The SNF project “Mediating the Ecological Imperative: Formats and Modes of Engagement” is a joint research project of the Institutes of Art History, American Studies and Social Anthropology at the University of Bern. In addition, a collaboration with the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) is being realized. Research focuses on the visual politics of climate change, the role of ecological issues in art and literature, and social engagement with the environment in indigenous cultures. The philosopher Hans Jonas coined the term “ecological imperative” in his book Das Prinzip Verantwortung (The Principle of Responsibility, 1979), in which he formulated an ecological maxim for action based on Immanuel Kant’s “Categorical Imperative”: “Act in such a way that the effects of your actions are compatible with the permanence of genuine human life on earth”. → Read more about the project
- Prof. Dr. Peter J. Schneemann (Lead, University of Bern)
- Prof. Dr. Gabriele Rippl (University of Bern)
- Prof. Dr. Michaela Schäuble (University of Bern)
- Prof. Dr. Peter Krieger (2021-22) (National Autonomous University of Mexico)
- Dr. Toni Hildebrandt (Advanced Postdoc and Coordinator, University of Bern)
- → See the whole project team
Metamorphosen der Gegenwart is an Open Air Film Programme at the Botanical Garden of the University of Bern (BOGA). We will screen and discuss documentary and experimental films (Andrea Bordoli, Ursula Biemann, Ben Rivers, Ana Vaz) inside the BOGA. The programme, curated by Toni Hildebrandt, Peter J. Schneemann, and Magali Wagner (from the SNSF Sinergia Project Mediating the Ecological Imperative) in collaboration with Flavia Castelberg (from BOGA), is a response to the BOGA project Chronoversum – Pflanzen im Wandel der Zeit.
Every film image is geological. As a technical medium derived from the metals and minerals extracted from the earth, every moving image is materially embedded in the world it records. It is also temporally linked to the almost inconceivably vast deep time of the planet’s formation. What would it mean to make films in response to this situation? In this screening and expanded discussion Sasha Litvintseva will discuss her process of developing such a film practice as a way of tackling the perceptual and aesthetic difficulties presented by ongoing ecological crises. The event will include the screening of two films made as part of this broader research project, Salarium (2017), which looks at the sinkholes appearing on the Dead Sea shore, and Asbestos (2016), which traces the interaction of toxicity and invisibility in the the history of the use of this mineral.
Hannah Baader, the Permanent Senior Research Fellow at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max-Planck-Institute, and leader of the Research Group Transregional Art Histories. Spaces, Actors, Ecologies will give a lecture Caspar David Friedrich, Der Watzmann, 1825/1937: Doppelte Ökologien, jointly organized with Zentrum Paul Klee Bern. The lecture will take place at Zentrum Paul Klee on May 25, 17:30 in the context of the exhibition Alles wächst [Everything grows].
The Workshop will take place at University of Bern (Hauptgebäude, Kuppelraum) on May 26, 9-12:30. The lecture is public, but please register for the workshop at info@ecological-imperative.ch
