Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin, DE
Interventions in the mineral collection
Tue-Fri, 9.30am–6pm, Sat-Sun 10am–6pm, closed Mon
Lab talks (in German) on Mon, September 2, 5-8 pm
Please register: NetzwerkNaturwissen@mfn.berlin
Today, we are experiencing a turning point in which the most serious consequences of human activity – such as the climate crisis, dwindling biodiversity and ecological destruction – are becoming inexorably and unmistakably apparent. The future habitability of the planet therefore requires new forms of cooperation. As part of the Netzwerk Naturwissen, the project group “Petrified Times: Energizing Past Futures” approaches this topic from the perspective of the two central energy regimes “coal” and “nuclear energy”, which have shaped the history of (post-)industrial societies and the planet. The rocks coal (in the form of charcoal, but also hard coal) and uraninite (pitchblende) represent the industrial revolution on the one hand and the atomic age on the other.
The project group Petrified Times: Energizing Past Futures consists of Friederike Schäfer (FU Berlin), Elisabeth Heyne (MfN) and Maike Weißpflug (Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management – BASE) and uses these rocks and the raw materials to which they refer (as “stones of impetus”) to make the complex of topics relating to the development of the energy requirements of extractivist and capitalist societies accessible. The project was developed as part of the Netzwerk Naturwissen, an initiative of the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin and its partners from Berlin and Brandenburg.