Thomas Oberender: For us, Down to Earth is a “little organum” in the Brechtian sense—a practical tool, a guide for behavioural change. This comes very close to our intentions regarding the exhibition of the same name in Gropius Bau. Considering our collaboration, I am very interested in your and Frédérique’s fascination with theatre. In your book, you keep speaking in theatre metaphors. You write: “Today, the decor, the wings, the background, the whole building have come on stage and are competing with the actors for the principal role.”¹ I like this idea very much: today, conflicts are no longer bound to the human sphere but can also take place within the realm of all the things that inhabit a stage—thereby enabling those things to take on agency of their own. This idea reminds me of James Lovelock’s “systemic” perspective on the earth. His so-called Gaia Theory poses a change of worldview that is as fundamental as the one Galileo brought about approximately 400 years ago.

Bruno Latour: When Galileo Galilei turned his telescope towards the sky in 1609, he discovered mountains on the surface of the moon. Thus, the moon became another earth and earth a star among many...