Open Call: WORK, BODY, LEISURE

Het Nieuwe Instituut, the commissioner of the Dutch Pavilion at the 16th Venice International Architecture Biennale, announces WORK, BODY, LEISURE, the theme of the official Dutch contribution to the biennial.

The 2018 Dutch Pavilion is envisioned as a collaborative research endeavor by a national and international network. This network, which brings together the expertise of architects, designers, knowledge institutions and the private sector, will test and disseminate outcomes before, during, and beyond the exhibition timeframe and venue of the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2018. Het Nieuwe Instituut will announce the list of commissioned exhibitors for the Dutch Pavilion, including those selected through the open call, in the coming months. The curator, Rotterdam-based architect and researcher Marina Otero Verzier, head of the Research Department at Het Nieuwe Instituut, will act as the instigator and creative mediator of the multiple contributions.

WORK, BODY, LEISURE
With the title WORK, BODY, LEISURE, the 2018 Dutch Pavilion addresses the spatial configurations, living conditions, and notions of the human body engendered by disruptive changes in labor ethos and conditions. The project seeks to foster new forms of creativity and responsibility within the architectural field in response to emerging technologies of automation. 

From New Babylon to Rotterdam Harbour
The Netherlands is, arguably, a testing ground where the future of labor has been and continues to be reimagined. The work of architect and artist Constant Nieuwenhuys has been a particular trigger for this conversation. In Constant’s New Babylon (1956–74)—an architectural paradigm of free space and leisure afforded by automation—society devotes its energy to creativity and play, and individuals can design their own environments. And yet, as Constant’s oeuvre evolved, his optimistic vision on the possibilities and pleasures of automated labor gradually gave way to a more conflicted perspective. Violence would not be eradicated by the new technological order, mobilized to satisfy society’s immediate needs; it would become, rather, an intrinsic part of its processes and aims.
 
“Automation is a material condition and achievable,” Constant claimed in May 1980 in a lecture at the Faculty of Architecture of TU Delft. More than 30 years later, the architecture of full automation is currently being implemented in the city of Rotterdam, from the self-managed logistical infrastructures of the port to the logic and relations that define the physical and social landscape of the city, and across agricultural clusters in the Netherlands.
 
Reflecting on a spectrum of theoretical viewpoints—including New Babylon’s initial proposal for a leisure-oriented society liberated from the bondage of labor; the recent techno-optimistic premise that full automation will bring increasing bounty and luxury; and the dystopian forecast of rampant, machine-abetted human unemployment and inequality—WORK, BODY, LEISURE claims that these visions are already shaping contemporary labor structures and, ultimately, our capacity to redesign them according to a different set of ethical principles.
 
The project builds upon “Automated Landscapes," a long-term research initiative on the implications of automation for the built environment, launched by Het Nieuwe Instituut in 2017. In the Dutch Pavilion, this perspective will be in dialogue with contributions by other individuals and organizations.
 
In addition to historical and present-day case studies of automation in the Netherlands, the project will analyze spatial arrangements and protocols that are molded for the interaction between man and machine; will explore spaces that challenge traditional distinctions between work and leisure; will address the ways in which evolving notions of labor have categorized and defined bodies at particular moments in time; and will discuss the legal, cultural, and technical infrastructures that enable their exploitation.

Open call
Het Nieuwe Instituut and Creative Industries Fund NL have jointly organized an open call for the extended program of the Dutch Pavilion. This call will support project proposals with a maximum budget of 50,000 EUR.

For more information on the open call, click here.