Franco Berardi, commonly known as Bifo, offers a multifaceted analysis of art that positions creative expression as a crucial form of resistance against contemporary capitalism. His theorization of art emerges from his broader critique of what he terms “semiocapitalism”—a system where signs, symbols, and information have become the primary commodities and where cognitive labor has replaced physical production as the dominant economic force. Within this framework, Berardi examines art not merely as aesthetic expression but as a potent political tool capable of reactivating human sensibility in an increasingly automated and desensitized world.
Historical Art Movements Through Berardi’s Lens
Berardi analyzes several key art movements to understand how art has historically engaged with technology, politics, and language:
In Berardi’s view, futurism represented an enthusiastic embrace of the machine age, with figures like Marinetti declaring automobiles more beautiful than classical sculptures. The Futurists sought to create the future through poetry and graphic art, understanding the future itself as an effect of language. Futurists like Fortunato Depero believed that “the art of the future will be powerfully advertising-oriented,” glorifying industry, science, and fashion. However, Berardi notes that the formal innovation of Futurism was eventually subsumed by propaganda in totalitarian regimes.
In contrast, the Bauhaus movement attempted to synthesize utopia and practical design, seeking to abolish the separation between art and everyday life through functionality and constructive style. Berardi identifies this school’s revolutionary approach to typography and design as finding the intersection between art and functionality.
Berardi examines Dadaism for its ironic stance and suspension of meaning, contrasting it with Futurism’s hyperbolic affirmation. The Dadaists attempted to abolish art and everyday life as separate domains, though Berardi characterizes this more as a suspension than an actual abolition.
According to Berardi, surrealism demonstrated an awareness of the semantic over-inclusivity of signs and sought to liberate possibility from the constraints of reality. It explored the relationship between unconscious processes and symbolic consciousness. He particularly values Surrealism’s political effects in affirming the transformative power of the unconscious and the imaginary.
Art as Resistance in the Digital Age
In the contemporary context of semiocapitalism, Berardi argues that art, particularly poetry, serves as a crucial form of resistance against the colonization of language by algorithms and binary codes. He writes that “poetry is the breathing of the possible in a world suffocated by the predictability of financial capital.” Art creates spaces of deceleration where language and senses can be reimagined, interrupting the accelerated flow of pre-fabricated meanings dominant in digital communication.
Berardi suggests that semiocapitalism anesthetizes sensibility through informational overload, digital hyperstimulation, and standardization of emotions (exemplified by social media mechanisms like “likes” and emojis). Art counters this by creating spaces where ambiguity and the unexpected can emerge.
Poetry as Transformative Force
Poetry holds a special place in Berardi’s thought. He views it as “the voice of language” and the reappearance of the deictic function of enunciation—the sensory excess that reopens the infinite game of interpretation. Poetic language represents the occupation of communication space by words that escape the plane of exchange.
In his “Post-Futurist Manifesto,” Berardi proposes that the essential elements of poetry are irony, tenderness, and rebellion, in contrast to mobilization for profit and war. He asserts that “beauty exists only in autonomy” and that poetry creates bridges for sharing and liberating singularity.
For Berardi, poetry anticipated the abandonment of referentialization and the automation of language, and today can initiate the reactivation of the emotional body and social solidarity. He considers it a hidden tool that enables paradigm shifts.
Art as Collective Care
Beyond individual expression, Berardi conceptualizes art as a communal practice that can rebuild social bonds eroded by competition and digital isolation. He references movements like Dadaism and urban artistic occupations as examples of reclaiming public space through creativity.
In “Futurability” (2017), Berardi argues that art helps reimagine collective futures, replacing profit logic with an ethics of care. This vision stands in contrast to what he criticizes as the “creative industry,” which commodifies art, precarizes artists, demands constant “innovation,” and reduces creation to entertainment products or branding.
Art, Therapy, and the Ritornello
Berardi explores the relationship between art and (schizo)therapy through the concept of ritornello (borrowed from Guattari), which describes semiotic concatenations capable of connecting to the environment. He suggests that twentieth-century art was engaged with acceleration, reaching a point of saturation in collective perception. However, contemporary art has the potential to rebalance the osmosis between mind and chaos through Guattari’s concept of “chaosmosis.”
Conclusion: Art as Breathing Space
For Berardi, art represents an act of psychic and political survival. In a world where subjectivity is colonized by algorithms and communication reduced to transactions, art offers a space to breathe, create meaning, and reconnect bodies and minds. As he poignantly states: “Poetry will not save the world, but without poetry, there will be no world to save.”
Through his analysis of art, Berardi ultimately invites us to consider creative expression not as a luxury or mere entertainment but as a necessary practice of resistance and reimagination in an increasingly automated and alienated world. By preserving the complexity of human language and its capacity to create alternative worlds, art becomes a vital force against the reductive tendencies of contemporary capitalism.