Assembly for Permacircular Museums: Exhibition-making, education, and care in times of ecological crisis

21.04.2021 - 24.04.2021

Foto of the ZKM orchard, superimposed in white handwriting a mindmap, the middle node says "Critical Orchard Observatory"

The Assembly for Permacircular Museums, a four-day international conference organized by ZKM, will take place online from April 21-24, 2021. The focus is the cultural sphere, which is giving more and more space to ecological and post-colonial discourse while remaining deeply entangled in capitalism. The Assembly for Permacircular Museums handles a pressing theme of our time: How can art institutions manage the radical transformation towarda permacircular future?

In sustainable economics, permacircularity stands for resizing enterprises to bring them into harmony with the capacity of Earth as a system, while reorienting their structures of knowledge and practices towards caring for our planet. The Assembly has chosen the ecological blind spot of the exhibitionary complex as its point of departure. It invites institution boards, curators, activists, artists, and educators to view museums as the vanguard of a profound transformation and explore their own potential for transformation.