Exhibition // Curation BIOTOPIA/DISSIDENT GARDENS – Het Nieuwe Instituut – Rotterdam (NL)

On March 3, 2018 the new exhibition Dissident Gardens will open to the public.
As part of the larger programme and series of exhibitions, Officina Corpuscoli has been invited by HNI to curate one specific chapter: BIOTOPIA.

In most recent years, the role of designers has increasingly shifted towards the exploration of novel trans-disciplinary fields, intersecting apparently distant fields of study and application, while combining them into unorthodox emergent practices, which often focus on actively developing and introducing new typologies of materialities, as well as innovative production processes.

As part of such framework, designers are not anymore to be looked at as the mere users of materials provided by the market, but can be evermore identified as the researchers and creators of novel processes and alternative materialities arising from a direct collaboration with natural systems and resonating with some of the most urgent issues originated by humans and affecting the planet at large.

By staging and reflecting upon the morphing nature of such practices and the redefinition of the related operating environments (the ateliers), BIOTOPIA encourages the public to dive into hybrid landscapes and processes, where the concept of dissidence is informed not only by the very notion of the garden (autonomy vs. control), but also by the nature of the creative actor himself – the dissident designer -, allowing to open up questions related to identity and activisms and understanding the emerging relational dynamics characterising the ever-transforming design practice.

Dissident Gardens is not only the title of an exhibition, but it is also Het Nieuwe Instituut’s overarching theme for 2018. With Dissident Gardens, HNI focuses on the most current expressions of the classic struggle between nature and culture. The programme will include five exhibitions as well as a series of lectures and debates. Dissident Gardens (Gallery 1) is curated by Frank Bruggeman and it comprises the exhibitions Biotopia, Smart Farming, Gardening Mars and Pleasure Parks.

More information about Dissident Gardens can be found here.
More information about the opening can be found here.

When:
March 4 – September 23, 2018

Opening on:
March 3, 2018

Where:
Het Nieuwe Instituut (Gallery 1)
Museumpark 25
3015 CB – Rotterdam (NL)