April 24, 2025, I have had the opportunity to participate in the international conference The Representation of Machines in the Arts and Discourses, held at the University of Gafsa in Tunisia. I presented a paper entitled The Broken Machine: Aesthetics of Malfunction in Photography and Literature, and I also served as moderator for the sixth session of the conference.
Header image of the article: official photograph from the conference program.
Presentation Reference:
Jessica Ragazzini, “The Broken Machine: Aesthetics of Malfunction in Photography and Literature”, paper presented at the symposium The Representation of Machines in the Arts and Discourses, organized by the University of Gafsa, Tunisia, April 23 to 25, 2025.
Conference Summary: Towards an Aesthetics of Dysfunction
Presented at the international conference The Representation of Machines in Arts and Discourses at ISEAH in Gafsa, this talk examines how breakdowns, bugs, and other technological failures become genuine aesthetic tools in contemporary art. Rather than being perceived as mere accidents or defects, these “glitches” are activated as critical languages — expressive forms that disrupt the logics of transparency, optimization, and control. Through a range of artworks spanning photography, performance, and digital arts, the presentation proposes to view dysfunction as an artistic method: a poetics of disturbance and an embodied political gesture.
Technological Dysfunction: A Visual Metaphor for Human Imperfection
At the heart of many contemporary practices, technological dysfunction operates as a visual metaphor for human vulnerability. Where the machine once symbolized perfection and mastery, its failure now becomes a site for questioning the limits of the human, the fragility of systems, and the potential for a non-normative understanding of life. By introducing noise, glitches, or instability into their work, artists craft ambiguous sensory experiences that confront us with our own zones of imperfection. This aesthetics of disruption offers another way of inhabiting the world — not in the promise of linear progress, but in the lucid acceptance of flaws as creative power.