Postnatural Independent Program
The first edition of the Postnatural Independent Program (PIP) explored the new implications of postnature as a framework for contemporary creation. In the form of an experimental educational platform, we speculated and questioned not only contemporary ecologies but also new academic approaches and radical notions of learning together.
The Independent Program (reported on by e-flux) offered by the Institute for Postnatural Studies is a new learning space that offers theoretical tools, embodied learning, and expertise to define and develop projects that examine postnature as a framework for contemporary creation. Its duration of seven months in 2023, used a dual methodology incorporating both theory and practice. It offered an experimental platform for ecological thinking and cultural initiatives in an expanded virtual campus. It also brought together established researchers and art institutions to host working sessions, encounters, and presentations. The virtual program was complemented by two in-person laboratories in Madrid and a final presentation hosted by Matadero Madrid.
The cohort collaborated with the Institute and Faculty and their in-house publisher Cthulu Books to produce a hybrid publication, ‘We?’ (available for download). We believe that this complex and multilayered space that emerges from conversations, ideas, shared intimacies, vulnerabilities, and propositions has real consequences in the world. By critically leaving behind the representational distance between “us” and “them”, “here” and “there”, and “knowledge” and “superstition”, to name just a few of the dichotomies cultivated by Western traditional art and philosophy academies, we forge a necessary and immediate relation to the world. But who is “we”? And how can “we” stay together, despite our differences? How can “we” create collectivity without sameness, and bypass the pull towards homogeneity? This book is a reflection, reverberation and resonance of our 7 months together.
