Re:Mind is a scalable collaborative adaptation strategy to an already evident crisis, designed as a three-phase project that digitally captures and makes accessible the threatened cultural heritage of Africa, Oceania, and Central America. It will establish a global knowledge environment that adopts, augments, and activates this unique heritage for human learning. Large-scale digitization of climate-threatened cultural heritage will be unified with cutting-edge technology to create vibrant, nuanced, and comprehensive narratives presently hidden and unheard. It will bring together living social networks—actual regional and institutional communities of students, teachers, and other independent and curious individuals—through transnational curriculum development, comprehensive training, exchange opportunities, fellowships, and iterative sharing of new discoveries.
The challenge we address is a combination of two interrelated destructive phenomena. The first is the emerging catastrophe of climatological disruption. Communities around the globe are facing unprecedented challenges as they grapple with the impacts of climate change. Climbing temperatures, sea-level rise, and extreme weather events threaten the fabric of these communities’ cultural heritage—the traditions, languages, customs, and histories that encapsulate their values, experiences, and knowledge.
Our solution provides capacity-building programs for communities that collect, document, preserve, and share unique cultural heritage before it is lost. The beliefs, values, and behaviors captured in those artifacts and traditions can then be applied to build resilience in the face of climate change.
To respond effectively to climate disruption, Re:Mind is an adaptation strategy based on reciprocal transmutation. Think of a dry, ancient riverbed. A shard of obsidian rests among the stones. An ancestor sees it and reconceives the object toward a new purpose, reinterpreting a stone as a scraper, a carving device, a tool. That imaginative leap bundles craft, skill, application, technique, and method to the rock piece. The idea restructures time. With this perceptual reformation a different future is portended and our capacity altered. For the attentive designer, and all who similarly acknowledge and adopt the device, a new context is invented. The stone, replicated and refined to better adjust to its new purposes, generally retains its original state—it stays a stone—but catalyzes a different cognizance of the world. It has been appropriated by the human gaze, transfigured by intelligence while transmuting intelligence.
We share the conviction that access to cultural heritage is essential to human well-being. Today, the survival of many languages, cultural sites, and traditions is under threat due to the climate crisis, disproportionately in under-resourced areas of the world. Digital preservation is one strategy for limiting the harmful consequences of lost culture, while digital access can amplify the benefits of learning through exposure to cultural heritage for people everywhere.
We’re proud to collaborate with a diverse group of institutions and organizations who share our commitment to preserving and promoting culturally significant heritage. By collaborating with these esteemed partners, we’re able to amplify our impact and reach new audiences. Together, we will preserve and promote the rich cultural heritage that makes our world a more vibrant and interesting place!
As Re:Mind embarks on its mission to preserve and promote culturally significant heritage in the face of climate-related threats, we recognize the importance of building upon existing knowledge and best practices. This section serves as a curated list of citations and resources that have informed our project’s development and will continue to guide our efforts.
Far far away, behind the word mountains