolaus Schafhausen

On the exhibition: Anne Faucheret (Curator)

Artists present: Athanasios Argianas, Zbyněk Baladrán, Steven Claydon, Tyler Coburn, Judith Fegerl, Barbara Kapusta, Nick Laessing, Benoît Maire, Wesley Meuris, Gerald Nestler, Emanuel Rossetti

Machines and robots are part of our lives and have gradually started to substitute man. Is the promise of total automation a curse or a blessing? How does art react to this new relationship of man and machine?

The Promise of Total Automation shows the social and politicaleffects of automatization from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution until the digital future. More than 30 artistic positions, which enter into an active dialog with technical objects, deal with the changes of our living and working environment through automatization and digitalization. They question our fascination with technology as well as the hierarchy of subject and object in general without disregarding the potentials of technological progress and therelated optimistic visions of the future.