ResearchResearch

This year, the Research team at the Nieuwe Instituut proposed Tool Sheds as the theme for the Call for Fellows. This theme focuses on the research and application of tools, instruments, formats and methods that could contribute to a society that supports all life. Researchers ‘inhabit’ the space of the Tool Sheds to test and share tools and applied methodologies, metaphorically or otherwise.

Using the Tool Sheds as a starting point, this year’s Call for Fellows invited applicants to conceptualise, design and test applied research tools, instruments, methods, formats and processes for generative world-building using material, theoretical, political, time-based or place-based sets of practices. More information on the open call can be found here.

All the applications were assessed on the basis of their engagement with the Tool Sheds theme and with contemporary challenges, connection with the Nieuwe Instituut’s vision, depth of investigation, situatedness and distinctiveness of research theme and methodology, and clarity of positioning within the socio-economic, nature-cultural and political context. Preference was given to proposals that demonstrated critical and forward thinking. Individuals and collectives from any country were invited to apply. No CVs or letters of recommendation were requested. The fellowships are open to all levels of study in all disciplines. Equal priority is given to those without a degree or institutional affiliation who can demonstrate a high level of creativity, critical thinking or other potential in their respective fields.

Between the announcement of the Open Call for Fellows on 19 June 2023 and the deadline on 10 September 2023, the Nieuwe Instituut received 319 applications from all over the world. The applicants’ interests included a wide range of approaches and topics, such as exploring curatorial practices and engaging with urgent human and more-than-human ecologies. Proposals ranged from sustaining and maintaining ongoing collective practices to strategies for world-building during or following planetary apocalypse, and from developing alternative perspectives on bio-materialities to community-based learning initiatives situated in kitchens, DIY spaces and digital realms. Research Department members Ramon Amaro, Delany Boutkan, Klaas Kuitenbrouwer, Setareh Noorani, Federica Notari, and Wietske Nutma read all the entries. They pre-selected 33 projects that best exemplified this open call’s criteria.

The pre-selected proposals, along with the full set of submissions, were made available to a jury consisting of Aric Chen (general and artistic director, Nieuwe Instituut), Renan Laru-an (researcher, curator and artistic director, SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin), Melissa Haniff, Akil Scafe-Smith and Seth Scafe-Smith (all members of the interdisciplinary design collective Resolve and former Nieuwe Instituut research fellows), Kate Rich (artist, trader and founder of Feral MBA) and Sandi Hilal (architect, researcher and co-founder of DAAR, Decolonising Architecture Art Residency). The jury members read all 33 shortlisted proposals and could nominate any other projects for inclusion.

The jury meeting took place on 9 and 10 October. The meeting was chaired by Delany Boutkan and Federica Notari (from the Research Department of the Nieuwe Instituut). The jury evaluated the proposals according to their engagement with the Tool Sheds theme and contemporary challenges, connection with the Nieuwe Instituut’s vision, depth of investigation, situatedness and a distinctive research theme and methodology, and clarity of positioning within the socio-economic, nature-cultural and political context. Preference was given to proposals that demonstrated critical and forward thinking and projects that could engage with future circulations. Nieuwe Instituut’s team members and jurors negotiated consensus on proposals, while acknowledging groups and individuals with whom they have affiliations or conflicts of interest.

The jury commended the wide range of collectives that applied and of the proposals that were submitted, and the critical and generative engagement with the theme. The jury recognised the outstanding quality of the shortlisted projects and therefore requested that three applicants and projects be awarded a Research Fellowship rather than the formal two. The three selected proposals demonstrate sensitivity and timeliness, fostering site-specific approaches that have the potential to be extended to larger and different contexts. Each proposal shows specificity and carefully situates its research through a practice-based approach that reflects and reinterprets the Tool Shed in its own distinctive way.

lumbung.space & lumbung kios
In a collaborative effort towards achieving networked sustainability, lumbung.space and lumbung kios conspire to further develop digital tools and financial systems that counter extractive frameworks and instead emphasise entangled ways of working while navigating differences in access, distribution and forms of making public. Originally developed during Documenta 15, lumbung.space is a platform offering a range of (online) services that extend and collectivise a wide range of artistic and design practices. lumbung kios is an international network experimenting with the structure of a shop to generate and redistribute financial income through the sale of goods produced by and for lumbung members, lumbung artists and their local ecosystems, using instances of exchange as opportunities or critiques.

Luna BuGhanem
Luna BuGhanem is an artist, researcher, and architectural designer. Luna’s research projects explore travel and translocality across scales, ranging from objects and buildings to systems. Her artistic practice spans multiple media and focuses on personal themes, mostly on how moving from one place to another and adapting to unfamiliar environments shapes a person’s experience. Luna holds a Master’s degree from MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning and Bachelor’s degrees of architecture and fine arts from RISD.

Varia
Varia is a Rotterdam-based initiative and space for developing collective approaches to everyday technology. Varia’s members note: “As Varia members, we maintain and facilitate a collective infrastructure from which we generate questions, opinions, modifications, help and action. We work with free software, organise events and collaborate in different constellations.”

lumbung.space and lumbung kios have their origins as prototypes for digital and economic self-determination, which were created in the specific context of Documenta 15 in Kassel. What lessons can be learned from these early prototypes, and where can these artistic projects go next? What does our international network of distant but allied art practices need, both in terms of digital infrastructure and economic networks, to work towards networked sustainability? The two projects and the questions they raise are intertwined in many ways: How can such systems (networks of people and digital toolsets) be organised to function globally but be sustained locally? How can regional differences in wealth be taken into account between the local and the global? What are the possibilities of opening up and what forms of making public can be considered? To answer these questions, we will return to the majelis (‘assembly’) as a space for sharing knowledge and challenging power dynamics. We will begin with a three-day meeting to set the agenda and convene both existing and future collaborators. Another majelis will conclude the community as we share our harvest. During the majelis, we aim to set up a version of a physical Lumbung kiosk in Rotterdam as a space for experimentation and encounter, to implement our learning harvests, and as a playful way to open up to public perspectives.

Jury comments: The research proposal submitted by lumbung.space & lumbung kios is compelling in how it is thoughtfully embedded in a practice of doing research by testing and exploring various theoretical and real tools for digital and economic self-organisation. The jury recognises that the proposed working framework engages with methodologies that have a substantial history of trial and error and are embedded in collective practice, as lumbung.space & lumbung kios engage in urgent conversations. The jury encourages lumbung.space & lumbung kios to approach the Nieuwe Instituut Fellowship as an exercise in space and time to continue and reflect on the conversations and critiques shared during Documenta 15. In doing so, the jury underlines the importance of keeping such conversations alive.

Luna BuGhanem uses the term ‘diasporic homemaking’ to refer to the process by which emigrant individuals and families build houses in their homelands while living abroad or while moving from one place to another. In Mount Lebanon, for example, houses are realised through years of remittances, correspondence and visits and are often referred to locally by the geographic location of the emigrants who finance their construction: the American house next to the Saudi house, the Dutch house, the Brazilian house, and so on. At the Nieuwe Instituut, Luna will expand on her previous research, to ask and investigate: What are the tools that support diasporic homemaking and bring the built form into being? And how can diasporic homemaking rethink and expand the architect’s toolkit? As an outcome, she proposes to gather insights into a Diasporic Homemaking Toolkit, dedicated to those spatial practitioners who do not have a permanent ‘shed’ to store their tools.

Jury comments: The jury appreciates Luna’s detailed research as she seeks to construct new languages for homemaking, with impressive sensitivity, attention and vulnerability. It is through this vulnerability that Luna create a vocabulary for architecture that goes beyond the star architect and proposes lenses through which to examine the processes of building and making. The epistemic humility of the project allows for the research matter to be replicable and accessible to different publics. As Luna embarks on the research fellowship, the jury invites her to stay close to her own path and not to follow the fellowship’s theme too directly, and encourages her to move away from solutionist approaches and applying the notion of ‘tools’ too quickly. Rather, she should see the toolkit as a placeholder for larger reflections which are already unfolding.

The theme of Tool Sheds is an invitation to preserve digital culture through the open distribution of resources and a set of ethics that sustain it. Varia’s situated approach results in tools that we bring together as ‘patches’ to respond to particular needs and curiosities. Our focus is on developing the sites through which Varia’s resources are accessed and through which we practice within digital culture: our website and archive. We want to offer these as tools for making public, involving peers in the process, while learning how other self-organised initiatives have been archived historically. Building digital tools within and/or for Varia has always involved discussing their appropriateness. Are they socially useful for the collective? Who else can benefit from using them? We want to make our encounters with the public conscious and mutually fulfilling. We want to develop common vocabularies with our peers to build our network of solidarity. The metaphorical spaces created through conversation provide stable contexts in which these tools can be made, shared and used. Our methodology has three phases: 1) stocktaking, inspired by permaculture practices; 2) mending, where community building and co-maintenance come together; and 3) patchworking, where we will use the tools, vocabularies and methods developed in the first two phases as patches woven together.

Jury Comments: The jury recognises the radicality of Varia’s approach, which is distinctive among all the applications dealing with similar issues and urgencies. The jury acknowledges Varia’s sincere dedication to using the Nieuwe Instituut Fellowship as an opportunity for reflection, exploration and most importantly; nurturing its members’ practice. The questions Varia poses may seem banal, but are in fact urgent: How do you continue the practice you have successfully maintained for so long? How do you support such a big collective? The jury applauds Varia’s methods in maintaining its DIY collective and encourages it to keep finding different ways of being public-facing and of actively working through what this ‘publicness’ means for the different audiences for their practice.