Techno-critical dimensions of art Challenging hegemonic negations of nature

It has almost become commonplace to state that nature and culture cannot be divided. But what does this mean in times of profit-driven intensification of technologisation? This thesis inquires into the ways in which art and theory have related to the changing relationships between nature and culture from a position of concern for ecological breakdown. More in specific, it develops a critique of the hybridist naturalisation of technologisation and its aesthetics of an ecology without nature. To environmentalists and social ecological thinkers, nature has been a pivotal concept to convey the need to limit (post-)modern techno-culture that not only produces solutions but simultaneously continues to ignore and increase ecological hazards, injustice and harm, while narrowing the scope, space and time of possible responses. Part of this culture, this research demonstrates, art has nonetheless maintained a techno-critical sensibility. Incited by art, the thesis historicises the backgrounded, automated, reductivist and (dis)appropriated relationships to nature. As a result, hybridism appears as an extension of the idea(l) of domination and reinvention of nature instead of its contestation. This is reflected in the Anthropocene discourse and its proposed aesthetics that discourages knowledge and active public engagement. Art and theory disentangling nature and humans from 'the machine,' by contrast, have challenged the alleged incapacity to take responsibility, individually and collectively. Sustaining a wider, both sensitive and rational understanding eluding the merely efficient, works of art and social ecological (art) practices present a multitude of situated and connective, regenerative and creative possibilities.