This question is based on the assumption that central reasons for the conjuncture of this terminology seem to lie in current debates about the Anthopocene: on the one hand, ways out of an exploitation-based understanding of the world are sought and the age of the Planthropocene (Natasha Myers) is proclaimed; on the other hand, with the rise of machine-based services in everyday life, non-anthropocentric forms of intelligent ontologies and epistemologies are under scrutiny. Connected to this conjecture is the question of whether the recognition of vegetal forms of “intelligence” led to other methods of knowledge generation, coexistence, even breeding, dealing with pests, and ultimately to new, “intelligent” forms of plant, agricultural, and forestry culture? How far can the concept of intelligence be stretched, what is gained or lost in the process, and what are the ethical and aesthetic implications?
These are the questions the team, consisting of three artists and an art scientist, is exploring in close collaboration with research partners from botany, seed and plant breeding as way of organic agriculture, food sovereignty, media ecology, and indigenous nations. Using the examples of laboratory experiments with plant interaction and decision-making, of propagation patterns of lichens and mosses in urban spaces, of indigenous plant-human alliances and GMO-critical practices in South America, im/possibilities of vegetal intelligence are elaborated, compared and intertwined.
While Argentina is the second country in the world to circulate genetically modified seeds on a large scale since the 1990s, including drought-resistant wheat since October 2020, Switzerland is the only one that has formulated the dignity of the creature in its genetic engineering law.
The aim is to ground possibilities of an aesthetic-participatory epistemology of intelligent plant knowledge in the theoretical-practical exploration of the different concepts of intelligence, the intertwining of natural sciences, humanities and the arts, and the establishment of a South-North and East-West tangent of vegetal mutual learning: Underestimated vegetal intelligence/processes are to be experienced as an aesthetic experience. By approaching the way of being of plants through the concept of intelligence, the project creates genuinely new knowledge about them. Moreover, this perspective opens up directional approaches to fields as diverse as agriculture and food security, urban planning, education and appreciation. The project is application-oriented and consists of intertwined practical and theoretical parts, incorporating decolonial, technoecofeminist and ethical approaches. The results come together in different formats: a series of virtual colloquia, video installations, maps, drawings, a book, a traveling exhibition, and an online platform that can be used as a sustainable archive of materials to transfer knowledge and develop innovative education.
Yvonne Volkart’s concerns lie in the modes of how aesthetic theory-practice, ecology, technology, science, and decolonial feminism come together and bring us in relation to the world.
As the daughter of a gardener-botanist, she has been playing with plants since childhood. She is head of research and lecturer in art theory and cultural media studies at the Institute Art Gender Nature, Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW. There, she also co-directs the Agora project Digital Storytelling with plants – multimedia engagement with young people in the Botanical Garden (2023-25) (with Caroline Weckerle, Celia Baroux and Meredith Schumann,) and led the SNSF-research project “Ecodata–Ecomedia–Ecoaesthetics.
The Role and Significance of New Media, Technologies and Technoscientific Methods in the Arts for the Perception and Awareness of the Ecological” (2017-21). She also holds a teaching position at the Master of Arts in Art Education, Zurich University of the Arts, and writes regularly for the art magazine Springerin and others. In collaboration with Sabine Himmelsbach and Karin Ohlenschläger she curated the exhibition and book project “Eco-Visionaries. Art, Architecture and New Media After the Anthropocene” (ed. by Pedro Gadanho, Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz 2018), and “Ecomedia. Ecological Practices in Today’s Art” (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2007).
In 2023, her monograph “Technologies of Care. From Sensing Technologies to an Aesthetics of Attention” has been published (Zürich: diaphanes).
Contact: yvonne.volkart@fhnw.ch
Rasa Smite is an artist and researcher working in the intersection of art, science and immersive technologies.
She is co-founder of RIXC Center for New Media Culture in Riga, and a series editor of Acoustic Space publications as well as co-founder of NAIA, Naturally Artificial Intelligence Art association in Karlsruhe. Rasa holds PhD in sociology of media and network culture.
Currently she is a Professor in Liepaja University, and Researcher at Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW, Switzerland; recently she also has been a Lecturer at the MIT Art, Culture and Technology (ACT) Program in Boston, US (2018-2021), and Guest Professor in Academy of Art and Design (HfG) in Karlsruhe, Germany (2019-2020).
In her artistic practice, Rasa works together with artist Raitis Smits and scientists creating visionary and interdisciplinary artworks exploring techno-ecological perspective, human-plant communication, nature-cultures and climate topics. Their artworks, including pioneering Internet radio project Xchange (1998) as well as more recent immersive VR experience Atmospheric Forest (2020), among other, have been awarded (Ars Electronica 1998, Falling Walls – Science Breakthrough 2021), and shown widely – in Venice Architecture Biennale 2018, ZKM Karlsruhe, HEK in Basel, Ars Electronica in Linz, Beijing Art and Technology Biennale, ONX Studio New York, OCADU Onsite Gallery in Toronto, and other representable venues and cultural institutions in Europe, North America and Asia.
Contact: rasa.smite@fhnw.ch
Felipe Castelblanco is a multidisciplinary artist, working at the intersection of participatory, film, and Media Art.
His work explores institutional forms and creates platforms for inter-epistemic dialogue in unlikely spaces. Felipe has exhibited at museums and galleries internationally, including ZKM in Karlsruhe, the Royal Academy in London (UK), Taoyuan Fine Arts Museum (TW), and the San Diego Museum (US) and has been the recipient of several international awards, including the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Residency (USA, 2019), Starr Fellowship at the Royal Academy Schools in London (2015).
Felipe holds an M.F.A from Carnegie Mellon University (US) and in 2021 completed a practice-based PhD from the Academy Art and Design Basel FHNW and the University of Arts Linz.
In 2011 he founded the Para-Site School, a parasitical nomadic educational platform serving underserved students; later in 2014 he served as a Cultural Emissary for the US State Department to the Philippines and in 2021 he was recognized by the Berlin-based Breaking Walls Foundation for his contributions to arts and society. In recent years, Felipe’s creative work has focused on developing avenues for biocultural peacebuilding in the Andean-Amazon foothills of Colombia by supporting diverse modes of vegetal and human cooperation, and fostering cultural diplomacy through sustained engagement with Indigenous, farmers and migrant communities and the international cultural, academic, and eco-political spheres.
More at: www.felipecastelblanco.com
Contact: fcastelblanco@fhnw.ch
Julia Mensch is a visual artist and mother of one. She is from Buenos Aires, and is currently based in Berlin.
She studied at Hito Steyer’s class at the UdK, Berlin, and at the National Art University in Buenos Aires, where she finished her thesis under the supervision of Eduardo Molinari. She has taken part in several international residency programs and exhibitions, including Savvy Contemporary and NGBK (Berlin), Museo Nacional de Grabado (Buenos Aires), Shedhalle (Zürich), Kunsthalle Appenzell, Art Biennial Sesc_Videobrasil (São Paulo), BienalSur (Buenos Aires). Her work was supported the Senate of Berlin/DE, Pro Helvetia/CH, Amt für Kultur Appenzell Ausserrhoden/CH, Schlesinger Stiftung/CH, Sulzberg Stiftung/CH, DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service)/DE, Robert Bosch Foundation/DE, Fondo Nacional de las Artes/AR, among others. Julia develops her practice based on long-term research, readings of fiction and theory, interviews, and visits to archives and territories.
Her work is an intersection of text, drawing, installation, public events, photography, video, and lecture performance to open collective dialogues regarding political and social contexts and future scenarios.
Her practice focuses on the history of Socialism and Communism as well as environmental socio-political conflicts in Latin America confronting the exploitative conditions of the land and beings since colonization and throughout neocolonialism. In recent years, Julia’s artistic work has focused on the neo-extractivist model of transgenic agriculture in Argentina by cooperating with wild plants and farmers, agro-ecologists, environmental activists, and critical scientists, who are creating resistance and alternatives to this ecocide model.
Contact: julia.mensch@fhnw.ch
Chair for Media Environments, Faculty of Art & Design, Bauhaus University Weimar
Human Rights and Food Sovereignty Lawyer, coordinator of Hunger Museum
Director Kunsthaus Baselland Basel
Director HeK House of Electronic Arts Basel
Member of the Kamënstá Territorial Council, digital creator and coordinator of the Pan-Amazon Media Collective. Putumayo, Colombia.
Co-head of the Department of Crop Sciences (ad interim) and leader of the Plant Breeding Group at FiBL
Director Museum Sinclair-Haus (Stiftung Kunst und Natur GmbH), Bad Homburg
Head of Plant Ecology / Director Botanical Garden, University Tübingen
Visual artist, environmental planner and Junior Professor for Arts and Research at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar
Professorship for Knowledge Cultures and Media Environments, Department of European Media Studies, University of Potsdam
Director Rixc, Riga
Legal Representative of Tierra de Selva Foundation and the community Nodo de Pensamiento Andinoamazonico, Municipio de Mocoa, Colombia
FHNW University of Applied Sciences and Arts
Northwestern Switzerland
Basel Academy of Art and Design
Institute Art Gender Nature
Freilager-Platz 1, Postfach, 4002 Basel
plants_intelligence.hgk@fhnw.ch
@plants_intelligence
