NEUHAUS Academy for more-than-human knowledge 1 Het Nieuwe Instituut “Let us therefore create a new guild of craftsmen craftspeople without the class distinctions that raise an arrogant barrier between craftsman craftsperson and artist. Culture of the few and the many, research and experience, human and nonhuman, science and poetry! Together let us desire, conceive, and create the new structure of the future, which will embrace architecture and sculpture and painting everything in one unity a multiplicity which will one day rise toward heaven from the hands of a million workers like the crystalline living symbol of a new faith.” — Walter Gropius, Bauhaus Manifesto, April 1919; updated by Neuhaus, April 2019 3 Het Nieuwe Instituut In collaboration with academies, designers, artists, theatre makers, machines, chefs, inventors, researchers, algorithms, activists and neighbours, Neuhaus ran a open-ended curriculum that revolved around the following questions: What could humans—if they actively ignore their own values and needs—learn from and with more-than-human actors and in what ways can humans arrive at these alternative forms of knowledge? With special thanks to Gerrit Rietveld Academie Rawshaping (Jeroen Kramer, Iskra Vuksic, (dr. ing. Robert E. Wendrich) Maze de Boer) Research Institute of Botanical Alexandra Oudewater Gert Staal Linguistics Alexia Manzano Goethe-Institut Rotterdam Rianne Makkink Alexis Destoop (Claudia Curio) RNUL Interactive Ali Eslami Grâce Ndjako (Aart Muis, Rob Donkers) Andy Weir Hackers & Designers NEUHAUS Rozi Toth Angela Rui (Anja Groten, Juliette Lizotte) Ruben Jacobs Annika Kappner Hanna Valle Samiha Awad ARGUS working group Night(s) Hans Jansen SHIFT of Philosophy Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Jan Peter Scheen & Lenn Cox) Arthur Boer & Boris Smeenk Heleen Klopper Sien van Look Asmus Tietchens Hendrik-Jan Hunneman Space4Good Bas van Koolwijk Ian Ingram (Andrej Bocin-Dumitriu, Alexander Bauhaus Kooperation Berlin Inès Leverrier Péborde Gunkel, Liliana Garcia, Elke Sauter Dessau Weimar Jo Goes Hunting & Madhusudhan Srinivasa) Academy for Bennet Edwin Kruit Joe Ziemba Squirrel Nation Carolin Lange & Dico Kruijsse Johanna Weggelaar (Erinma Ochu & Caroline Ward) Center for Philosophical Technologies Jonas Hejduk Stefan Prins at Arizona State University Joost van Veen Stefanie Korrel (Stacey Moran & Adam Nocek) June Yu Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie more-than-human Chris Arends Katya Stepanova Studio Cream on Chrome Clovis Wieske Klasien van de Zandschulp (Jonas Althaus & Martina Huynh) Commonplace Studio, Lara Balladi Studio Moniker Jesse Howard & Tim Knapen Lea Berner Studio New West Cooking Sections Léon Bloch (Edward van Dongen) knowledge (Daniel Fernández Pascual & Lisette Smits Tabita Rezaire Alon Schwabe) Lotte Haagsma Team Landstra Ontwerp & Uitvoering De Beeldvormers Louis Buurman The Empress & Tchozn (Machteld Aardse and Kyra Sacks) Mamali Shafahi The House of Being Corradino Garofalo Mark Baker The Laboratory of Electronic Ageing CreativeMornings Marie-Louise Schmidlin (LEA) Danae Io & Callum Copley Mark Bergwerff The Learning Lab Dani Ploeger Mark Poysden The Otolith Group Daniel de Bruijn Mediamatic Theun Karelse Daphne van Schaijk Menno Schilthuizen Thieu Besselink David OReilly Merle Bergers Tjacco Bakker Dimitri Le Roux Michael Strebel Verbruggen Paddestoelen BV Design Academy Eindhoven Mona Lisa’s Vincent Koorstra Dora Lionstone Nadine Botha Waèl El Allouche Driessens & Verstappen NASA Wieland Textiles Elaine Gan MAMA Willem de Kooning Academie Elfi e Tromp (Nathalie Hartjes) (Aldje van Meer & Franciska Elisa Yvelin Nederlands Film Festival Wierenga) Eric Kluitenberg Nicolas Rotta Wim van Egmond Eric Maltz Offi cina Corpuscoli World Wilder Lab Ernestien Idenburg (Maurizio Montalti) (Erik Overmeire, Kasia Molga) ESA Ollie George Z33 House for Contemporary Art Esben Ingemann Larsen Oregon State University (Jan Boelen, Ils Huygens, Eva Bullens & Floortje Zonneveld Patricia MacCormack Tim Roerig) Eva Langerak Patrycja Beliniak NEUHAUS is supported by Evelina Domnitch & Dmitry Gelfand Pauline Rip Fashion Machine Peter Betner and many more Gemeente Rotterdam (Conny Groenewegen) Peter Kalkman Willem de Kooning Academy Federico Campagna Piet Zwart Institute (Liesbeth Bik) Center for Philosophical Technologies, Floriek Landeweerd Plants & Animalia Francisco López (C.E.S. & Felicity Mangan) Arizona State University Frank Bruggeman Platform-Scenography Frans-Pieter Vonk (Sanne Leufkens, Sigrid Merx, Anne Gaile Pranckunaite & Mislav Žugaj Karin ten Bosch, Ariane Trümper) Gerard Forde PolakVanBekkum Gerard van der Ree Puck van Donselaar Gerjan Piksen Raoul de Jong 1 Raphael Coutin Content Introduction Over the course of 2019, Neuhaus organised a multifaceted curriculum In 2019, exactly 100 years after the together with artists, designers, 5 19 foundation of Bauhaus, the German art academies, theorists, makers TIME WORLDS EXTENDED SENSES art school that combined crafts and more-than-human bodies and fine arts to bring about a new that occupied and transformed 6 20 A STRANGER IN THE CITY NEUHAUS AFFENKÄFIG type of design for ‘the modern man’, Het Nieuwe Instituut’s building On the Tarot and Urban Time BY MONA LISA’S Het Nieuwe Instituut transformed and facilities, adding new ones, A Column by Adeola Enigbokan Visual essay into Neuhaus, a temporary and opening them up to co-create, transdisciplinary academy for co-own, share and perform. 9 PANDORA’S BOX a new type of designer, focused on An interview with Adam Nocek 25 the ‘more-than-human’. NEUHAUS is a collective of humans and MEETING MATTER In Neuhaus, Het Nieuwe Instituut nonhumans 26 wanted to challenge a notion of 12 MATTER SERIES progress that has for centuries NEUHAUS MULTISPECIES URBANISM revolved around the specific needs is a spatial entity and interests of some humans 13 An interview with Debra Solomon 28 with the result that the realities of NEUHAUS almost all other bodies, species, is a learning environment OTHER SUBJECTIVITIES creatures and ecosystems have 30 been side-lined. Today’s ecological NEUHAUS 15 BORDER OBJECTS by Het Collectief and socio-political crises are a is an inclusive place COLLECTIVE BODIES direct consequence of this ethos and exclusionary mechanism. NEUHAUS 16 is an environment that learns THE ZOÖP 33 An interview with Klaas Kuitenbrouwer What happens if we decentre MORE-THAN-HUMAN the human, and embrace the NEUHAUS challenges perception LANGUAGES more-than-human in design? 34 What do we need to learn and NEUHAUS NEULAB how do we learn it? What type of speaks non-verbal metaphors An interview with Aldje van Meer designer emerges then? NEUHAUS produces other knowledge in the age of reset 2 Het Nieuwe Instituut 3 This reader offers an overview of the core themes—the learning trails—of the Neuhaus curriculum, giving an impression of the many TIME contributions and events that took place and will be further developed in the near future. These include WORLDS the continuation of conversations with art and design academies about how to incorporate the more- than-human, the Dutch contribution to How Will We Live Together? at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia that will build upon the multispecies urbanism trail, and the experiments around the zoöp that will continue in Fort Abcoude and at Boerderij Bodemzicht, south of Nijmegen. Contemporary humans live within develop knowledge of the world Follow the developments in the web a system in which they have to at different speeds, and use magazine with events, research material, navigate through seemingly that knowledge to adapt. videos and essays at https://neuhaus. incompatible time scales beyond hetnieuweinstituut.nl/en the temporal experience and The Time Worlds learning trail perception of their species. On asked what can be learned the one hand we humans are only from more-than-human time just beginning to become aware scales in order to understand of our position within geological what it means to live in a time and its processes that used more-than-human world. to slowly unfold over the course of millions of years. At the other end of the spectrum there is the elusive speed of the man-made, digital infosphere that envelops human life, but also manipulates it intensely. Plants, animals, systems and collective bodies such as forests or coral reefs 4 Het Nieuwe Instituut 5 Rituals of welcome are timeless. A cup of “The Bauhaus was a political community as (1) The Foreigner’s Home, lecture given at (2) water offered. Tea brewing. Boots taken much as it was an artistic one.” It was a École Normale Supérieure, Paris, A STRANGER IN THE CITY and replaced with comfy slippers. A formal place of welcome for strangeness, a place 19 December 2003. (2) Holleran, Max, ‘The Dean: out of the ruins bow, the host’s head lowered to the guest. to experiment with different and radical of war Walter Gropius made a vital political A handshake. One, two or three kisses. relationships. But by 1925, the citizens ON THE TAROT AND community’ The New Republic, April 2, 2019. An embrace. No matter the length of the of Weimar kicked out this community of (3) “Our geological bonfire illustrates just how URBAN TIME journey, these rituals open the way for strangers and the school had to move to unusual the project of humanity is. We are new relationships. Every time one leaves Dessau. By 1933, the school was completely trying to retrieve, burn down, and metabolize all the forests and sea life ever buried, from alien A column by Adeola Enigbokan and returns, or arrives for the first time, disbanded, as the fascist machine made worlds long past. We’re not merely lighting a a new relationship must be established everyone foreign in their own home. match to the Amazon and imperiling everything with a place. that lives in it with extinction, but also “The question is are [Science and Art] And now, in 2019, at the Neuhaus academy summoning creatures long dead to return to Earth’s surface and give up the ancient energy married, or just engaged? Or perhaps To be strange in the city is not simply to be in Rotterdam’s Het Nieuwe Instituut, we they took to the grave.