The Unclean World, Percy Stow, UK 1903, 2'
Le chant du styrène, Alain Resnais, FR 1958, 14'
Utopia, Max Almy & Teri Yarbrow, US 1994, 5'
Künstliche Diamanten, Andreas Bunte, DE 2013, 13'
Cerro Rico – The Silver Mountain, Armin Thalhammer, AT 2015, 30'
Preliminary Material for 2022, Maximilian Schmoetzer, DE 2015, 10'

The technical developments of the last hundred years have made the Earth into a different world. Automation is making major social impacts: machines are taking control of everyday life. But the digital revolution has its price—not only in the form of surveillance by the state and corporate exploitation of information, but also in the displaced materiality of computers, mobile phones, and other high-tech products. Rare metals and earths are routinely mined under working conditions that are anything but automated. Electrical waste, dumped in the global South by industrialized countries, is being recycled with bare human hands. From the chemical industry to the silver mines of Potosí, from mechanical beings under the microscope to dancing space capsules—a selection of historical and contemporary documentaries and experimental films reflects the contradictory nature of progress in modernity.