Monthly Archives: desember 2019

•
Hva kommer etter antropocen?
Picture from the exhibition. Photo: Kyrre Kverndokk.

“What is time? Time is the past, the present and the future. Time is moments, seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, and years. Time is also the long, slow story of the Earth –although even this is short from the perspective of cosmological time.” This is the introduction to a new exhibition entitled The Nature of Time. It is part of the reopened University Museum of Bergen, and it is co-produced with the project The Future is Now. Through 20 showcases constantly circulating in a paternoster lift, the exhibition explores how human relations with time are inextricably linked to nature.

•
The Cukoo.
The Cukoo. Photo: Ron Knight, CC license.

In her recently published article, "Making Invisible Changes Visible: Animal Examples and the Communication of Biodiversity Loss", Marit Ruge Bjærke explores how animal examples are used in the construction of biodiversity loss as an environmental problem. Cuckoos, ptarmigans and mountain hares are all on the Norwegian Red List for Species, but when used as examples in media texts, they convey different conceptions of nature and biodiversity. Through their way of both exceeding and reducing the general statement they are meant to illustrate, examples bring certain ideas about biodiversity loss to the foreground: The cuckoo evoked conceptions of nature as a place of magic and biodiversity as a requisite for happiness, while ptarmigans linked biodiversity loss with future climate change, as well as with hunting traditions. The animal examples thus provide important insight into how biodiversity loss is constructed and communicated.