Donna Haraway & the Arts
Thick Present
31.01.2020 — ongoing

A transdisciplinary exhibition and symposium project based on the work of one of the most ingenious and influential thinkers and writers on technology, science and transformation of our age, Donna Haraway.

No other contemporary thinker has more forcefully and implacably pursued an understanding of humanity, its history, present and prospects with as much radical appreciation for its complexity, interdependence and incompleteness. From the canonic Cyborg Manifesto proposing a revolutionarily feminist understanding of pervasive technology, Haraway’s social(ist) commitments have broadened to embrace human beings’ entire terrestrial biome. Her thinking carefully and compellingly weaves scientific insights with interpretations of ancient philosophy, cutting analyses of contemporary techno-industry with rich transversal accounts of the lives of the critters of the earth, always infused with ribald and rebellious humour and furious sense of irony. Starting from biology and expanding into a rich trans-discplinarity necessary for our times, Donna Haraway has evolved a unique scholarly voice, intimate yet precise, angry, funny, bawdy and trenchant, forging new associations and unexpected insights, compelling us to encounter our world where nothing is fully autonomous, least of all anthropos, and all transfused with the legacy of technology.

Our project ‘Donna Haraway and the Arts: Thick Present’ will provide a deep dive into the rich interconnectedness of Haraway’s world, encouraging visitors to take their time and allow themselves to be taken up in the rich complexity of their contemporary condition. Haraway convivially cajoles us we will ‘stay with the trouble’, and to encounter and discuss the urgency of our condition, because despite, or as a vital part of the difficultly, what we do still very much matters.

It matters which thoughts think thoughts.
Donna Haraway in ‘Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin’