Desire Is a Machine

In their 1972 book Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari reimagined the schizophrenic not as a pathological subject but as a figure who 'deterritorialises' fixed structures of identity and social organisation. Where psychoanalysis understood desire as repression and sublimation—organised through the familial structure of the Oedipus complex—Deleuze and Guattari proposed 'schizoanalysis', a practice that connects bodies, systems, and ecologies in open-ended assemblages. Always intended as a tool for social and political transformation, schizoanalysis was never confined to the clinic.

Curated by Institute of Modern Art Adjunct Curator Stephanie Berlangieri, Desire Is a Machine brings together artists who understand desire not as a lack to be filled but as a generative, machinic force coursing through all life. The artists engage with the legacy of schizoanalysis by reorienting how mental health is understood, foregrounding connections between living beings, technologies and other entities, and conceptualising the flows of capital and information. The exhibition shifts focus from the individual psyche to the collective and relational, affirming desire's capacity to disrupt, reimagine, and reorganise the world.

Artists: Graeme Doyle, Stuart Ringholt and Giselle Stanborough (Australia); Pedro França and Rodrigo Sano with Ueinzz Theatre Company (Brazil); Aurélien Froment (Scotland/France); Fritz Kahn (Germany); and Angela Melitopoulos (Greece/Germany) and Maurizio Lazzarato (France/Italy).