New
Materialism

@ Centre for the Humanities, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands
7th of April, 2011
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Organisers

Dr Iris van der Tuin

Dr Rick Dolphijn

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This conference used Donna Haraway’s concept ‘naturecultures’ as a point of departure. Conceptual innovation in contemporary cultural theory will be studied from seemingly different ‘disciplinary’ and ‘paradigmatic’ angles in order to demonstrate how similar movements in thought are at work in the emerging paradigms of new materialism, post-humanism, agential realism, and in fields ranging from philosophy to the humanities and to the natural sciences.

During the conference LeineRoebana, the modern dance company of Andrea Leine and Harijono Roebana, “dance(d) theory” and commented on several important concepts raised in their recent work (the mind-body problem, Otherness, the earth) posed to them by Dr. Rick Dolphijn. The dances were performed by Tim Persent and Heather Ware, who was awarded the Gouden Zwaan for the most impressive dance performance of 2010.

The public exhibition ‘Companion Sculptures’ brought together the scholarly work of Donna Haraway and the artistic production of Piet van de Kar. The project entailed the exhibition of several sculptures of Van deKar in the buildings around Drift in Utrecht. The project was both ‘A Tribute to Donna Haraway’ and ‘A Retrospective of the Work of Piet van de Kar’.