International Visitors Programme
As part of the Lithium research and exhibition project, Het Nieuwe Instituut invited architects and researchers Godofredo Pereira and Pedro Alonso and anthropologist Emily Martin to take part in a series of online programmes on the mineral lithium and how it relates to forms of burn-out on a planetary, human and technological scale. The meetings were organised in the context of Thursday Night Live! Due to the coronavirus regulations in force at the time, these TNL! activities were streamed.
As part of the Lithium research and exhibition project, Het Nieuwe Instituut invited architects and researchers Godofredo Pereira and Pedro Alonso and anthropologist Emily Martin to take part in a series of online programmes on the mineral lithium and how it relates to forms of burn-out on a planetary, human and technological scale. The meetings were organised in the context of Thursday Night Live! Due to the coronavirus regulations in force at the time, these TNL! activities were streamed.
During the first event in the series, Godofredo Pereira talked about the consequences of lithium mining on the Atacama Salt Flat. _Lithium Dreams: Extraction in the Salar de Atacama_ took place on 19 November 2020. Pereira, together with London's Lithium Triangle Studio and musician and composer Nicolás Jaar, was behind the multimedia installation The Ends of the World, which was one of the 'treatments' or rooms in the exhibition that was conceived as a spa.
Emily Martin was invited for an exclusive interview about lithium and mental health in pop culture. From Burn-Out to 7UP: On Lithium and Mental Health took place on 14 January 2021.
The three panel members, Alonso, Martin and Pereira, all contributed to the book Lithium: States of Exhaustion (in collaboration with the Chilean publisher Ediciones ARQ), which was compiled by Francisco Díaz, Anastasia Kubrak and Marina Otero Verzier as an extension of the exhibition and accompanying programming. The book builds on the thinking and research that underpinned the project. Drawing on their own viewpoints and expertise, the contributors reflect on both the beneficial effects and the harmful aspects of the element of the same name.
The Lithium exhibition could be seen at Het Nieuwe Instituut from 20 September 2020 to 15 August 2021.