Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
This event is part of “Conserving Active Matter: A _Cultures of Conservation_ Research Project,” a collaboration between Bard Graduate Center, the Humboldt University (Berlin), and the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam), generously supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This initiative aims to bring new developments in materials science and new ways of thinking about matter to create new ways of thinking about the future of conservation. The project is articulated through semester-themed explorations along four axes: Indigenous ontologies (spring 2018), history (fall 2018), materials science (spring 2019), and philosophy (fall 2019).
The Indigenous ontologies working group considers the fact that diverse peoples of the world bring their own cultural values and orientations to the material realm: their own fundamental notions of what “the object” is and isn’t; what its proper and persistent relationships to humans and other-than-human beings might be; what protocols surround its conservation, if indeed it ought to be preserved at all. Thinking globally, we explore cases where Indigenous ontologies of “Active Matter” expand western scientific, aesthetic and philosophical paradigms around the collection, care, and exhibition of living cultural heritage—tangible and otherwise.
Funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
This event is part of “Conserving Active Matter: A _Cultures of Conservation_ Research Project,” a collaboration between Bard Graduate Center, the Humboldt University (Berlin), and the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam), generously supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This initiative aims to bring new developments in materials science and new ways of thinking about matter to create new ways of thinking about the future of conservation. The project is articulated through semester-themed explorations along four axes: Indigenous ontologies (spring 2018), history (fall 2018), materials science (spring 2019), and philosophy (fall 2019).
The Indigenous ontologies working group considers the fact that diverse peoples of the world bring their own cultural values and orientations to the material realm: their own fundamental notions of what “the object” is and isn’t; what its proper and persistent relationships to humans and other-than-human beings might be; what protocols surround its conservation, if indeed it ought to be preserved at all. Thinking globally, we explore cases where Indigenous ontologies of “Active Matter” expand western scientific, aesthetic and philosophical paradigms around the collection, care, and exhibition of living cultural heritage—tangible and otherwise.
