Call for Fellows 2020
July 24, 2020
Application deadline: July 24, 2020
Since its founding in 2013, Het Nieuwe Instituut has pioneered research in architecture, design and digital culture, fostering programmes, exhibitions, lectures, archival investigations and publications in the Netherlands and internationally.
Through its annual Fellowship programme, Het Nieuwe Instituut’s Research Department acknowledges and gives visibility to research projects offering departures from established modes of thinking. For this iteration, the Open Call for Fellows focuses on the theme “Regeneration. New Institutional Practices.” Following previous calls on the body’s burn-out (2018) and planetary exhaustion (2019), the 2020 programme invites collectives to take current conditions of burn-out and exhaustion as a point of departure to generate forms of collective organisation and action.
Institutions constitute a shared value system that transcends individuals and individual intentions. They dictate the ways in which bodies organise and assemble; they host relations and stratify access; they normalise gender and racial subjectivities; they promote protocols to interact and communicate, all providing possibilities for political transformation. Regeneration. New Institutional Practices emphasizes the need for generative, collective and practice-based endeavors to test and rehearse new notions of institution and instituting.
The Call constitutes a request to reimagine protocols, collective decision-making processes, forms of care, working ethos and financial structures of institutions. It welcomes initiatives that make explicit the unacknowledged logics and consent mechanisms, as well as the often abstract and invisible forces and relations that traverse the social spaces of institutions.
Envisioning, bringing into practice and sustaining new institutions equally demands a reconsideration of established daily organisational structures, methodologies and dynamics. Applicants are, therefore, also invited to recognise the intimate connection between established and ‘new’ institutions, by implementing reflections upon the adaptability of existing systems and their ability to transform. How to relate to the past critically yet hopefully in conceiving new modes of living together? Could existing structures be re-shaped as non-exploitative spaces for public good? How to set free potential already residing in the world around us? How can design, architecture and digital culture contribute to, imagine and put in motion anti-racist, feminist, decolonial modes of institutional practice?
About the Research Fellowships
Het Nieuwe Instituut offers two Research Fellowship positions, for a period of 6 months (from October 2020–March 2021). Each of these two positions includes a total budget of 20,000 EUR.
This year’s call specifically invites collectives to apply, and aims to support collaborative practices within design, architecture and digital culture, extending beyond the notion of individual authorship.
There is no age limit for applicants. Collectives from all citizenships and places of residence are invited to apply. Neither a curriculum vitae nor letters of recommendation are requested. The fellowships are open to all degree levels in all disciplines (design, architecture and digital culture). Equal priority will be given to those without a degree or institutional affiliation who can also demonstrate a high level of creativity, critical thought and other potential in their respective fields.
An international jury will select the two collectives. Jury members include Susana Caló and Godofredo Pereira (research collective whose work focuses on ecology, institutional analysis and social movements), Jeanne Van Heeswijk (artist), Jaromil (software artisan, digital social innovation expert, co-founder of Dyne.org), Malique Mohamud (former fellow at Het Nieuwe Instituut, designer, Hiphop Futurist and founding member of Concrete Blossom), The Nest Collective (multidisciplinary arts collective creating applied-research methodologies in film, fashion, literature and other media), Marina Otero Verzier (Director of Research, Het Nieuwe Instituut), Elizabeth A. Povinelli (Franz Boas Professor Anthropology and Gender Studies, Columbia University / Founding Member of Karrabing Film Collective) and Cassie Thornton (artist and feminist economist, founder Feminist Economics Department). The jury meeting will be chaired by Guus Beumer (General and Artistic Director, Het Nieuwe Instituut). More information about the jury members will be announced in the coming weeks.
For more information about the Call for Fellows, click here.
Applications are open from June 16 to July 24, 2020.
