b. 1980, London, UK
James Bridle is an artist, writer, and technologist based in Greece and London. With a long-standing investigative interest in modern network infrastructure and automatization, their artistic practice operates at the crossroads of art, science, and political activism. By revealing the mechanisms of computational governance, their work calls for transparency, accountability, and ethical scrutiny of the technologies that shape contemporary geopolitics.
In 2011, Bridle coined the term “New Aesthetic” to describe a visual and cultural movement shaped by the expanding presence of digital technology in everyday life. Since then, the concept has sparked lively debate and inspired critical and artistic responses across multiple disciplines. Their acclaimed work as a writer critically examines the intersections of technology and society, challenging mainstream assumptions about progress and innovation. Bridle’s books, New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future (2018) and Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines—The Search for a Planetary Intelligence (2022), offer a compelling critique of technological determinism while suggesting alternative ways of thinking about intelligence, agency, and our relationship with digital and natural systems.
Their artworks have been shown at major international institutions including the Barbican and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Serpentine Galleries, London; MoMA, New York; MAK, Vienna; Witte de With, Rotterdam; KW, Berlin; PinchukArtCentre, Kiev; HkW, Berlin; Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah; ZKM, Karlsruhe; and National Arts Center, Tokyo. Bridle’s writings appear in publications including The Guardian, Wired, ICON and The Observer.