Please note: -1 is closed between Monday 19 August and Friday 6 September. On 12 September -1 hosts an Open House for the new residency programme.
In the depths of the Nieuwe Instituut, down industrial metal stairs and between humming servers, there is a new hub for digital culture called -1. Part laboratory, part exhibition space, -1 responds to the urgent need to address critical issues in digital culture, from the rapid advancement of AI and the reemergence of do-it-yourself technology to the inclusion of more diverse and alternative voices in computing.
As such, -1 is a testing ground for intermingling digital culture and its practitioners, participants and audiences. It does so through activities ranging from artist and researcher residencies to modelling workshops and collective thinking sessions, while presenting works-in-process, immersive research documentation, and prototyping projects—alongside the hardware, software and motivations that bring them to life.
-1 is curated by Dr. Ramon Amaro, Senior Researcher for Digital Cultures, Nieuwe Instituut, and researcher Benjamin Earl. You can also follow -1 on Instagram.
Follow -1 research and documentation
-1 is a constantly shifting and adapting space that reacts to and fosters deep research into the developments of digital culture. As the space, it’s use, and it’s identity change in realtime, the -1 team have begun to use are.na to document, collect, organise, and curate the research that is currently being undertaken by the artists and researchers in residence as well as the -1 team. From behind-the-scenes prototyping and construction to archival research and imagery, you can take a look at what’s going on in -1 at our are.na page.
➝ Keep track of -1 at our are.na pageSuperkilogirls Workshop
Earlier this year, -1 invited the the Superkilogirls, a trio of researchers, artists and writers (Camila Galaz (USA), Ana Meisel (UK) and Lua Vollaard (NL)) to investigate the material infrastructures of computing, its entanglement with women’s labour, and how the historical marginalisation of these efforts reverberate now. During the two days, the Superkilogirls took over -1 and hosted an open office to work towards the creation of a “Manual for Superfluous Motions” where they worked with material found in the archive of Nieuwe Institute and Stichting Link.
Embodied Restoration Lab
-1 Researcher-in-Residence Afaina de Jong hosted the Embodied Restoration Lab at Nieuwe Instituut and -1. Afaina brought together an amazing group of participants to explore how the architectural practice, and its complicated entanglement with social and ecological destruction, can be developed into a practice that fundamentally reimagines a new system of value and methodologies for engagement with the social and ecological. The event created a space for this group to engage with the design of a regenerative design algorithm that explores practices and imaginaries at the intersection of architectural & ecological restoration.