Understanding Biodiversity, Culture and Knowledge
The participants in the Max Planck–NTU Singapore Centre for Biocultural Worlding (CBCW) aim to discover just how closely biological diversity and cultural life are intertwined
The Max Planck–NTU Singapore Centre for Biocultural Worlding (CBCW), a joint initiative of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, Germany and the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art brings together researchers, artists, curators, legal scholars, and knowledge-holding communities. Together, they want to explore how biological diversity and cultural life are profoundly entangled, how this entanglement shapes planetary futures, and what forms of knowledge are needed to respond to these realities.
Rather than treating nature and culture as separate spheres, the Center seeks to understand how ecosystems, biodiversity, cultural practices, and systems of knowledge continuously shape one another. It defines “biocultural worlding” as the active and ongoing process through which human and non-human beings collectively create, interpret, and inhabit worlds through intertwined biological and cultural knowledge.
“The CBCW is here to make possible a more reflective and responsible culture of knowledge production,” says Dagmar Schäfer, Director at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science and co-lead of CBCW. “Its core contribution lies in making people of different backgrounds responsibly think through how knowledge is generated, shared, attributed, and sustained across communities.”
"Who owns culture and its embedded knowledge, meanings, values, systems, and objects? The Centre furthermore intends to complicate the problematic notion of ‘cultural ownership’, in part rooted in ongoing global discourses on rematriation, restitution, conservation, and the preservation of culture," adds Professor Ute Meta Bauer, Acting Director of the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore and co-lead of CBCW.
The Center is conceived not only as a research program, but also as a new institutional model. Its aim is to overcome the disciplinary boundaries that often separate the epistemic, ethical, and political dimensions of contemporary challenges. By bringing together different forms of expertise and ways of knowing, CBCW seeks to create new forms of inquiry that no single discipline could develop on its own.
Initiated by NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, Germany, the partnership builds on the complementary strengths of its founding institutions. The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science contributes historical and archival expertise, structural analysis, and global intellectual networks. The NTU Centre for Contemporary Art brings curatorial practice, experimentation, and regionally grounded research experience in Asia, the Pacific, and the Global South. Together, they aim to establish a new framework for understanding the relationship between biodiversity, culture, and knowledge.