The NEMO Biennale runs from October 2019 to February 2020 with 85 events, concerts, exhibitions, performances, meetings, shows, etc. in nearly 40 partner venues in Paris and Ile-de-France, including the Cité internationale des arts.
Is the animal a piece of furniture like any other? Can the city feed us? Do we have the right to modify the living? These were the questions that were asked in the AgroParisTech Disputes, a series of debates open to the general public. In a spirit of civic emulation, Disputes are a meeting place for the arts, sciences and societies.
The seventh round of AgroParisTech Disputes is devoted to the Collapse. The collapse is first of all that of curves that seem to be panicking. Accelerated loss of biodiversity, available resources, climate change, rapid population growth... It is now very clear that the success of homo sapiens as a species is to the detriment of the rest of life. A large part of humanity already lives on credit on a very improbable "planet B". The radiant horizons of modernity have given way to a gaping hole, dug by words like anthropocene, apocalypse or colapsology.
To approach the abyss without risk of dizziness, it is best to multiply the points of view. Climatologists and artists, philosophers and politicians - ecologists and writers - help us to free ourselves from the effect of fascination or amazement that numbers can have on our minds. This threat can even be seen as a very exciting opportunity. It is an opportunity to rethink our great choices of civilization, to question our relationship to our environment, to life and finally to others. But also to question our lifestyles, which require ever more resources and energy. The very idea of a possible collapse is a challenge to our imaginations, the obligation to invent new futures, new stories.
In the spirit of the Disputes, by leaving a very large place to the interventions of the artists and the public, we will be ready to welcome all that is possible.
Topic of the day: Wisdom would have it that most fossil fuels should be allowed to rest underground. And so, we are preparing for frugality, for decay? Or are we looking for and developing new forms of sustainable energy?
A brief overview of alternative solutions and their paradoxes, with an IPCC climatologist, decreasing practitioners, and a historian of science and technology.