Down to Earth Where can we land? This question on the modality of our connection to the Earth is the literal translation of the French title of Bruno Latour’s essay “Down to Earth” published in 2018, and forms the starting point of this year’s Immersion programme. Driven by the desire to be politically effective in the face of the climate catastrophe, this manifesto attempts to recalibrate our thinking and at the same time to provide guidance for action. The French sociologist, anthropologist and philosopher of science is an emeritus professor at the Médialab and the Experimental Programme in Political Arts (SPEAP) of Sciences Po Paris, which he founded in 2010. From 1982 to 2006, he was professor at the Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation (CSI) at the École Nationale Supérieure des Mines in Paris. Latour has been awarded six honorary doctorates, is a member of numerous academies and was awarded the Holberg Prize in 2013. He has published over 20 books and more than 150 articles. In addition to the eponymous climate change essay “Down to Earth” (2018), he has published monographs such as: “Facing Gaia. Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime” (2015), “An Inquiry Into Modes of Existence: An Anthropology of the Moderns” (2012), “We Have Never Been Modern” (1991) and “Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts” (1979). Like no other philosopher at present, Latour has turned to the theatre and, as he explains, uses it to explore the range of passions regarding current political issues. In his work, this impulse is not only reflected in theatre productions, but also in large exhibition projects, such as “Critical Zones” currently on display at the ZKM in Karlsruhe. For “Down to Earth”, Latour together with Frédérique Aït-Touati will transform a room in the Gropius Bau into their working space for the whole month – a place to build and share their tools, to rehearse performances, a place for reading, thinking and talking, which is open to the visitors who are invited to test their protocols of landing. When visitors enter the room, they will discover people at work, an inhabited place. A group of scribes, writers, welcomes them and offers to accompany the visitors on an exercise of self-description: a crucial first step to answer the question “Where to land”? The traces of the terrestrial descriptions of the visitors who have co-inhabited this room since the beginning of the experience will emerge on the walls, the tables and the floor.
Armin Linke
Der Fotograf und Filmemacher Armin Linke bedient sich zeitgenössischer Bildbearbeitungstechnologien, um die Grenzen S.> 89 zwischen Fiktion und Realität zu verwischen. Linke erforscht die Gestaltung unserer natürlichen, technologischen und urbanen Umwelt. Sein Werk aus Fotografien und Filmen fungiert dabei als Werkzeug, um sich verschiedener Gestaltungsstrategien bewusst zu werden. Durch die Arbeit mit seinem eigenen Archiv, aber auch mit anderen Medienarchiven, hinterfragt Linke die Konventionen der fotografischen Praxis, wobei Fragen der Installation und Präsentation von Fotografien an Bedeutung gewinnen. In 36
