Institute for
Postnatural Studies

“With increased acidification in freshwater ecosystems, there will be a decrease in biodiversity, with the increased loss of acid-sensitive species”

The Effect of Coal Utilization Emissions on Natural and Man-managed Terrestrial and Freshwater Ecosystems". Environmental Impacts of Coal Mining & Utilization. Elsevier. 1987

At a time of ecological fragility, a review of the extractivist approach we continue to exercise over the planet's natural resources is necessary in order to experiment with new methodologies for eco-social transition. The critical situation of water, a natural, public resource, inherent to human rights and fundamental for the development of our ecologies, proves the reality that our ecosystem is fragile and dependent on many other agents. Understanding water as a political subject can be key to imagine new contexts in which to experiment and think about future ways of relating.

Acidic Waters is an online seminar that will delve into the possibilities that speculative design offers for the generation of new desirable futures. New narratives that can lead us to deploy a relationship with water, understanding it as a space for debate, a place of mediation and a resource for speculation and proposition. In this aspect, a design exercise based on future projection processes can stimulate and give rise to a critical review of both our thinking and our material practices.

31/ 03 / 2022 - Institute for Postnatural Studies New operational frameworks are proposed, new theoretical climates from which to approach the relationships between design and ecology, between society and object, between public space and private space. Taking advantage of this water context, of tributaries, subway springs and flows of knowledge, thought is introduced as a support for the practice of contemporary design. A bet that understands reflection as action, the future as something to be defined, and the present as a context to be modified hand in hand with all the voices and agents that make up the new ecologies that surround us.

07 / 04 / 2022 - Marcin Rusak Marcin Rusak (born in 1987, Warsaw, Poland) is an artist and multidisciplinary designer interested in ideas of value, ephemerality and aesthetics. Specializing in storytelling, process and material investigation his work often incorporates research, object and installation as well as visual creations to explore overlooked details of our lives which recreated and re-imagined are shown again in a different light. www.marcinrusak.com

14 / 04 / 2022 - Speculative EDU SpeculativeEdu is an educational project funded by ERASMUS+, the European Union program for education, training, youth, and sport, with the aim of strengthening speculative design education by collecting and exchanging existing knowledge and experience whilst developing new methods in the field of speculative design. Its scope is to collect, exchange, reflect upon, develop, and advance educational practice in the area of speculative design and its self-critical approach. www.speculativeedu.eu

21 / 04 / 2022 - Erez Nevi Pana Nevi Pana’s investigations of salt have developed into a long-term research project; he has been working with salt in the Dead Sea for the past eight years—investigating the devastating imbalance of an over-abundance of salt caused by the industrialization and mineral extraction of the region. The culmination of this research is a body of work entitled Bleached (2018), where Pana submerges wooden structures encased in loofah into the Dead Sea to absorb the wasted salt, which then crystallize like coral formations over time. www.ereznevipana.com

28 / 04 / 2022 - Verónica Gerber Bicecci Verónica Gerber Bicecci is a visual artist who writes. She has published the books: Mudanza, La Compañía, Otro día… (poemas sintéticos), Empty Set, which won the 3rd International Aura Estrada Literature prize and the Otra Mirada Cálamo prize, and Migrant Words. Some of his most recent projects and visual interventions are: the vocabulary b in muca Roma, Mexico City; lamaquinadistopica.xyz at the Manuel Felguérez Museum of Abstract Art, Zacatecas; and the curatorial tale In Bambi's Eye at Whitechapel Gallery, London. She was an editor at the Tumbona editions cooperative and a tutor at the Photographic Production Seminar at the Centro de la Imagen. She is currently part of the soma teaching team and is a scholarship holder of the Fonca National System of Art Creators. www.veronicagerberbicecci.net

15 / 05 / 2022 - Ippolito Pestellini (2050+) Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli is an architect and curator based in Milan. He is the founder of the interdisciplinary agency 2050+. Currently, he teaches at the Royal College of Arts in London. Pestellini has recently co-curated Manifesta’s 12th edition (2018) taking place in Palermo and has edited Palermo Atlas, the preparatory investigation on the Sicilian capital (Humboldt books, 2018). Between 2007 and 2019 he worked as an architect and partner at OMA where his work focused on research and curation, scenography, and preservation.

Opening in 2021, MAYRIT is a design event that reflects on the Biennial format from the point of view of research and proposal, in order to establish itself on a continuous basis in the city of Madrid. Through a critical review of its structure, it is defined both as a platform for the generation of content and as a network of opportunities and care for the collective of designers in the city. This is the proposal that the Institute for Postnatural Studies has developed to shape the conceptual framework commissioned by MAYRIT, which set the bases for the upcoming design biennale.