Claudia Banz – författare

The post-ethnological museum no longer regards ethnological collections as archives of ‘foreign cultures’, but as dynamic repositories of knowledge on global relationships. It critically examines their origins and provides new forms of interpretation, cooperation, and authorship. Central to this approach is the dialogue with contemporary art: artistic practices create new ways of engaging with the collections, challenge established meanings, and link them to current social and ecological discourses. The museum sees itself as a translator between different knowledge systems and provides a space in which the past, present, and possible futures are negotiated. The volume brings together artistic and research-based positions that link historical collections with current ecological issues.Invites readers to explore new forms of relationship between humans and the wider world, moving beyond an anthropocentric perspective

Rare stones have fascinated people for thousands of years. Their extraction is never free of conflict, but at the same time the trading and processing of stones brings together people from the most remote regions of the world. In Germany, the town of Idar-Oberstein is considered a hub for gemstone trading and processing, and students come from all over the world to study and work here with rare materials. In LithoMania, part of the Design Lab exhibition series at the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Berlin, students from the Idar-Oberstein campus of the Trier University of Applied Sciences explore the complex ambivalence of gemstones, going beyond their use in jewellery design through objects, drawings, photographs, and texts. Since 2019 the exhibition series Design Lab has invited various design labs, organisations, and students to present their current projects and to enter into a dialogue with the Kunstgewerbemuseum collection.Text in English and German.

The first volume of the new series "WMW NOW" is dedicated to the artist, activist, and farmer Tabita Rezaire, who presents a poetic, critical reconfiguration of knowledge in her work, combining indigenous cosmologies, African spirituality, ecofeminist perspectives, and scientific findings into a visually and conceptually dense practice.Five authors provide contributions from their respective fields to this project: artist Léa d. Allexandre, curator Inke Arns, environmental activist and writer Holly Bynoe, ethnobotanist Marc-Alexandre Tareau, and marine biologist and behavioural scientist Anja Wegner. Their texts open multi-layered approaches to Rezaire’s work and allow us to experience the productive ways in which knowledge, practice, and aesthetics intersect.