In search of the PluriverseIn search of the Pluriverse

Lately, as makers and as human beings, we have been feeling deep discomfort with the way we - as Western capitalist society - live with each other and with other-than-humans on this planet. Patriarchal thinking and doing, greed, waste, inequality. To secure a future for all living entities on this planet, we feel that a radical shift is needed. But how? We chose a book as our guide: Designs for the Pluriverse by Colombian anthropologist Arturo Escobar. His writing brings together many different ways of knowing. We set to work with some notions from the book: the realisation that we are all interdependent, the idea that autonomy and communality can go hand in hand and - if we want to "make a world in which many worlds can thrive" - the need for radical imaginations.

We decided to search at the fringes of Europe for manifestations of this more pluriversal way of looking at life and this planet. Why edges, why fringes? Because where one thing ends and another begins, change has room to grow. With makers and thinkers based in the Netherlands, we are connecting with local makers and thinkers in five locations: İstanbul, the Scottish Isle of Mull, Berlin, Casablanca and the Spanish region Asturias. At these locations we capture the encounters in radio talks that we publish as podcasts. We are still in the middle of this process of travelling, looking, listening and editing.

For this exhibition, we have reshuffled the narrative into a circular story of four chapters that you can look at as seasons or moments of the day. Time to Harvest. Letting Go. New Beginnings. Heat of the Action. There is a lot to see and to do in this digital version of our 'pluriversal yard' you are about to enter. Probably more than you can handle in one visit. There are 27 doors into the pluriverse: some small, some a little bigger. And if this digital tour stimulates your appetite: till August 7th 2022, you can visit the physical version of the exhibition in Rotterdam. We not only want to show a glimpse of the pluriverse, we are also trying to be pluriversal.

Come in, the door is open. Sophie Krier & Erik Wong @insearchofthepluriverse

The exhibition includes online and offline contributions from: Mae-ling Lokko, Yaşar Adnan Adanalı (Centre of Spatial Justice), Kıvılcım Özmen & Besê Diribaş, Suzanne Dhaliwal, Aslı Hatipoğlu, Huis van de Toekomst & Feest van de Eenvoud (Melle Smets, Klaas Burger, Bart Groenewegen, Peik Suyling, Ayse Alcinkaya), Tony & Judy Gibson, School of Mutants (Hamedine Kane, Stéphane Verlet-Bottéro, Valérie Osouf, Boris Raux), Severine Amsing, Bodil Ouédraogo, Anne van Leeuwen (Bodemzicht), Nina van Hartskamp, Camila Marambio & Ariel Bustamante, Tom Morton (Arc Architects) & the Travellers, Miek Zwamborn (Knockvologan), Collins+Goto (Tim Collins, Reiko Goto) & Chris Malcolm, Serkan Taycan, Mhairi Killin, Lonnie van Brummelen, Siebren de Haan & Tolin Alexander, Joke Robaard, Nur Horsanalı, Jay Tompt (REconomy Centre), Sabine Zahn, The Linen Project, Ooze Architects (Eva Pfannes, Silvain Hartenberg) & Marjetica Potrč, Kornelia Dimitrova, la C.A.R. (Cellule d'Actions Rituelles), Cynthia Hathaway (WASA / Wool Alliance for Social Agency), Li An Phoa & Thom Verheul, Ola Hassanain, Tomás Espinosa, Valeria López and Ana Bravo Péres, Bárbara Sanchez, Franchesca Caballero, Nini Palomino, Natalia Bernal, Daniela Maldonado, and those who prefer not to be named.

For the spatial design of In Search of the Pluriverse, architect Sean Leonard draws on the idea of the Caribbean yard, a semi-public private space where daily activities such as cooking, playing, working and rehearsing (for Carnival!) need to be combined. Negotiation is key. What does a pluriversal yard look like? Come and find out.

"The weather" is a perfect way to link a "here" to a "now". Wong and Krier often start their podcast conversations with a weather report. Graphic designer Miquel Hervás Gomez translated weather conditions into typographic constellations. These likeable yet abstract narratives form the basis of the graphic layer of the exhibition.

The exhibition has been put together as an inspiring introduction to the themes, locations, thinkers and designers that feature in a long-running project by Wong and Krier. Through intensive field research, a lively Instagram channel, a series of podcasts, several do-it-yourself exercises and a list of reading suggestions, In Search of the Pluriverse offers further depth to what can be seen in the exhibition. Krier and Wong aim to connect different places in the world, different kinds of knowledge and different ways of living together.