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 can mobilize and intersect 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, even 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 find your way when you only get blurred shadows of what industrialisation is really setting in motion? How do you reclaim agency and redefine justice?

Featured artists

Heba Y. Amin | Andrej Beštak, Anja Leko | Živa Božičnik Rebec | Maks Bricelj, Ema Maznik Antić | Alice Bucknell | Kate Crawford, Vladan Joler | Sophie Cundale | Aleksandra Domanović | Sandro Đukić | Anna Engelhardt, Mark Cinkevich | 업채 eobchae | Daniel Felstead, Jenn Leung | 김아영 Ayoung KIM | Laibach Kunst | Lawrence Lek | 刘窗 Chuang LIU | Abu Bakarr Mansaray | !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Selena Savić, Gordan Savičić | 오세린 Serin OH | Gerard Ortín Castellví | 박민하 Minha PARK | Rich Pell | Tanit Plana | Cemile Sahin | Nestor Siré | Suzanne Treister | Marina Xenofontos | Dragan Živadinov, Dunja Zupančič

This book resulted from the screening programme The Vast Automaton which was part of The 5th Industrial Art Biennial in in Labin, Pula, Raša, and Vodnjan (Istrian region in Slovenia), in 2025.

Published in 2026, softcover, 264 pages.