What Is Knowledge?

Principal delegates: Petra Baettig-Frey and Monica Ursina Jaeger, Clémentine Delisse
Respondents: Txanabane Huni Kuin, Fabio Rubio Scarano and students

In a green valley located on the hills of Lake Zurich, Switzerland, the team of “Sustainability Communication” at the Institute of Natural Resource Sciences ZHAW explores the possibilities of new communication methods. Using “Narrative Environments” as a working tool to promote sustainability, they have created an open-air experience and learning environment for students and visitors to discover the world of plants and how they have changed the world.

How can knowledge be taught to students without them being connected to the world of plants, especially students of pharmacology or TCM? Why is it important for Universities to find different approaches and develop new ideas? How does the concept of a “Narrative Environment” help in achieving better education? Are there relevant connections to the changing concepts of what a museum is and can be?

How can the museum, especially the newly reframed World Museums, become University Museums, sites of genuine learning and ongoing inquiry, how can they re-connect to the advancements of the field radically reconceptualized through post-colonial theory, museological methods and values, political struggles, claims for restitution and participation? How can the metacultural value of these institutions be re-envisioned as to create new practices, legitimations, methods of sharing, and interpretation? How can the museum include other fields of research such as art, filmmaking, politics, botany, ecology, and so forth?