Ecologizing experimentations : a method and manifesto for composing a post-humanist museum

Urgent action is required to produce knowledge and cognitive frames that will give rise to new ways of thinking and acting to promote a livable planet for the long term. Such action requires innovation across all disciplines and sectors. It also demands we engage afresh with familiar established concepts and constructions. Museums are one of modernity’s most emblematic and trusted pedagogical institutions. Recognized as icons of modern humanism and Cartesian rationality, museums are instrumental in shaping visions of the world, of culture and cultural difference, human relations with nature, technology, and science. Their philosophies and representational practices continue to endorse and disseminate a modern worldview. In the context of the current ecological crises this worldview is seen as increasingly problematic. In order to promote a viable future we must dissolve familiar, modernist dualisms such as “nature” and “culture,” “human” and “nonhuman,” “social” and “natural” (Latour 1993) and view the world as entangled, dynamic sociobiological systems.