The New AcademyThe New Academy

Philosopher Rosi Braidotti refers to the simultaneous occurrence of these phenomena as ‘the posthuman convergence’. According to Braidotti, responding to posthuman convergence requires considering the more-than-human agents while keeping in mind the social agenda. This requires bringing attention to those humans, who are dehumanised, marginalised, or excluded from current technological developments while being most exposed to environmental degradation. The ‘posthuman convergence’ brings together the technological systems such as Artificial Intelligence or robotics, the toll they take upon the environment, and the inequalities they foster in the contemporary social and economic systems. The New Academy aims to address environmentalism not only for the elites, but also for the marginalised communities in Rotterdam including people of colour, urban poor, migrants, lgbtq+ people, and non or low-educated social groups.

One of the concerns of posthuman philosophy is that emerging new forms of knowledge production are increasingly segregated. Especially the separation between knowledges related to new technologies and sustainability, combined with the lack of connection between them and the social agenda. The New Academy challenges this compartmentalisation by fostering experiments with new, intersectional methods that cut across these divisions and create connections between the technological, the environmental and the socio-economic dimensions.

The posthuman method used by The New Academy focuses on the embodied and embedded perspectives of non-human entities, ranging from elements such as water, air, and the earth as living entities, including non-human organisms such as animals, plants, mycelia, and microbes. This method also accounts for perspectives of dehumanised and marginalised humans situated in advanced capitalism. According to Braidotti, a better understanding of the multi-layered character of knowledge produced by all those actors is needed to support a transition to a socially and ecologically just city. This requires more attention to real-life subjects and how they engage with distributed knowledge production practices, within the space of the contemporary city.

Rosi Braidotti is a philosopher and an emeritus professor of Utrecht University. She is a Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion and received the Humboldt Research Award for 2021-22. Her most important books include The Posthuman, Posthuman Knowledge, Posthuman Feminism, Nomadic Subjects and Nomadic Theory. Her work has been translated into more than 20 languages and she has collaborated with art museums and design institutions worldwide. Her philosophical ideas have inspired artists and curators, most recently for the 2022 Venice Art Biennale. Together with the team of the Nieuwe Instituut, she is shaping The New Academy and bringing together various forms of knowledge by designers, researchers and residents for a Curriculum for Rotterdam.