Het Nieuwe Instituut Online #5
During the temporary closure of Het Nieuwe Instituut a weekly newsletter provides an update of online programming and a selection of our online content. This web page is based on Newsletter #5 - 23 April 2020
23 April 2020
Who is We?
"Only together will we get corona under control," is the slogan on the backdrop of the space where the Dutch Prime Minister, ministers, and experts give their press briefings. It's interesting how this phrase sounds completely self-evident, yet still raises big questions - for example, about the word 'control', the combination of 'only' and 'together', and the word 'we'. Who is we, actually?
That question - _Who is We? _- is also the title of the exhibition in the Dutch pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale this year, the opening of which is planned (for the time being) for 29 August. The question posed by curator Hashim Sarkis - How will we live together?- prompted Het Nieuwe Instituut to ask: _Who is we? _The exhibition offers perspectives on a design practice based on a multiple understanding of who we are: Other, female, of colour or multi-species. Whatever society we strive for, the equal and proportional involvement of a diversity of people and non-people is crucial. The coronavirus makes it clear that this society is desperately needed, but also that it seems far away.
The Multiplicity of Other In the context of Multiplicity of Other, her contribution to the exhibition in the Dutch pavilion in Venice, architect Afaina de Jong presents a mixtape in collaboration with designer and DJ InnaVisions, with music by artists whose work explores Other worlds, spaces and spirituality: a Space of Other. De Jong sees music as an important 'language' and a creative expression of the spatial complexity of metropolitan life. Music can even be considered as a spatial-art discipline. The songs on the mixtape range from contemporary jazz and beat productions to 1970s jazz and broken beats.
Values for Survival The research programme Values for Survival, developed by Professor Caroline Nevejan, unites (international) scientists, designers and policymakers in an exploration of the meaning of the themes of Who is We? for the urgent spatial and social issues on which they are working.
Radical Observation Exercise
Multispecies Urbanism "Find a location for your ecological intervention: a clearing in the local food forest, in your front- or backyard, or a communal garden." So begins Radical Observation No. 23, developed by Debra Solomon to connect with the surrounding natural ecosystems.
Zoöp As the environmental and societal pressure on them increases way beyond their adaptive capacity, how can non-human populations counterbalance exclusively human-centred systems? The zoöp is a proposal for an alternative: a cooperative, cross-species legal entity in which humans and ecological communities work together as partners.
Total Space By 'total space', architect Jaap Bakema meant a relational approach to humans and their environment through which he introduced an almost cosmological understanding of space. This ecological conception of architecture was explored through the notion of Habitat during the CIAM congress in 1956. The installation of the same name at Het Nieuwe Instituut can now be seen online and the book that will be published in June can be ordered here.
Failed Architecture wonders in the editorial 'The Virus Biennale: Shall We Call The Whole Thing Off?', if we can seize the opportunity offered by the corona crisis to completely overhaul the way we produce and consume culture.
If we want humanity to survive the climate crisis, we need to formulate collective, creative solutions now, according to philosopher Rosi Braidotti.
The Cultures of Energy podcast examines the ethical and political significance and relevance of 'care' in a more-than-human world.
Designer Petra Blaisse believes that we should look to the earth for responses to 'above-ground' problems in landscape architecture and urban planning.
According to the authors of the book Terra Preta, you can use a surprisingly simple recipe to make a kind of fertile soil that may offer a solution for climate change and famine.
The 99% Invisible podcast devotes a two-parter to the story behind the metropolitan utopia of Amsterdam's Bijlmer as a Modernist 'city of the future'.