We live in a world where the machines know us very well. A bit too well. But how well do we know the world through machines? With a colossus of automated algorithms, invisible trackers, and other creatures of technological manipulation, the human mind and body become technologically distorted–nothing but pixelated information. Increasingly, we see ourselves surrounded by seemingly seamless machines and we, flat data points in a world of beautifully textured chaos.

A move beyond a critique of technological determinism invites an uncomfortable kind of agency into the room. To think about the future, one must first learn the steps towards it and take the time to dance with the present. To choreograph alternative movements for a future crafted with care, collaboration, and creativity. On the political dancefloor, active movements create strands of generative hope which tie together the active struggle against authoritarian realities. True attempts to understand, work with, and care for something which has been designed to feel easy, seamless and almost invisible, opens a field of affects and emotion in the world of technology. Through such interactions, critical embodied understandings of technologies can help form intentional modes of doing in our present–future relationships with the digital world. An escape from the polycrisis demands a radical flight from the rigid paths of capitalist and extractivist logics towards a flexible, collaborative, diverse, and open field of ‘techtopia’.

Artist credits: Joe Horner. Inside my Harddrive. Accessed in July 2026.