Output details

Wachsen! uber das geistige in der nachaltigkeit

Having been a pioneer in exploring the relationships between art, culture and sustainability since 2001, my research documented in `Wachsen!´ received support from the Altner Combecher Foundation for Peace and Ecology and from the Hatzfeld Foundation, both members of the Association for the Promotion of Science and Humanities in Germany. `Wachsen!´ explores the anthropological and the epistemological dimension of sustainability as key to an actual culture of sustainability. Central questions are: In what sense is art a form of knowledge? How does the expanded concept of art (social sculpture) relate to the necessary rethinking of our concept of science? Which understanding of ourselves as human beings do we need in order to transform an `Industrial Growth Society´ (Sigmund Kwaloy) into a life-sustaining society? The originality of this investigation stems from its `trans-theoretical´ approach: from the domain of cultural studies, quantum physics, art and personal experiential knowledge. `Wachsen!´ explores an open territory that can be called the return of the spiritual - or perhaps better a turn to the spiritual on a new level – beyond its `academisation´ in the humanities, beyond the dualism of the modern age and beyond a romanticising idealism. A key understanding that has emerged from this work is the necessity of a `culture of the inner human being´, claimed already by the economist Ernst F. Schumacher back in the seventies, and now, in `Wachsen!´, extensively investigated. The portfolio contains documents that show some of the wide interdisciplinary impact of this research – manifest in many lectures, seminars and related activities, along with a series of commissioned essays as well as collaborations with institutions and foundations. The Heinrich Boell Foundation in Berlin is building on `Wachsen!´ in their rationale for designing a Fund for Aesthetics and Sustainability, to be established by this foundation in 2014.

German. `Wachsen!´ explores the anthropological and the epistemological dimension of sustainability as key to an actual culture of sustainability. Central questions are: In what sense is art a form of knowledge? How does the expanded concept of art (social sculpture) relate to the necessary rethinking of our concept of science? Which understanding of ourselves as human beings do we need in order to transform an `Industrial Growth Society´ (Sigmund Kwaloy) into a life-sustaining society? The originality of this investigation stems from its `trans-theoretical´ approach: from the domain of cultural studies, quantum physics, art and personal experiential knowledge.