Natures en tête: vom Wissen zum Handeln

To exhibit is to mediatize knowledge by way of a production proposed to each one for their evaluation. Returning synthetically to the reality experienced and the imaginary, of knowledge and action, the title Natures en tête, vom Wissen zum Handeln announces immediately a thought on cultural constructs. The conceptors place themselves in the perspective of ecology of mind, taken in the sense of a discussion of the living, while keeping in mind considerations of the complex relationships between the feelings that people endure, the ideas they conceive and the objects they manipulate.

Each human society possesses the concepts for designating the elements of its environment, even if in certain cases, the terms are lacking to qualify nature in general or to characterize what certain other groups value.

  
The desert, the forest, the mountain or the city generate, among those who inhabit them, a specific body of knowledge unique to them and which influences their language.

The first goal of the exhibition is to make us question our way of perceiving the environment and to catch a glimpse of other points of view. As in a rite of passage, it is suggested to us to abandon for a moment our convictions and to open our minds to the proposed experiment. Because only the rite is able to make us step across the boundary of the obviousness.

We first examine the last four decades during which the term environment became progressively important, reimported from the United States about 1965 to define the complex and problematic relationship existing at this time between man and the milieu that he inhabits. In front of four dioramas depicting the breakfast, a moment in which one consumes also the news of the day, parade the important events and flow the lesser ones. In the caddies is suggested the awareness, renewed by political decisions and socio-cultural activities, in the areas of ecology, health and development.

How are our egos shaped by social discourse ? How do we react to external influences? In the exhibit, the area of disintegration proposes a game of tensions between fundamental feelings: love, fear, respect and desire to master, oriented by four types of opinions: ordinary, scientific, ecological and animistic. We understand that we are shaped by these contradictory tendencies, that we are not able to remove ourselves from the social context in which we are immersed, and that we must take apart and rebuild completely and permanently the world in which we live. A series of portraits of personalities known for their commitment in the area of ecology, health and development, remind us that our representations are founded on ideologies and social practices.

The rite of passage continues with a voyage to a country of dreams and visions and proposes a magical solution to problems which arise from our willingness to gratify basic needs. To travel, to eat, to care for, to clothe, to clean, to evoke, to love and to communicate bring with them their share of complications in our daily life. An interpretive solution is proposed by four contrasting visions: advertising, technical, idyllic and mythical. Beyond the manichean, moralizing or administrative propositions, these visions drive us to find in our innermost self a place where our way of life is rebuilt.

Rediscovering the thread of our existence, stopped before a time and a space to rethink, we are confronted with the necessity to build new beacons, to take a stand, to act, or innovate, persuaded that the only true knowledge is a knowledge that questions its very principles.