Artist13: Jean Tinguely

Jean Tinguely, unlike many artists, spent a lot oftime both creating and destroying. The Swiss-born sculptor communicated his concepts through metamechanics - kinetic mechanical sculptures. His intricate, and often colossal, machines work in classic steampunk fashion with complex networks or metal and wire often performing comically simple and clumsy tasks. He used his machines in traditional Dada fashion, criticizing and satirizing the military-industrial complex in its similarly clumsy functions as well as the inevitable collapse of the modern industry and society as it grew and germinated in an unsustainable fashion.

His sculptures often self-destructed to communicate Tinguely's projections of the coming self-destruction of the current status quo. His most famous of these self-destructing machines was his Homage to New York:

The machine, decomposing into bent metal and broken wire and consuming itself in flame and smoke, drew parallels to the massive machine that is future New York as its industrial clockwork violently shut down under its own weight and complexity.

Tinguely's cautionary tales for society, told using his kinetic sculptures, function as reminders to constantly question to status quo and repercussions therein. Although the complete bombastic destruction of current society according to Tinguely's predictions for the future haven't occurred (at least not yet), his message will remain relevant as we grow and change exponential faster. His call for the need for sustainability and, if nothing else, criticism of modern civilization , is necessary to manage such rapid and abrupt change. A self-aware and cautious society with the capacity for collective introspection was perhaps what Tinguley was trying to push humanity towards with his visceral and violent machines.