<aside> 🌊 Hello! To have an impression of our New Earth vraagstuk (subject/course/topic) under Social Practices, you can find below the outline of each year as well as the bios of the team. Note that there has been a complete overhaul of the programme last year, so all this content will be revised for next year.
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New Earth centres climate justice, system-change and collective action in engaging with the urgencies of eco-social crises. In this subject area, we offer students inspiration and practical strategies for how artists, designers and cultural workers can contribute to repairing and regenerating an unjust, damaged, but not yet broken planet. Students are invited to engage with and enact concepts such as reciprocity, multi-species community and intergenerational care as they co-create and reclaim the future.
<aside> 🪵 The Minor program is a full semester of courses and assignments in theory and practice. The term project is intended as a group work, and the essay is meant as a positioning paper / political manifesto / artist statement for the student. These lead to the final semester, where the same tutors support the graduation project and research document.
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We have never been here before. This is uncharted territory. We have left the planet that gave rise to our kind. Behold the emerging geological age: restless, hot-tempered, volatile. There is no going back. This is our new home. How to housekeep this hostile planet? How do we become a new species fit for this New Earth?
In this Minor, we learn to ground ourselves in geological and biological time. We start unlearning the colonial-capitalist cosmology that brought us to this place. We follow local wisdom for plenary stewardship. We sharpen our position in complex, ambiguous climate politics. We strive to practice ecological thinking in our everyday lives.
The semester opens with an intensive class to confront the multiple emergencies we face. What’s going on? What are the origins and causes of our predicament? Who’s to blame and who has agency over it? What’s being (insufficiently) done and what remains to be done? What are the futures we can strive for, what are the rallying cries that define our moment?
The crash course will constitute the basis for your personal essay in which you will express your political analysis/position and your role/mission as a creative practitioner. It will also anticipate the theoretical grounding for your graduation project.
Key text:Â David Wallace Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth, 2019
This is Decade Zero: the years to turn the world upside down, to peak carbon/growth/capital, and to initiate the infrastructures of care and repair. What will your role be in the Just Transition? What kind of a changemaker are you? Identify the piece of the puzzle you will work on, define your goals, pathways and theory of change, and start prefiguring the New Earth! Remember: what you will do this decade will reverberate for centuries to come!