
Paul Graham Raven is a postdoctoral researcher for Lund University, Sweden (paul@paulgrahamraven.com)
This blog relates to the Global Discourse article Paul G. Raven and Johannes Stripple: Touring the carbon ruins: towards an ethics of speculative decarbonisation
The Museum of Carbon Ruins is… well, we’re still not sure how to categorise it, in truth. Is it an art intervention? An immersive research exhibit on decarbonisation? Climate change theatre? It’s all of these things, in a way – the common thread being the creation of a space of speculation about climate change, and how we might adapt to it.
More prosaically, the Museum of Carbon Ruins (MCR) is a set of vitrines (or an antique suitcase, depending on the venue) full of familiar objects and images, which are reframed for the museum’s ‘visitors’ by researchers performing the role of curators or guides to the museum itself, which purports to ‘exist’ in 2050 or thereabouts.
If you’re wondering what the point is, you’re not the first! However, we flatter ourselves that most of the museum’s ‘visitors’ have grasped it, even if they haven’t taken away exactly the same point as one another. It’s in the nature of the thing that describing it can’t come close to reproducing it – and I might go so far as to say that’s the point. But what of speculative methods in general? Why are we academics messing around with the tools of science fiction, product design and participatory theatre? I have three answers, or three aspects of a single answer: the creation of speculative climate futures can serve to concretise the challenge, situate the consequences and democratise the discussion.
Continue reading