Call for papers to Artefacts
Dear Colleagues
You are most cordially invited to submit papers to the
next meeting of the Artefacts consortium which will be held at the Deutsches
Museum in Munich on 26-28 October.
Call for Proposals for the conference
ARTEFACTS XIX "Environing Exhibits: Science,
Technology, and Museums in the Anthropocene"
ARTEFACTS is an international network of academic and
museum-based scholars interested in promoting the use of objects in studies of
the history of science and technology. The network was established in 1996 and
since then has held annual conferences and published several books examining
the various ways that this can be accomplished.
The next conference will be held at the Deutsches Museum
in Munich, Germany, 26-28 October 2014. The conference is co-sponsored by the
Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, a joint center of the
Deutsches Museum and Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich.
In 2000, the fifth ARTEFACTS conference discussed the
topic of "Artefacts and the Environment." In the very same year the
atmospheric chemist and Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen jointly with the ecologist
Eugene F. Stoermer proposed the new geological epoch of the Anthropocene that
is shaped by the deep impact of humankind on the environment at a planetary
scale.
Since that, with climate change and global warming
gaining ever more momentum, the concept of the Anthropocene has found ever more
followers not only in the natural sciences but also in the cultural sciences
and the humanities. The idea of the Anthropocene has developed into a vibrant
field of studies which examine the inextricable interrelations between nature
and culture, environment and society. This year's Artefacts conference will
embark on this inspiring agenda. It aims to discuss the material
culture-dimensions of the Anthropocene.
Topics could cover questions such as:
* Technologies
and techno-scientific knowledge are both driving
forces of the environmental problems that we are faced
with in the Anthropocene and an indispensable source of finding solutions to
overcome these problems. How do we cope with this dual character of
technology/science in museum exhibitions and what sorts of artefacts are
suitable to reflect this duality?
* How have
certain features of material objects, especially
instruments that may have been designed for some other
purpose, led us to a better understanding of environmental change?
* How have
certain artefacts become symbols of the human impact on
the environment ("natural" phenomena like the
ozone hole and the "calving" of glaciers, or "artificial"
devices like plastic waste and CO2-emissions)?
* Museums of
science and technology have acquired an impressive
record of displaying environmentally related issues such
as climate change, changing energy regimes or nuclear disasters. Likewise,
museums of natural history have held exhibits on changes in the biosphere, loss
of biodiversity or ecological change. Is the Anthropocene asking for a merger
of these two discrete types of museums or/and for a reinterpretation of the
science and technology museum in the 21st century?
* Internet,
television, smart phone - our present media-speeded-up
world is filled with fast communication media. Museums,
collections, and exhibitions are the opposite: slow media that allow for
long-term thinking and balanced reflection. How can we benefit from the
slowness of museums in the Anthropocene as an era of speed and acceleration?
* Workshop
session on how these various topics can be effectively
treated-through objects-in museum exhibits. Note this
would be an opportunity for participants who don't have enough material to
develop a formal presentation, but who have good ideas, to express themselves.
It might also be a forum for non-historians (geologists, biologist, architects,
civil engineers) to describe problems and/or solutions that might be worth
describing in exhibits.
ARTEFACTS conferences are friendly and informal meetings
with the character of workshops. There is plenty of time for open discussion
and networking. Each contributor is allocated a 20 minutes slot for her or his
talk plus ample of time for questions and discussion. Please send you proposal
for sessions or individual papers (500-700 words) along with a brief CV to
Helmuth Trischler (h.trischler@deutsches-museum.de)
no later than Friday, 4 July 2014. Please remember that the focus of
presentations should be on artefacts.
Prof. Dr. Helmuth Trischler
Head of Research, Deutsches Museum
Director, Rachel Carson Center
Museumsinsel 1
G-80538 Munich
Tel
++49-89-2179-209
Fax ++49-89-2179-239
e-mail h. trischler@deutsches-museum.de
Dr Robert Bud
Keeper of Science and Medicine
The Science Museum, London
+44 207 942 4200