Foreword by Prof Dr Andreas Mulch
Director of the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum Frankfurt
Foreword by Prof Dr Andreas Mulch
Director of the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum Frankfurt
The world we live in is the result of billions of years of natural development. The transformation of our planet, which accompanies this evolution, can provide insights yet to be discovered into the way Earth deals with change. Science and art offer very different approaches to exploring nature. However, both come together beautifully in this exhibition, which focuses on glimpses into the absent.
If we want to understand the functional relationships between the living world, the solid Earth and the climate system, or if we aim to reconstruct how our planet has changed over millions of years, scientists must gather information that indirectly provides insight into the past. For example, they use the chemical fingerprint left by a global event in geological formations to give shape to the past, the absent, and make it tangible. The study of our planet’s evolution, from the depths of time to the present, is carried out through precise, extensive and ideally innovative measurements of organisms and natural materials. These store information about a phenomenon, a development or a significant event in the living world that needs to be reconstructed. In order to delve deeply into the planet’s history, scientists must overcome incredibly long timescales. We bring the past into the present; we study the traces of a development. The present, therefore, opens up the possibility of gaining insights into processes and sequences that occurred long ago and would otherwise have remained forever hidden.
To discover the absent, it is necessary to look at a question from an unusual perspective. Innovation, creativity and the courage to take unfamiliar paths are the foundations for groundbreaking scientific discoveries. But they also offer an opportunity to provide solutions to the many challenges of a rapidly changing world—solutions built on authentic knowledge. Here, science becomes part of the democratic process, which it is our collective responsibility to protect. The question of what kind of world we want to live in in the future is a societal one, and science, if we choose to frame it this way, can describe the possibilities for shaping that future and the consequences of our actions. Making the absent visible from the present in order to develop options for the well-being of both humanity and nature—that is our opportunity.
We aim, through the collaboration between the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum Frankfurt and the Frankfurter Kunstverein, to reveal new perspectives and narratives concerning the relationship between humans and nature by combining science and art. Both partners bring their own unique expertise to this collaboration. How is the relationship between humans and nature changing against the backdrop of increasingly urgent global issues? What approaches will allow visitors to reflect on themselves without being overwhelmed by the scale and complexity of the question? For both institutions, this collaboration offers the opportunity to perceive nature and its development from different perspectives through jointly developed content. Transforming the absent into a describable reality—that is the art in science.
The collaboration between the Frankfurter Kunstverein and Senckenberg is always a great pleasure. We hope that visitors will feel and take away this enthusiasm when experiencing the exhibition.
Prof Dr Andreas Mulch,
Director, Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum Frankfurt
Prof Dr Andreas Mulch has been a professor at the Institute of Geosciences at the Goethe University Frankfurt since 2010 and Director of the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum Frankfurt since 2015. As a member of the Senckenberg Board of Directors, he is responsible for the research programme of the Senckenberg Society for Nature Research. The latter is one of the world’s leading institutions for natural and biodiversity research, with eight institutes, three museums and around 850 employees operating globally. Andreas Mulch received his PhD from the University of Lausanne in 2004, and his work has taken him to the University of Minnesota, Stanford University and Leibniz University Hannover. His research focuses primarily on climate changes in Earth’s history and the relationships between climate and biodiversity changes, as well as mountain building. Andreas Mulch is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America and has held the A. Cox Professorship at Stanford University.
