Abstract:
In the age of the Anthropocene, the idea of shared responsibilities between humans and the broad realm of the non-human carries more than a symbolic meaning. At the center of an ethical debate that nowadays informs even legal documents, the active maintenance of good relations with the different elements making up the ecosystem -material and spiritual, living and non-living- has become pivotal in the sustainable management of resources past, present and future.
This topic is a major chapter of the current temporary exhibition held at the Museum of Ethnography in Geneva (MEG). Titled “Environmental Injustice – Indigenous People’s Alternatives”, the exhibition explores various Indigenous Peoples’ views on the matter and their concrete application in the everyday.
Inspired by this approach valued since the inception of the exhibition in 2019, the MEG has deeply reassessed its curatorial and heritage management practices towards the ethnographic collections held in its walls.
Bio:
Damien KUNIK is the curator for the Asian collections at the MEG – Musée d’ethnographie de Genève, Switzerland since 2020. After his studies at INALCO (Paris, France), University of Geneva (Switzerland) and Keio University (Tokyo, Japan), he obtained his PhD with a thesis (in French) titled “Art and Matter – Cultural nationalism and folk heritage in 20th Century Japan” (2016) and spent the two following years at the National Museum of Ethnology (Osaka, Japan). Outside of his current curatorial work, his research is focused on the anthropology of techniques as well as the history of anthropology.