Zitationsvorschlag

Coulter, Kimberly: Mediating Ecologies: Cultivating Diplomacy, Destabilising Paradigms, in Wergin, Carsten und Affeldt, Stefanie (Hrsg.): Digitising Heritage: Transoceanic Connections between Australia and Europe, Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing, 2024 (Kulturelles Erbe: Materialität – Text – Edition (KEMTE), Band 4), S. 91–101. https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.1305.c18421

Identifier (Buch)

ISBN 978-3-96822-223-3 (PDF)
ISBN 978-3-96822-224-0 (Hardcover)

Veröffentlicht

26.09.2024

Autor/innen

Kimberly Coulter

Mediating Ecologies

Cultivating Diplomacy, Destabilising Paradigms

Abstract Ecology, Bruno Latour writes, is a “new way to handle all the objects of human and non-human collective life … Nature is here considered as what assem­bles all entities into one whole.” Media ecologies, it follows, may illuminate not only such relationships, but also the mediated nature of connections, represen­tations, and engagement opportunities. The 2016 exhibition “Reset Modernity!” at the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, which Latour co-curated with Martin Guinard-Terrin, Donato Ricci, and Christophe Leclercq, of­fered one such opportunity for participants of the Heidelberg “Media Ecologies” workshop. Arguing that environmental destruction is often fueled by tenets of “progress,” growth, and the nature/society dichotomy, the exhibition aims to dis­orient and gently “reset” visitors’ paradigms of (ecological) observation and repre­sentation. In this essay, I recount the hope expressed by workshop participants that that digital and environmental humanities can destabilize paradigms, allay fears, cultivate diplomacy, and amplify serendipity. I reflect on this in light of our visit to the exhibition “Reset Modernity!”.

Keywords Ecology, Environmental Humanities, Exhibitions, Latour, Reset Modernity!