A New Order, A New Earth

Following government policy announced on Tuesday 15 December, Garage Rotterdam will be closed until further notice. Unfortunately, the current exhibition A New Order, A New Earth can no longer be visited.

Humanity has made itself the main actor on planet earth. In this process, we have gradually come to see ourselves as a separate entity from nature. Nature has become something that we see as an ‘Other’, something we can control and exploit. This also relates to how we have colonised and treated women and people of other cultures, religion, colour and sexuality to this very day. However, a need for emancipation of the marginalised, to reconnect as one people and one earth, can be sensed in art, philosophy, and society at large.

Contemporary philosophies such as ecofeminism have traced the tendency of looking at man outside of nature to Descartes’ statement ‘cogito ergo sum’ (I think therefore I am), which draws a line between humans (as having rationality) and non-humans (as non-rational).

Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto from 1985, considered as a crucial milestone in the development of feminist posthumanist theory, rejects the rigid boundaries separating ‘human’ from ‘animal’, and ‘human’ from ‘machine’.

We are currently seeing a catastrophic disbalance with nature, as we pollute more and faster than nature can restore. Are we capable of turning the tide? Can we realign and empathize with nature? Starting with a fundamental change in our view on nature and how we relate to it, leaving behind our human-centred view and daring to look from nature’s perspective.

A New Order, A New Earth brings together visual arts, quantum science, and philosophical traditions, as well as ancient shamanistic wisdom and AI technology. The group exhibition invites us into a world with a different take on the hierarchy. Nine international artists, thinkers, and scientists show their visions of an alternative relationship between man and nature. They bring us more holistic views, alternatives for the longtime dominance of the western and ‘scientific’ paradigm. Re-envisioning us as – part of – nature, instead of separate from it.