“Rainforest Consumer Table” – a new exhibition module at Museum Koenig
Corinna Seibt, curator for the rainforest exhibition at Museum Koenig, explains the functions of the consumer table. Persons to be seen (from left to right): Corinna Seibt, Christiane Overkamp, Prof. Dr. Bernhard Misof, Frank Griesel, Helmut Stahl
©Sabine Heine
How can we protect our climate and biodiversity? These are the burning questions of our time. The tropical rainforest is also burning – every year, almost 160,000 square kilometers of rainforest are destroyed worldwide, which corresponds to almost half the area of Germany. A new multimedia and interactive exhibition module at the LIB Museum Koenig now vividly illustrates the links between our own everyday consumer behavior and rainforest destruction: at the “Rainforest Consumer Table”, visitors can playfully explore how our daily choices for the next meal or when reaching for the supermarket shelf influence the state of the tropical rainforests. The new exhibition module was realized thanks to funding from the Foundation Environment and Development North Rhine-Westphalia and the Alexander-Koenig-Gesellschaft e.V..
Every day, species-rich tropical rainforest burns and falls – in South America, Africa and Asia. Every minute, 42 soccer fields of forest disappear. One of the main causes of rainforest destruction is, for example, the high consumption of meat in industrialized countries, including here in Europe and Germany. In the Amazon region in particular, huge areas of rainforest are being cleared – to obtain pasture land for cattle, whose meat is exported all over the world, and to create cultivation areas for soy, which is fed to pigs, cattle and chickens as “concentrated feed” in local fattening farms and thus serves industrial meat production.
A new, multimedia and interactive exhibition module at the LIB Museum Koenig now invites visitors to take a seat at the set “rainforest consumer table” and “bring to life” the objects provided by touching them. Using a selection menu, they can decide which meal goes on their plate, which hot drink goes in their cup, or which wood their cutting board should be carved from. By means of projection, the selected alternative appears virtually on the three-dimensional object at the table. To round off the visual experience, animated images show, for example, a blob of ketchup on the XXL meat plate or a pinch of herb salt on the steak from regional organic beef.
The impact of the alternative chosen by the visitors on the tropical rainforest becomes immediately visible in the center of the table, where the canopy of a rainforest rises up as a three-dimensional projection surface, which continues below it in the table base as a real miniature model. If a rainforest-friendly choice was made, the lush green canopy continues to shine there, over which the parrots fly. If a rainforest-damaging alternative was chosen, chainsaws sound and the rainforest begins to smolder and finally burn. An information field provides explanatory texts, images and videos for a more in-depth examination of the contexts that make the selected alternative a rainforest-damaging or rainforest-saving product. In the spirit of edutaining, the “rainforest consumer table” thus conveys in an entertaining and educational way how we can contribute to the destruction or also to the preservation of the tropical rainforests with our own consumer behavior.
“The consumer table is a wonderful instrument with which we can literally understand how our consumer behavior affects the sensitive rainforest habitat” explains Viktor Haase, representative of the Ministry for the Environment, Agriculture, Nature Conservation and Consumer Protection of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia at the official inauguration of the exhibition module. The “Rainforest Consumer Table” was financed by a grant from the Foundation for Environment and Development of North Rhine-Westphalia and the Alexander-Koenig-Gesellschaft e.V. (AKG), which contributed 20% of the funding as project sponsor.
“The playful transfer of knowledge, where people also directly learn how to change their behavior, is becoming increasingly important against the backdrop of worsening climate and environmental change,” says Christiane Overkamp, Managing Director of the Foundation Environment and Development North Rhine-Westphalia. “By supporting the project, the Foundation has made possible a central and original module of the new rainforest exhibition, which is particularly close to our hearts as the museum’s sponsoring society” enthuses Helmut Stahl, President of AKG. The director of the LIB Museum Koenig, Prof. Dr. Bernhard Misof, thanks the foundation and the AKG: “We are very happy that the funding has made the realization of this innovative exhibition module possible, with which we can fulfill our educational mission as a museum in a contemporary way.”
The “Rainforest Consumer Table” is currently available to visitors as a special station on the 1st floor of Museum Koenig and will in future be part of the permanent exhibition “Rainforest”, which is currently still under construction.
© über Leibniz-Institut zur Analyse des Biodiversitätswandels, Museum Koenig, Bonn
View of the rainforest consumption table
