Institute for
Postnatural Studies

Session I 19 / 10 / 2022 - New Ecologies: Dissolving the Nature/Culture Binomial This introductory session proposes an approach to contemporary ecologies that defy rigid categorizations, whilst exploring matters and stories that blur the boundaries between the cultural, the natural, and the artificial.

Session II 26 / 10 / 2022 - Genealogies of the Postnatural This session will revolve around the concept of Postnature, understanding it as a political subject, that will function as a debate platform from which to investigate, communicate and discuss new approaches to artistic practice.  Through political ecology, post-natural aesthetics, and the creation of new ethics we can find the definitive dissolution of the nature-culture binomial. Session III 02 / 11 / 2022 - Against The Anthropocene We will raise a critique of the contemporary understanding of the Anthropocene, and deploy other terminologies and approaches, both theoretical and material, in order to think about desirable worlds of the future.

Session IV 09 / 11 / 2022 - Decolonizing Time Decolonizing time is an invitation to inhabit multiple temporalities, enfolded and entangled times that are ontologically complex and which involve the cultivation of the capacity to be still, to listen, and not to be self-certain. This session invites us to understand that a post or decolonial time should be defined as a critique to extractivist and hyperproductive inertias, and to all its massive material and political complexities.

Session V 16 / 11 / 2022 - Gardens of Delights Via a digital visit to botanical gardens, we will explore how we have built the idea of nature into a specific space of the urban landscape that is layered with political, economical and aesthetical complexities. From queer plants to the rare ginkgo tree, we will investigate how we exploit plants for medical purposes, how we shape nature for aesthetic pleasure and how botanical gardens have inspired artists in their practices. Session VI 23 / 11 / 2022 - Ecologies for The Future Analyzing theories from ecofeminism to new queer and coexistence approaches, this session proposes a political and post-anthropocentric revision of nature as a space for debate, as a parliament from which to be interested in the non-human, with entities, bodies and things that are not like us, but that also construct us and constitute us.

The seminars that make up our Open Program are run by the IPS’s faculty.

Gabriel Alonso (Madrid, 1986) is a visual artist and researcher formed between the ETSAM (Madrid), the Technische Universität (Berlin), and Columbia University in New York at the MS-CCCP, where he graduated with honors with his research thesis An Archaeology of Containment. In his works, through various formats such as installation, sculpture, photography or video, he investigates contemporary relationships between fiction and materiality, in order to blur binomials between the natural and the artificial, the human and the non-human, understanding nature as a complex cultural construct. Represented by Pradiauto Gallery (Madrid), his work has been exhibited in different galleries and international exhibitions, such as Nordés Galería (Santiago de Compostela), CaixaForum (Barcelona), La Casa Encendida (Madrid), CA2M (Madrid), Centro-Centro (Madrid), Fundación La Caixa (Barcelona), Matadero (Madrid), John Doe Gallery (New York), IIAF (New York), Poor Media Leuven (Belgium), Mila Gallery (Berlin) among others. He has been assistant professor at Barnard College of the University of Columbia (NYC) and at the Master of Advanced Architecture of the ETSAM, and has given many lectures, talks and workshops in different international institutions, museums and universities. In 2020, he received the Creation Grant from the Madrid City Council, and in 2016 he received the FAD award for his publication Desierto and was awarded one of the prestigious grants from the Graham Foundation for the Fine Arts. In 2020, he founded the Institute for Postnatural Studies. In parallel to his academic experimentation, research and curatorial practice, he develops an editorial practice through the platform Cthulhu books.