NAMING THE NOW
Thick present is a way to think of the time and space that we inhabit and recognize the web of intricate and terrifying connections that pervade our collective reality. It is an expanded timescale that includes the stories of struggles and transformations going back hundreds of years as well as the lives and deaths of several future generations, which are shaped today. As Donna Haraway describes it, the thick present is “a tentacular web of troubling relations that matter now.” 1
The thick present makes visible the blessings and curses of our interconnectedness, and calls us to recognize “who we are bound up with and in what ways.” 2
Stichting Thick Present explores these entanglements in its projects and exhibitions. It functions as a platform for collective exchange of knowledge and affect, promoting critical reflection, radical imagination and creating new moments of care.