Round Table »Rinde: Gestaltung mit Resten«

We cordially invite you to the Round Table »Rinde: Gestaltung mit Resten« which continues the format series accompanying the exhibition »Design Lab #13: Material Legacies« at Kunstgewerbemuseum. The Round Tables represent each of the exhibiting projects and the involved researchers and artists in a moderated dialogue with guests from different disciplines. The format brings a variety of perspectives to the exhibited works, its material legacies and entangled discourses and invites the public to engage.

On January 26th designer and Cluster Member Charlett Wenig and cultural theorist and Cluster professor Robert Stock will talk about their work and exhibits with the forest scientist Ferréol Berendt (HNE Eberwalde) and the ethnologist Nikolaus Stolle (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt).

From the point of view of today's wood industry, bark represents a remnant that is difficult to recycle. Since bark represents about 10–20% of the total volume of trees, the amount of waste in the current timber plantation economy should not be underestimated. What new applications can these »leftovers« be put to? And has tree bark always been primarily a waste product everywhere? We take up these questions and will explore new design approaches and postcolonial histories of this material. Using the bark sphere on display, we will discuss the protective function of bark between the interior of the tree and its environment, which the architectural prototype also aims to provide to human inhabitants. Through historical objects from the KGM collection, photographs by Alexander Henderson (1831-1913), and the documentary film Good Enough for Two (2005), the material bark will also be situated in the specific historical and cultural context of North America and the bark canoe. The tensions between the various objects point to different contexts of use of bark, in which this material unfolds not only as a residue, but in its multifaceted materiality.

The exhibition station on bark results from a cooperation between material and cultural science: On the one hand, Charlett Wenig at the MPI for Interfacial and Colloidal Research is concerned with tree bark, its processing and woven structures. Robert Stock researches at the Institute for Cultural Studies of the HU Berlin on the historical and material genealogies of bark and wood.

The event is in German and free of charge. No registration needed.