The Importance of Being Lost
“The problems of the Anthropocene have grown far too large. In fact, nobody can be held accountable anymore. Our species has made such a mess of things, but can you blame humanity as a whole for that?…
Longread
We are astronauts
The more I think about it, the more I think that the International Space Station functions as a temple of sorts, as a place of community, contemplation and worship. As a spiritual place that orbits our planet, where…
The Parliament: a new public space
An interview by Marjan Slob for a publication of the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving). See the text below. You can read the contributions by Bruno Latour, Roger Scruton, Wilhelm Schmid and Matthijs Schouten via this…
DDW 2016: Family Tree
ON SHOW, 22 October till 30 October 2016: visit the Parliament of Things at the Dutch Design Week 2016: an intriguing new political structure where non-humans are represented as well – and by themselves, no less. A place…
We need new senses
They have languages, like us, know concepts of reciprocity, affection, friendship. Cows have friends, primates use tools, dolphins call each other by name, wild dogs have been found to use words to describe the people studying them (‘the…
The Antropocene: welcome to the Age of Man
As far as time is concerned, the key concepts to most people are probably day and night, weekend and workday, and perhaps the seasons. On your birthday, you might contemplate the yearly cycle of the moon, and when a…
The Future of Language
“It is by a complementary shift of attention that one may suddenly come to hear the familiar song of a blackbird or a thrush in a surprisingly new manner—not just as a pleasant melody repeated mechanically, but as…
A Pastor from Bern and his avant-la-lettre dialogue between two mountains
The latest member of the Parliament of Things is a post-mortem one: 17th century pastor Hans Rudolf Rebmann from the Swiss town of Bern is the author of a poetic conversation between two mountains, the Niesen and the…
Thinking like a Mountain, towards a Council of All Beings
From my unassuming position on the sunny side of the couch, surrounded by a view of rooftops, “Thinking like a Mountain, towards a Council of All Beings”, brought upon that overwhelming feeling of smallness I get when I’m…
Voices of Hollywood
October 2014: Conservation International launched a campaign advocating the preservation of nature. It is called ‘Nature is Speaking’, and features eight of Hollywood’s crème-de-la-crème speaking on behalf of nature in a series of short video clips. From the…