Fungi as anarchist designers at New Institute

Fungi meet a wide variety of human needs. Such as food, for example mushrooms, and combating bacteria with penicillin. In design and architecture, fungi are being embraced as a new, trendy material. FUNGI. Anarchist Designers at New Institute between 21 November and 9 August shows fungi precisely as independent designers, allies and world builders, subverting the human ambition to control and dominate the world.

Compilers Anna Tsing and Feifei Zhou show fungi as radical designers in a world beyond human control. Anna Tsing is an internationally renowned anthropologist based at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her book The Mushroom at the End of the World is considered one of the most influential publications of the past decade at the intersection of ecology, capitalism criticism and more-than-human thinking. Designer Feifei Zhou (terriStories) works at the interface of spatial design, ecology and visual culture, and is known for her interdisciplinary translations of complex scientific processes.

FUNGI is not a classic design exhibition, but an experimental space that invites to think differently, live differently and design differently. At its centre are seven new works created especially for the exhibition. Anthropologists, ecologists and biologists were paired with visual artists for this occasion, who reinterpret and translate their research into installations. Painting, sculptures and multimedia installations, mostly interactive, take visitors on a varied, multi-sensory trip.

Destroyers of civilisations

In the three consecutive halls: Break, Assassinate and Mobilize, visitors will experience how fungi break down, affect or revive systems. From destroyers of civilisations to connectors of species.

For instance, the installation coffee_rust maps how coffee fungi undermine monocultures, Of Boar and Fungi: a Nuclear Love Affair shows how fungi, wild boar and radioactive particles conspire in post-nuclear landscapes, and yeast worlding confronts visitors with the evolutionary pact between yeast and the human intestinal system.

In addition to the seven collaborations between scientists and artists, the exhibition also includes three individual artworks-in-commission, five manifestos, 11 loans - including from Rotterdam textile artist Lizan Freijsen, Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson and Korean conceptual artist Annicka Yi - and two poems, including Mushrooms by Sylvia Plath (1959), which is available in Dutch for the first time.

In addition, archival pieces from the New Institute's collection that have been redesigned due to the presence of fungi are also included. Outside in the garden, visitors will find an installation around a tree stump. As the starting point of a new fungal life.

Cover photo: Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing & Feifei Zhou by Isa de Jong