Renowned Italian theorist Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi will present his latest work, Chaos and the Automaton, at MISS READ: The Berlin Art Book Festival on Friday, June 13 at 6 p.m. The event, held at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, will feature a public talk by Berardi, followed by a discussion moderated by Brian Kuan Wood, editor of e-flux Journal.
Published jointly by e-flux and the University of Minnesota Press, Chaos and the Automaton (2025) is the first comprehensive volume compiling Berardi’s extensive contributions to e-flux over the past decade. The book traces Berardi’s incisive commentary on global upheavals since the 2008 financial crisis, encompassing movements and moments such as European austerity, the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Through a selection of key essays, Berardi offers a critical exploration of the psychological and structural shifts within global society, arguing that the turbulence of the past decade marks both a return of history and a retreat from any coherent vision of the future. “I know that it is dangerous to write in simultaneity with events that nobody can precisely foresee,” Berardi remarked on the eve of the 2020 U.S. election, “but the only way to imagine something about the becoming of the psycho-sphere is to run ahead of the dynamics of the disaster.”
Drawing from his longstanding influences—ranging from Félix Guattari to 1970s Italian street art and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini—Berardi weaves a philosophical and cultural tapestry that interrogates the anxieties of the present moment.
Chaos and the Automaton will be available for purchase at e-flux’s booth throughout the festival, alongside other publications from the e-flux catalogue and the e-flux Index. The MISS READ festival, which runs from June 13 to 15, will feature a wide range of international art book publishers, artists, and theorists.
