Erewhon

• Length7 min
• Year2025-10-21

Erewhon takes its title from the 1872 novel by Samuel Butler which depicts a country whose inhabitants have undergone a revolution destroying all machines. The novel was the first to critique the risks of advanced and intelligent technologies, considering notions of replication and machine consciousness. Erewhon was also used by Deleuze as a way of rethinking the concept of what a machine could be, in his reading Erewhon, is not only a disguised no-where but a rearranged now-here. Taking this idea as a departure point, the video proposes a contemporary vision of Erehwon, a speculative island, whose surface is made up of vast piles of broken technologies and the traces of a past hyper-technological community. Like the original story, the technology on the island seems to have achieved its own consciousness and whilst the island is littered with remnants there is something else happening below the surface.