About RADIUS
RADIUS is a center for contemporary art and ecology. We work collaboratively with artists and other stakeholders to tell the urgent and necessary story of climate and systems change by means of art. We do this through a continuous programme, consisting of exhibitions, public events and educational projects. Just as systems are made of fossilised stories, we work together with artists to tell stories that will shape the systems of the near future. Using imagination and climate action, RADIUS focusses on shaping the blueprints for regenerative and sustainable more-than-human worlds.
RADIUS is located in the city of Delft and stationed in the pump house and water basin belonging to the Delft water tower, a historical national monument and architectural landmark. With five hundred square meters of subterranean exhibition space, our program is dedicated to the intersection of art, science and ecology. The name RADIUS is based on the circular geometry of our exhibition space. In a more poetic sense, the radius of each circle in our program serves to jointly develop a more grounded understanding of our shared living environment.
The compounded crisis of capitalism, sociopolitical unrest, environmental catastrophe and technological transformation is becoming increasingly pressing and tangible, simultaneously on a local level and on a planetary scale. In addition, the struggle for social emancipation—and the process of awareness-raising surrounding the oppression of certain social groups—is inextricably linked to the current ecological depression, re-drawing attention to the fragility of Earth and life itself. In our view, issues of decolonisation and feminism cannot be separated from their interfaces with ecology. Within our programme we approach this scheme by means of intersectional ecological thinking: a form of thinking through crossroads in which concerns are treated integrally. Similar to how ecology forms a web of relationships, we believe it is important not to interpret the programme and its projects as parallel lines, but to look for the points at which interests intersect and to translate these integrally, in coherence, into activities for our public.
We believe that artists have an essential role in identifying, critiquing and shaping the narrative around climate change and ecological degradation, not necessarily in aiding science with visible solutions but to pose moral and ethical questions around what it means to be alive today. In our program we thus welcome artists and other practitioners that rigorously approach urgent ecological challenges, including climate breakdown, pollution, biodiversity loss, environmental and social justice.
The art center’s location in Delft, with proximity to some of the world’s leading scientific institutions, provides an opportunity for us to focus on collaborations between disciplines. In addition to a continuous and accessible exhibition program, we offer an educational public program of lectures, performances, screenings, workshops and seminars, for a general and more specialized audience, as well as for primary, secondary and higher education students.
