DNA #25: The New Institution

Cultural and academic institutions have been in crisis for quite some time now. In many cases, they still refer to a canon that has been made obsolete by global developments—in particular, by new voices from the Global South. Their modes of knowledge production operate within disciplinary bounds that can no longer cope with the Anthropocene’s radical processes of change, and their self-referential paradigms have ceased to reflect social change and the needs of society. Against this backdrop, the book discusses new counter-institutional practices and concepts, examining specific examples that reframe intellectual and pragmatic responses to concrete situations of societal conflict and demonstrate a new connection between social, aesthetic, and academic forms of work based on integrative, multi-perspectival approaches that transcend existing divides.