Videoregistration Composing for Multispecies Survival in Dark Times
On Thursday, 20 November 2025, the Nieuwe Instituut celebrated the opening of the exhibition FUNGI: Anarchist Designers. The festivities included a discussion featuring FUNGI co-curator and anthropologist Anna Tsing and science historian and philosopher Donna Haraway, which took place in a sold-out auditorium.
10 December 2025
Moderator Rosi Braidotti began by quickly addressing the question of how to pronounce the scientific names of the evening’s key figures. “For convenience’s sake, let’s just call them ‘funky’!” she said.
The three influential thinkers, who have been colleagues and friends for decades, then discussed a wide variety of inspiring examples of coexistence and survival in these dark times of mass extinction and other ecological crises. To mark the occasion, the guests of honour, Haraway and Tsing, took on the roles of two types of fungi: the indigo milkcap (Lactarius indigo) and the striate earthstar (Geastrum striatum). Watch their hopeful and playful conversation here.
- Speakers: Aukje Bolle, General and Managing Director of the Nieuwe Instituut; Geertjan de Vugt, Director of the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation; Rosi Braidotti, philosopher and University Professor Emerita at Utrecht University; Donna Haraway, philosopher and historian of science, and 2025 Erasmus Prize laureate; and Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, anthropologist and co-curator of the exhibition FUNGI: Anarchist Designers.
- Music: Nicholas Thayer.
- Costumes for Tsing and Haraway: Romy Day Winkel and Viivi Valpuri.
- In collaboration with the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation.
