Petit Mal

In 1989 Australian artist Simon Penny developed the robot Petit mal. This work, which inspired the title of the exhibition suggests the application of petit mal neurological phenomenon to robotics, in an attempt to create conditions that  would allow some autonomous behavior in the robot.

A machine is a set of mechanisms provided to produce, use or regulate certain energy. From a perspective that explains contemporary society as a 'machine' designed to direct all types of forces including desire, we can not ignore that each individual is one of the components that constitute and enable it to function. As part of the 'machine', man would not only be subject to it, but would have the power to activate, interrupt or divert the flow of energy in the system. If the useful and rational is the purpose of this social machine, to play with uncontrolled and unpredictable forces that do not respond to a logic of productivity becomes an act of resistance.

Petit mal  is an international collective that reflects on the devices of production, management and control of desire active in consumer society, which affect the way we build our subjectivity, and the possibility of challenging these mechanisms.

Artists: Chico MacMurtrie, Rubén Ortiz Torres, Gilberto Esparza, Ge Jin, Diego Gutiérrez, Michael Landy, Simon Penny, Heidi Kumao, Francis Als, Eduardo Meléndez, Alex Dorfsman, Gustavo Artigas.

Curator: Alejandra Labastida