Following the book launch, winter school and a trip to V2_ Lab, I went to Fungi: Anarchist Designers at Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam, co-curated by Anna Tsing and Feifei Zhou.

The exhibition is framed in contrast to instrumentalist claims about fungi as design materials - emphasising their roles as “independent organisms that thrive in unique, multi-species environments and in the ruins of capitalism”.

Having much enjoyed Anna Tsing’s The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, I was curious to see how this exhibition would draw on this book and associated collaborations such as the Feral Atlas, which was also co-curated with designer Feifei Zhou.

This was a big exhibition with many works in many formats - accompanied by waist-high stacks of tear-off paper sheets about most of the works. It will take me a while to process and reflect on the many pieces.

To mention a couple of works that stayed with me, there was a video installation on the “nuclear love affair” and mutual affinities between wild boars, minerals, radiocesium, and fungi by Berkveldt, Bettina Stoetzer and Åsa Sonjasdotter. The video work “Matsutake Lead the Way” by researcher Shiho Satsuka and Liu Yi explores cycles of deforestation and renewal - and the role of Matsutake in different moments: volcanic eruptions, ancient deforestation, industrialisation, war and citizen ecology groups.

The exhibition concluded with a collection of manifestos which can be found here.

As well as the Fungi exhibition, the Nieuwe Instituut’s Digital Lab had a small selection of works on display - including Sam Lavigne’s “The Zooms”, Hanchen Zhang’s “Cloud of Polyphony” and Colette Aliman’s “The Acoustic Continuum”.

Continuing to go through these exhibition materials will be good inspiration for collaborations on forest media practices and digital cultures and politics of ecological restoration.