Ecologising Museums

"The implications around climate change have far-reaching consequences but they can also have far-reaching benefits. The e- publication Ecologising Museums explores how museums and cultural institutions can face the issue not only head-on, but from all angles. To what degree are the core activities of collecting, preserving and presenting in fact attitudes that embody an unsustainable view of the world and the relationship between man and nature?" -- Publisher's website

Cost Effectiveness in River Management: Evaluation of Integrated River Policy System in Tidal Ouse

The River Ouse forms a significant part of Humber river system, which drains about one fifth the land area of England and provides the largest fresh water source to the North Sea from UK. The river quality in the tidal river suffered from sag of dissolved oxygen (DO) during last few decades, deteriorated by the effluent discharges. The Environment Agency (EA) proposed to increase the water quality of Ouse by implementing more potent environmental policies. This paper explores the cost effectiveness of water management in the Tidal Ouse through various options by taking into account the variation of assimilative capacity of river water, both in static and dynamic scope of time. Reduction in both effluent discharges and water abstraction were considered along side with choice of effluent discharge location. Different instruments of environmental policy, the emission tax-subsidy (ETS) scheme and tradable pollution permits (TPP) systems were compared with the direct quantitative control approach. This paper at the last illustrated an empirical example to reach a particular water quality target in the tidal Ouse at the least cost, through a solution of constrained optimisation problem. The results suggested significant improvement in the water quality with less cost than current that will fail the target in low flow year

How on earth? Cartography and curatorial practice in the archipelago

While geologists and stratigraphers debate the scientific merits of the Anthropocene thesis, culture workers remain precariously exposed to experiences of the planetary upheavals characteristic of our all-too-human epoch. If, as Peter Sloterdijk has suggested, our planet of terrestrial globalization has become a world interior of capital, what are the cartographic and curatorial practices that might respond to the ecologies of excess in this world interior

125,660 specimens of natural history: navigating colonial collections in the Anthropocene

In the age of the Anthropocene, the assumed division between nature and culture is radically destabilized. By taking a nineteenth century colonial collection of natural history as our point of departure, the international touring exhibition 125,660 Specimens of Natural History: Re-imagining the Practice of Collection Through Alfred R. Wallace\u27s Malay Expedition (premier at Komunitas Salihara, Jakarta, Indonesia in 2015) develops transcultural artistic and curatorial methodologies as means to rethink traditional views on scientific knowledge production, human-nature interactions, and the future of natural history collections

125,660 specimens of natural history: Re-imagining the practice of collection through Alfred R. Wallace\u27s Malay expedition

In the era of the Anthropocene, the assumed division between nature and culture is radically destabilized. By taking a nineteenth century colonial collection of natu r:al history as a point of departure, the international touring eXhibition 125,660 Specimens of Natural History: Re-imagining the Practice of Collection Through Alfred R. Wallace\u27s Malay Expedition (to premier at Komunitas Salihara, Jakarta, 2015) develops transcuttural artistic and curatorial methodologies as means to rethink tradttional views on collecting geographies, and museological genres in light of contemporary political and environmental issues. In our presentation to the Collecting Geographies conference at the Stedelijk Museum, we will discuss the conceptual framework of the project, including our research on other scientists wor

Traversals : Five Conversations on Art & Writing

"TRAVERSALS is based on a series of conceptual interviews with Dora Garcia, Chris Kraus, Mark von Schlegell, Charles Stankievech, and Jacob Wren originally produced for an installation in an art gallery. As a re-issue of these texts the forthcoming publication continues K.‘s interest in the book-as-exhibition. Each invited contributor has found a unique way to explore the hybrid spaces between genres and art forms, and the discussions focus especially on the role and relationship between visual art and writing." -- Art Metropole

Species of Accumulation & the Necromass of Natural History

My practice-led PhD, Species of Accumulation and the Necromass of Natural History, at the Centre for Research Architecture of Goldsmiths’ Visual Cultures Department, is an in-depth theoretical analysis of my work as Principal Co-Investigator and Co-Curator of the international exhibition-led research initiative Reassembling the Natural (2013–23, henceforth RN). With major exhibitions, publications and public event programmes, RN was an international and transdisciplinary collaboration dedicated to reassembling and critically repurposing the so-called “necromass” of natural history specimen collections with the aim of denaturalising the legacy of extractivist and ecocidal practices and transforming the inheritance of these collections. The thesis is organised in five chapters that explore the intertwined legacies of colonial natural history and geopolitical exploitation by approaching natural history collections through their relationship to the biodiversity/climate/pollution crises and the transformative impact of ecofeminist views regarding ecology, evolutionary change and planetary solidarities. Departing from a critical discussion around ethnographic collections and the genocidal gaze, the dissertation develops the ecocidal gaze, the nature of investment, and species of accumulation as concepts to discuss the construction of the colonial image of nature in the museum in its under-reflected relation to capitalist economies of extraction, commodification and extinction. Arguing that centuries-old botanical and zoological collections in museum and university repositories constitute a body of evidence of social and ecological injustice, the thesis reconnects the realm of natural history with the frameworks of coloniality, monoculture and domination, which still shape many socioecological conditions and assumptions today. The theoretical dissertation is divided in two conceptual halves—in Part 1, Chapters 1 and 2 deal with tropical botanical and zoological specimens collected in the nineteenth century; in Part 2, Chapters 3 and 4 return to the original scenes of collection in the twenty-first century to consider the material and conceptual legacies on the ground and in the archive. While Chapters 1 and 3 focus on flora and related botanical practices (especially oil palm), Chapters 2 and 4 attend to fauna and their necroaesthetic presentation (especially birds of paradise). This structure is the result of my in-depth conceptual dialogue with the writing of Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913), co-discoverer of the theory of evolution and naturalist-collector in the tropics, especially present-day Indonesia, in whose footsteps RN’s projects have travelled to investigate numerous collections around the world. As a tentative conclusion, Chapter 5 offers an alternative scientific view on natural selection by examining the legacy of microbiologist Lynn Margulis (1938–2011) and her theories of symbiogenesis. This discussion is underpinned by reflections on RN’s final exhibition project, ponds among ponds, and concludes by proposing to repurpose the natural history museum as a habitat interface—that is, as an amendatory site for the sensitive re-assembly of natural futures based on transformation, kinship, reciprocity and repair. The dissertation is informed by my curatorial and editorial practice and mobilises decolonial, postcolonial and ecofeminist theory, as well as extinction and museum studies, visual culture, history of science and political economy. The arc of the thesis demonstrates that interdisciplinary partnerships and heterogeneous alliances are necessary to transform the inherited, colonial necromass of natural history into an operational, radical and transformational habitat interface adequate to the planetary crises currently imperilling all life on Earth

Commenting quality

The (participatory) opportunities provided by interactive features on news sites have been widely theorized and investigated in recent years. However, user comments’ effects on the perception of journalistic quality have only begun to be examined. To investigate those effects, the present study deployed two 2 × 2 experiments with a between-subject design, thereby exposing participants (N = 224) to a constructed online news article (covering a potential military intervention of the German armed forces against ISIS) and corresponding user comments. Comments varied in terms of (I) support for the issue described in the article as well as the (II) addressing of journalistic quality criteria (accuracy, impartiality). Results indicate that user comments indeed had considerable effects on readers’ quality assessments. If anonymous users praised the quality of the article in their comments, journalistic quality was perceived to be significantly higher. Implications for news media and media effects research are discussed

HOW USER COMMENTS ON A NEWS SITE AFFECT PERCEPTIONS OF JOURNALISTIC QUALITY. AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY USING STRUCTURAL EQUATION MODELING

Researchers have just begun to study the effects of user comments on individual and public perceptions. Existing studies have shown distinct effects and indicate that comments can influence perceived media bias (Houston, Hansen, & Nisbett, 2011), inferences about public opinion (E.-J. Lee, 2012), impressions of political candidates (J. Lee & Lim, 2014) and even risk perceptions (Anderson, Brossard, Scheufele, Xenos, & Ladwig, 2014). Our goal is to look at a possible outcome that was not investigated yet— the influence on perceptions of journalistic quality. This offers an interesting field of study for two main reasons: First, if comments indeed affect quality perceptions, this has implications for media image and, more generally, trust in media outlets. Second, quality assessments also influence the (future) selection of media. As suggested by the Theory of Subjective Quality Assessment (TSQA, cf. Wolling, 2009), selection decisions are based on perceived features of the media product. Quality assessments can be one of the features that decide whether users are willing to give their attention to a certain media product—or ultimately refuse to do so.