Biodiversity and the Cultural Landscape

14.01.2020 - 15.01.2020

Contemporary Matters, Wien / Österreich

In the realm of today’s sciences, the arts and humanities are not usually privileged as an authority or approved source of knowledge when reflecting on issues concerning biodiversity. Yet, this separation of the arts and hard sciences only emerged in the late-nineteenth century with the rise of new technological advancements, precipitating an epistemic shift in knowledge production. After the exposure of the conceptions of nature and biology as social constructs developed across generations, there is an urge to renegotiate these terms and update them for the 21st century.... In order to do so, we are turning toward contemporary cultural and activist practices that steadily make biodiversity a subject of discussion. Merging approaches from life sciences and cultural studies through the deconstruction of the binary opposition of nature and cultures equates to embracing the complex and large-scale hybridity of biodiversity. For this symposium, we invite researchers, scholars, artists, activists, and politicians to come together on a public forum at the University of Vienna to discuss new approaches for human and non-human co-existence.

[Quelle: contemporarymatters.org]