Remapping Collaborations Working Group presents publication
How does (international) collaboration unfold within the context of biennales and other international events? In a new publication presenting findings, tools and proposals, Nieuwe Instituut’s Remapping Collaborations Working Group highlights how international cultural events can embrace unpredictability, opacity, and discomfort in their forms of collaboration.
5 June 2025
The publication brings together a selection of transcripts from the Working Group’s public events, along with essays by contributors that offer tools, methods, and new perspectives that challenge the dominant frameworks of cultural events. Can biennales evolve into spaces of solidarity rather than spectacle? Can they embrace disorientation, opacity, and discomfort as fertile ground for new forms of working together? Rather than presenting fixed answers, the publication calls for ongoing, relational negotiations toward more meaningful and generative international collaboration.
About the Working Group
During the 2023 edition of the London Design Biennale, the Nieuwe Instituut, in collaboration with the Creative Industries Fund NL, brought together an international working group to research issues arising from that year's theme, The Global Game: Remapping Collaborations, and to develop tools and propose new ways of working for future international events. Through public work sessions and gatherings in London and Rotterdam—facilitated by Nieuwe Instituut researchers Delany Boutkan and Setareh Noorani—the Remapping Collaborations Working Group reflected on questions raised by past and current biennial models.
Launch and availability
The Remapping Collaborations Working Group publication is launched at the residence of the Dutch Embassy in London during this year’s London Design Biennale 2025. It is accompanied by a video that premieres during the Biennale, which is set to be released online in full later in 2025.
The 96-page publication is now available at various stores, including NAi Booksellers, and online through Idea Books.
Contributors
The Remapping Collaborations Working Group publication is edited by Delany Boutkan and Setareh Noorani (Nieuwe Instituut), with editorial coordination by Joyce Hanssen (Nieuwe Instituut), copy editing by Jason Coburn, photography by Adam Slama and Tomas Mutsaers, and graphic design by Jeanine van Berkel. The publication features contributions from the Remapping Collaborations Working Group: Yin Aiwen, Ali T. As’ad, Nishat Awan, Delany Boutkan, Anja Groten, Colin Keays, Setareh Noorani, and RESOLVE Collective.
Commissioned by Creative Industries Fund NL and the Nieuwe Instituut.