New Humans: Memories of the Future will inaugurate the New York New Museum’s expanded building with an exploration of artists’ enduring preoccupation with what it means to be human in the face of sweeping technological changes. New Humans will trace a diagonal history of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries through the work of more than 150 international artists, writers, scientists, architects, and filmmakers, highlighting key moments when dramatic technological and social changes spurred new conceptions of humanity and new visions for its possible futures.
Presenting new and recent works New Humans illuminates artists’ evolving visions of the future. The exhibition surveys the myriad shapes that humanity might take, from robots and cyborgs to haunting, seemingly alien life forms, and moves beyond the field of art by bringing together utopian architects, sci-fi filmmakers, and eccentric writers who imagine physical, virtual, and even post-human worlds. In an age when technological advancements and their unintended consequences seem to be accelerating at uncontrollable rates, New Humans proposes art as a collective form of creative prognostication—a vital self-portrait of the humans we may become.
Also on display is Nanni Balestrini's Tape Mark I (1961-2016). The work is one of Nanni Balestrini's first experimental poems, created using an electronic computer.
It is the result of a combinatorial process: fragments of text are recorded and then automatically recombined, producing a non-linear poem without traditional syntax.
Tape Mark I questions the idea of authorship, emphasises chance and the technical process, and is fully in line with the Neo-Avant-Garde and the research climate of Gruppo 63, anticipating many practices of electronic and conceptual poetry.
The work was given new life with its reconstruction in 2016 by Emiliano Russo (MIAI), Gabriele Zaverio (MusIF) and Vittorio Bellanich, which Balestrini wanted to include in his 2017 solo exhibition at the ZKM in Karlsruhe, curated by Margit Rosen.
New Humans: Memories of the Future
21 March - 26 July 2026
New Museum
235 Bowery, 10002, New York, NY (USA)
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