The loss of human centrality, the consequences of anthropic action, environmental aesthetics and otherness or the reproductions and displacements of natural phenomena, have reconfigured throughout the last century the way in which thought compromises or problematizes the natural, sparking a discussion that blurs the boundaries between aesthetics, ethics and politics. Organisms that grow roots as they go; such is the meaning of ‘radicante’, a new tool for collective thinking and action. Through affect, situated practice, and a new critical aesthetic consciousness via curatorial practice, we will seek to provide tools for the creation of artistic proposals that have real-world consequences.  

Delving into some of the most urgent issues related to the current ecological crisis and the necessary redefinition of human activity on the planet and its relationship with other beings, these meeting will focus on curatorial practices that assert a nomadic, transformative, and rooting positioning in the face of contemporary urgencies.

Affection and coexistence 
Filipa Ramos  with Gabriel Alonso and Yuri Tuma
April 29th, 2023 at 12 h.  

“The relationship with the natural world not as a source to learn from… as the knowledge extracted from it. I think that there is a difference between learning from the outside and truly feeling from within, having an experience that allows us to understand things in a different way, a sort of embodied epistemology. Art has the ability to do this.”

Filipa Ramos

Through the perspective of Filipa Ramos, an independent curator (VIII Biennale Gherdëina, “Bodies of Water”, XIII Shanghai Biennale, Vdrome, among others),  we will discuss different ways of speaking about and with other animals, questioning the idea of empathy and how it needs to be reconsidered for new modes of connection and transforming. We will also debate the role that legality is playing in the anthropomorphization of landscapes, territories and animals and how these bureaucratic entanglements  obscure the complexities of life and the distinct and unique landscapes.

PIP #1 - Postnatural Independent Program

These encounters enrich the independent program’s itinerary of the Institute for Postnatural Studies, a new learning space that offers theoretical tools, embodied learning and collective experience to define and develop projects that examine postnature as a framework for contemporary creation.  It is six months long (February July 2023), using a dual methodology that incorporates both theory and practice. Based on the ongoing initiatives of IPS, it offers an experimental platform for ecological thinking and cultural initiatives on an expanded virtual campus, addressing the students’ potential from a holistic mentoring perspective. It also brings together established researchers and art institutions that will host working sessions, meetings, and presentations. During the encounters, participants will share their work and research process, creating an open space for conversation around the projects in development.     

Filipa Ramos, born in Lisbon, is a writer, teacher and curator. Her research focuses on the relationships between contemporary art and film, how moving images address environmental and ecological issues and, in particular, the ways in which artists' films foster interspecies relationships between humans, non-humans and machines. She teaches on the MRes Arts at Central Saint Martins (London) and in the MA program at the Institute of Arts, Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst, Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz (Basel). Ramos is the founding curator of Vdrome, a program of film screenings by visual artists and filmmakers that she runs with Andrea Lissoni. She is the curator of the symposia series "The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish" with Lucia Pietroiusti for the Serpentine Galleries, London.

Gabriel Alonso (Madrid, 1986) is a visual artist and researcher formed between the ETSAM (Madrid), the Technische Universität (Berlin), and Columbia University in New York at the MS-CCCP, where he graduated with honors with his research thesis An Archaeology of Containment. In his works, through various formats such as installation, sculpture, photography or video, he investigates contemporary relationships between fiction and materiality, in order to blur binomials between the natural and the artificial, the human and the non-human, understanding nature as a complex cultural construct. Represented by Pradiauto Gallery (Madrid), his work has been exhibited in different galleries and international exhibitions, such as Nordés Galería (Santiago de Compostela), CaixaForum (Barcelona), La Casa Encendida (Madrid), CA2M (Madrid), Centro-Centro (Madrid), Fundación La Caixa (Barcelona), Matadero (Madrid), John Doe Gallery (New York), IIAF (New York), Poor Media Leuven (Belgium), Mila Gallery (Berlin) among others. He has been assistant professor at Barnard College of the University of Columbia (NYC) and at the Master of Advanced Architecture of the ETSAM, and has given many lectures, talks and workshops in different international institutions, museums and universities. In 2020, he received the Creation Grant from the Madrid City Council, and in 2016 he received the FAD award for his publication Desierto and was awarded one of the prestigious grants from the Graham Foundation for the Fine Arts. In 2020, he founded the Institute for Postnatural Studies. In parallel to his academic experimentation, research and curatorial practice, he develops an editorial practice through the platform Cthulhu books.

Yuri Tuma, Multidisciplinary Brazilian artist, Yuri Tuma focuses on the investigation of contemporary narratives related to diverse ecologies through sound art, installation, and performance as a way to address and reevaluate the human/animal binomial imposed by science and Western thinking. More actively, in addition to academic programming and development, he coordinates the Institute's publishing project, Cthulhu Books, to become a showcase for the political potential of imagining new worlds and possible futures for the planet through academic and artistic research. Starting in 2021, in addition to participating in residencies and coordinating workshops around interspecies thinking, Tuma works with educational and mediation programs through sound art and performance at Spanish institutions such as Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Matadero, La Casa Encendida, INLAND, among others.

The Institute for Postnatural Studies is a center for artistic experimentation that explores and problematizes postnature as a framework for contemporary creation. Founded in 2020, it is conceived as a platform for critical thought, a network that brings together artists and researchers concerned with issues related to the global ecological crisis, through experimental formats of exchange and open knowledge production.