The book Critical Art Ensemble: The Artistic War Machine and the Anthropotechnical Arsenals of Revolt, written by professor Lucas Fortunato, from the Humanitas Institute of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), was released in the United States by the publisher Autonomedia, from New York.
The work originates from the doctoral thesis developed by the author in the Postgraduate Program in Social Sciences (PPGCS/UFRN), under the guidance of professor Alex Galeno. During the doctorate, the research was supported by the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (Capes).
After defending the thesis, in 2019, the work was reformulated and published in Brazil, in 2022, by Editora Appris, in Curitiba. The English translation received partial funding from the Dean of Postgraduate Studies (PPG/UFRN), resulting in a revised version released in 2026 by Autonomedia.
The research analyzes the activist art collective Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) and presents a reflection on the artistic war machine and the anthropotechnical arsenals of revolt developed by the group. According to the author, the thesis argues that the CAE stands out as one of the most expressive artistic war machines in the history of art-revolt and that the aesthetic paradigm of the disorder, put into practice by the collective, has emancipatory potential in the face of mechanisms for capturing desire and subjectivities.
The idea of translating the work into English came from conversations with Steve Kurtz, a member of the Critical Art Ensemble, who showed interest in research when he discovered the Brazilian edition. According to the author, despite the international influence of the collective, there was, until then, a work with a comprehensive approach dedicated exclusively to CAE and its productions.
The book presents a historical contextualization of the collective and analyzes its arsenals of artistic warfare based on theoretical, philosophical and sociological references, dialoguing with artistic avant-garde movements, tactical media, electronic resistance and bioactivism. The work also proposes, for the first time, a historical, social and micropolitical approach to the nomadology of the artistic war machine.
The international edition was published by Autonomedia, a North American publisher founded in the 1980s. During its creation, Autonomedia collaborated with the publisher Semiotext(e), responsible for introducing, in English, works by thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Paul Virilio and Jacques Derrida. Later, it consolidated an editorial line focused on radical art, activism, culture and media, publishing hundreds of titles, including Zona Autónoma Temporária, by Hakim Bey.
The new edition of Critical Art Ensemble: The Artistic War Machine and the Anthropotechnical Arsenals of Revolt is available on the Autonomedia website and other online platforms.
