As we are reconsidering our place as humans within nature, philosopher Emanuele Coccia investigates the natural phenomenon of metamorphosis and develops it into a philosophical concept that enables us to think about ourselves as part of a single breath of life that passes from one life form to another. Opposed to a penitential vision of environmentalism, he disagrees with the idea that the living should be viewed as fundamentally subsumed in the issue of ecological balances, life being a perpetual metamorphosis, poles apart from any notion of equilibrium. He champions the idea of a transformation of cities into “museums of contemporary nature” in order to overcome the conventional nature—culture divide and reinstate an urban interspecies approach focusing on cohabitation between all life forms and biodiversity.
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Though the virtualization of museums is a corollary of the health crisis, curator Nicolas Bourriaud insists on the importance of physically meeting artworks. He postulates that the museum institution cannot be fully transformed without inventing places for community life and experiences.
Laurent Le Bon is Art historian and curator. He took part into the creation of the Pompidou Center Metz before becoming director of the Picasso Museum in 2014. In parallel with this function, he continues to curate major exhibitions. In 2017, he created Jardins at the Grand Palais and Dioramas at the Palais de Tokyo. These two exhibitions have in common the confrontation with the aporia that is the representation of the living world in the museum setting. He returns in this interview on the issues and the links between these two events.
Increasing the place of plants in cities plays a key role in mitigating the urban heat island effect, but trees must be addressed as a systemic issue, interfacing with the air, the ground, and water. For Frédéric Ségur, we must re-engage with the knowledge of urban forestry in order to regain our intelligence of trees and counter the mistaken assumptions on their life expectancy in urban settings. Beyond political declarations, the idea is to plant well rather than simply a lot, and to provide adequate conditions for them to develop—including space and living soil—and to take into account the ecotypes, but also to get the plant palette to change in relation to climate change.