At the latest with the protest movement Fridays for Future, the environmental catastrophe that has been emerging for decades has entered general awareness.

Despite all the resistance and repression mechanisms from the worlds of economics and politics, which, as recently at the failed climate summit in Madrid, put national economic interests above environmental protection, an ever-widening public worldwide is no longer prepared to accept the inconsequentiality of the events that threaten life on earth as a whole.

Yet it is not as if early warnings of the drastic consequences of man-made climate change had not been issued. Great moral authorities took a clear position decades ago - the Christian churches, for instance, since the 1980s with the »Conciliar Process for Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation« and most recently in the great environmental encyclical of Pope Francis »Laudato si'« 2015. At the same time, the ecological question is today as a whole the subject of intensive intellectual and artistic debate.

Inspired by the thoughts of the French philosopher Bruno Latour, who in view of the current cultural upheavals and environmental crises pleads for a broad turn towards the »terrestrial«, the exhibition »Critical Zones. Observatories for Earthly Politics« at ZKM | Karlsruhe from May to October 2020 will deal with these pressing issues. The panel discussion, organized jointly by ZKM and the Roncalli-Forum Education Center, anticipates »Critical Zones« and takes up the questions of this »exhibition of ideas«. 

Participants

• Dr. Markus Dotterweich, Foundation Lebensraum – Mensch.Boden.Wasser.Luft and Consultant for third-party funding and research promotion, Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe 
• Dipl.-Theol. Beate Eichinger, Environmental commissioner of the diocese of Regensburg
• Bettina Korintenberg, Curator, ZKM | Karlsruhe
• Dr. Hans Schipper, Head of the South German Climate Office, Institute for Meteorology and Climate Research, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)

Moderation

• Dipl.-Theol. Tobias Licht, Director of the Roncalli-Forum educational centre, Karlsruhe 
• Philipp Ziegler, Head of the curatorial department, ZKM | Karlsruhe

Organization / Institution

Roncalli-Forum and ZKM | Karlsruhe