studio erde.
office for anthropocene landscapes
Climate Sanctuaries
laboratories for an earthly survival
Competition Proposal -
Re-Imagining Museums for Climate Action
Shortlist
Our House is Burning. It is time for a new territorial Project!
The project “Climate Sanctuaries” represents the search for new ways of situating museums in the planetary structures and meshwork of the anthropocene. In a world without an outside, where thick and intertwined realities merge, multidimensional spaces overlap through time and space and where climate change challenges us to radically rethink our understanding in the world, we are left disoriented and unable to act.
We lost Ground. We need to re-earth. We need to act!
Museums for Climate Action can and should hereby fundamentally change their role in society and serve as testing sites for new earthly interactions and as laboratories for the search of future lifeforms and co-existences in the intertwined and haunted landscapes of our planet.
Rethinking the Museum as planetary Network of Climate Sanctuaries.
The static character of the classical museum needs to be radically rethought: The climate sanctuaries will actively engage in the haunted climate landscapes of our times, revealing and decoding the vast effects of planetary urbanization. The built focus of museums on city centers was too long- the new climate sanctuaries will open themselves up to the world, being situated in the remote, yet heavily influenced hinterlands. At those precarious edges, the earthly landmarks and shrines will unfold a planetary network of laboratories, where earthly practices and knowledge are being revealed, re-lived, tested and transformed into new narratives on how to live, coexist and act. The museums itself will serve as active agents, as curators of processes and earthly collections.
Engaging in the Haunted Landscapes.
The Climate Sanctuaries engage in various challenged edges of our world: from vanishing glaciers to drying out and dying rivers and lakes, challenged coastlines and excavated territories. The network of sanctuaries unfolds itself on the first sheet, presenting the overall vision of the new climate museums. They are understood as catalysts, landscape machines and knowledge producers and act as earthly shrines, from coral temples to ice towers, sanctuaries of ruptures and forest churches. Indigenous land-management-techniques and counter practices, as well as archetypical architectural structures and laboratory instruments serve as inspiration for the provocative, but yet open-ended spatial translations of the sanctuaries.
The Climate Assembly as territorial project and earthly collection.
The assembly functions as spatial translation of the planetary vision of the sanctuaries into the exhibition space. The installation is treated as a laboratory inspired Wunderkammer and as active collection of practices and narrations.
The idea of the assembly is represented by an elevated platform onto which the meshwork of haunted landscapes is being projected as interactive and dynamic territorial cartography. This imaginary landscape carpet serves as diorama for the different scenes of the haunted territories, zooming into and constantly switching between them, enabling a multidimensional understanding and reading.
Being inside each sanctuary, possible climate futures can be discussed, while the earthly collection of sanctuaries unfolds as a floating mobile of climate prototypes above the platform and the heads of the visitors. The collection is understood as a constant process and worldmaking, which will trigger senses, ideas and visions for an earthly survival.
The assembly as workshop will thus be a place for discussions on radical climate futures, knowledge production and as co-creation of earthly prototypes during the exhibition period.