Mate Roots, Reserve Kamëntsá Biyá, Putumayo, Colombia, photo: Ayënan Quinchoa Juajibioy
Zheng Bo, Le Sacre du printemps, 2021 – 2022, courtesy the artist and Kiang Malingue, Hong Kong
Installation view Parliament of Plants II with the contribution from the SNSF project Plants_Intelligence. Learning like a Plant, Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz, photo: Rasa Smite
Vibrant Forest Photo: Felipe Castelblanco
Plants-being-plants. Coca plantation at the limits of the Churumbleos National Park, overlapping an Inga reserve in Lower Cauca, Colombia, 2019, photo: Felipe Castelblanco
Master seminar Parlament der Pflanzen, excursion to Atelier Amden and Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, 2020 photo: Diogo Pinto
Master seminar Parlament der Pflanzen, excursion to Atelier Amden and Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, 2020 photo: Diogo Pinto
Picknick blanket by participants of The Rare Ability to Become Ocean – A method for Ocean literacy, cyanotype, Summer School, Istituto Svizzero, Rome, 2019, photo: Art Institute
Picknick blanket by participants of The Rare Ability to Become Ocean – A method for Ocean literacy, cyanotype, Summer School, Istituto Svizzero, Rome, 2019, photo: Art Institute
Summer School #2 Phenomenal Ocean, in collaboration with TBA21–Academy, Venice, photo: Enrico Fiorese
Summer School #2 Phenomenal Ocean, in collaboration with TBA21–Academy, Venice, photo: Enrico Fiorese
The Current II Convening #2, in collaboration with TBA21–Academy, Venice, photo: Enrico Fiorese
Phenomenal Ocean, Summer School #2 / The Current II – Chiesa di San Lorenzo, Venedig
The Rare Ability to Become Ocean – Summer School 2019, Istituto Svizzero, Rome
The Rare Ability to Become Ocean – Summer School 2019, Istituto Svizzero, Rome
The Waves of the Ah!s and the Oh!s, The Current II – Summer School 2018, Chiesa di San Lorenzo, Venice
The Waves of the Ah!s and the Oh!s, The Current II – Summer School 2018, Chiesa di San Lorenzo, Venice
On Ocean Intelligence, Master Symposium 2018 – Ingo Nierman, Teresa Solar, Julieta Aranda, Chus Martínez, Markus Reymann
Spheric Ocean, The Current II 2018 – Eduardo Navarro, Underwater Drawings
Spheric Ocean, The Current II 2018 – Teresa Solar, Drawing

Art Is NATURE

Seminars, Public Talks, Symposia, Summer Schools

Following our programs Art Is Science and Art Is Ocean, in spring 2020 we started a new series of seminars, public lectures, and symposiums dedicated to nature. This series continues with an expanding interest in research, experience, and the way artists inquire into nature and the disciplines that traditionally study it. It also pursues our collaboration with TBA21–Academy, a foundation committed to creating opportunities for artists and scientists to develop a new way of thinking about the seas, as well as a space inside education and art to address crucial questions on the future of life.

It would be wrong to think that when one says “nature,” one names a “subject.” One should be more radical and know that to say “nature” today is to say “art.” Art without the burden of institutional life, without the ideological twists of cultural politics, art as a practice that belongs and should belong to the artists, art facing the urgency of socializing with all those who care about life. In other words, to say “nature” is to replace the historical notion of the avant-garde with a code that is not determined by form and the invention of new gestures, but by an investigation into the substance of life, identifying this as the mission of art.

This would imply that all artists directly interested in life under water and in nature, in new forms of sensing based on non-human perspectives, etc., are, of course, “in.” But it also means that all those who are not directly interested in thinking in these terms—who do not identify the intelligence of art as a radical interest in life—are even more important than those who are. Think about the current situation and all the structures constituting the art world, about the impoverishment of a language inherited from left and liberal social visions of the past and the impossibility of reinventing these dreams under the same premises, under a late-capitalistic economic system. Think about the need for a new sensorium to invent new notions, to build new sentences, to embrace a new idea of equality and social justice. If we think thus, we can see that to say “nature” is to say the expansion of museums, of public space. We can see that nature is a source that reprograms our senses and entails a potential for a transformation that may affect the future of architecture, of communication, of gender entanglement, of economy, of art.

The Summer Schools in Venice and the Phenomenal Ocean podcast series and the associated episodes of Corona Under the Ocean, produced by the Institute Art Gender Nature and TBA21–Academy, are fundamantal for the collaborative conversations about the ways we imagine culture today and the implications of these ideas for climate change, nature, and policy-making.

For Plant Intelligence

Panel: Yvonne Volkart and team Plants_Intelligence
(Felipe Castelblanco, Julia Mensch, Rasa Smite)
Keynote by Paco Calvo
Input by Ayênan Quinchoa Juajibioy

Friday 18 October 2024, 6 pm
Auditorium D 1.04, Tower Building, HGK Basel FHNW
In English
Admission free and open for everyone

As part of Mesh Festival
16 – 20 October 2024
meshfestival.ch

The current hype around AI – which is basically just resource-intensive computing based on data mining and brute force – makes us forget that there exist completely different, much more “efficient” and pleasurable forms of intelligence: these are forms that are open to the multiplicity of being on earth, that create relations and playful forms of cross-species alliances. Plants in particular, these disregarded creatures, surprise us with their ingenious capacities to interact with their ecologies. This panel focuses on the question of how plants sense and compute, decide and act. What does that mean? What can humans learn from it? And why is this relevant for art, technology, science, and society?

The panel For Plant Intelligence @ Meshfestival will be accompanied by a workshop of the same name, which will take place on Friday 18 October and Saturday 19 October 2024 at the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK Basel FHNW. Interested people are welcome → registration and additional information

Interspecies Love

Panel with Monica Gagliano, Wanuri Kahiu, Bo Zheng
Curated and moderated by Yvonne Volkart

As part of Kinship In Transformation
Art-Science series

28 May 2024, 4 – 8 pm
Istituto Svizzero, Rome

istitutosvizzero.it

The narratives of kinship, love and networks of care are deeply rooted in the respective social structures and cultural systems. In the Western world and beyond, the definition and ideas of these concepts are closely tied to a capitalistic and heteronormative social structure that has furthered the maintenance of privileges for some, and the persistence of inequalities for others. The event Kinship In Transformation invites artists and researchers, coming from different disciplinary backgrounds and artistic practices, to share their reflections and work, opening to alternative narratives about kinship and love that can nourish fresh perspectives.

How can we think about kinship in new terms and acknowledge its myriad possible forms and always changing nature? And thinking beyond human relations, what can the realm of interspecies relations tell us?

The panel Interspecies Love is part of the event Kinship In Transformation. Interspecies Love is a cooperation of Istituto Svizzero and the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK Basel FHNW, supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation SNSF.

Agency of Plants

Symposium
Within the exhibition Parliament of Plants II
With contributions by Ursula Biemann, Roosa Laitinen, Nadja Mazouz, Julia Mensch, Christiane Meyer-Stoll, Uriel Orlow, Linda Schädler, Patrícia Vieira, and Yvonne Volkart, as well as students of the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK Basel FHNW
21 September 2023, 10 am – 8 pm
Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz
kunstmuseum.li

In the current ecological crisis, which is also a social, psychological and political crisis, there is a growing realization that humans must connect and ally with non-human beings in new ways. In particular, plants—those beings long perceived as other, alien, immobile and passive—are gaining new attention. Not only do plants take care of human and non-human animals, traditional agricultural practices and recent botanic research show that plants have a profoundly rich sensorium: they speak, communicate, make decisions, are responsive and adaptive and help shape environmental conditions. In short, plants have agency, they have an “extended cognition” (as plant theorist Michael Marder has noted) and thus can be defined as intelligent and as “active” subjects.

What does this mean exactly? What does it mean that plants “have rights”? And what impact does this have in “our” dealings with, or rather in our coexistence with, plants?
The symposium Agency of Plants takes up these questions and examines them through various presentations and joint discussions.

Costs: Museum Admission
Registration is requested → kunstmuseum.li

Many thanks to Roman Kurzmeyer, Senior Lecturer at the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK Basel FHNW, for preparing the participation of the students.

The symposium is made possible with a contribution from the H.E.M. Foundation, Vaduz.

A cooperation of the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein and the Institute Art Gender Nature, Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW, with the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation and the ETH’s Prints and Drawings Collection, Zurich

→ Flyer (pdf)

Program 21 September 2023

10 am
Visit and introduction to the exhibition Parliament of Plants II with Christiane Meyer-Stoll, Linda Schädler, and Yvonne Volkart, Curator and Co-curators of the exhibition

Noon Lunch

1.30 pm
Welcome by the organisers Christiane Meyer-Stoll, Linda Schädler, and Yvonne Volkart

1.45 pm
Plants in the Indigenous Amazon and the Language of Environmental Rights
Lecture by Patrícia Vieira. Research Professor, Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra
 
“In my talk, I will discuss the understanding of plants in Amazonian Indigenous communities, as teachers and guides that allow humans better to perceive their connection to the multiple entities that inhabit the rainforest. In many Indigenous traditions, plants engage in social relations and are closely connected to humans, some are even considered our ancestors. I then link this view of plants to the emergence of the ‘rights of nature’ in Amazonian countries, including Ecuador, Bolivia and Colombia, and examine the ties between Indigenous knowledge and the legal framework of environmental rights.”

2.15 pm Q & A

2.30 pm
From Forest Law to Forest Mind
Artist’s lecture by Ursula Biemann

Forest Law and Forest Mind are two distinct video works, ten years apart, that speak about the cultural dimensions of the forest. Located in Amazonia, the forest is considered not as a purely biological entity but an active biosemiotics assemblage. While Forest Law explores the juridical and forensic dimension of the forest in defense of indigenous territories in Ecuador, Forest Mind enters the deeper layers of plant-human interaction. The Amazonian forest, with its intelligent master plants, has formed the indigenous communities in distinct ways of relating to the natural world. My talk sheds light on scientific and a shamanic perspectives on how the energetic part of plants interact with the human mind co-creating a biocultural dialogue.

3 pm Q & A

3.15 pm Short break

3.30 pm
Insert by the students of the Institute Art Gender Nature, Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW

3.45 pm
Towards Understanding Plant Reactions: Responses and Interactions
Lecture by Roosa Laitinen, Associate Professor in Genomics-based Plant Science, Organismal and Evolutionary Biology Research Program, Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki

Plants, unlike animals, cannot move away from unwelcoming environments. Thus it is especially important for them to mitigate the negative effects of environmental changes quickly. In my talk, I will give an overview of the different ways plants react to their environments, respond to changes and interact with their surroundings. In concluding, I will give examples of my own research in investigating the potential for variability in plants’ adaptability.

4.15 pm Q & A

4.30 p.m.
Sensing a Damaged Forest
Presentation by Yvonne Volkart of her publication Technologies of Care. From Sensing Technologies to an Aesthetics of Attention

4.45 pm Coffee break

5.15 pm
Malezas | Weeds | Unkräuter. Amaranth as political agent in colonized America
Lecture performance by Julia Mensch

In the frame of the implementation of transgenic agriculture in Argentina since 1996, amaranth was the first wild plant to develop resistance to agrochemicals, growing in GM fields. Named kiwicha, yuyo colorado or amaranth, it is a plant native to the Americas: its seeds were preserved by indigenous peoples, despite the Spanish colonizers’ prohibition, and today it is the most wide-spread glyphosate-resistant weed. Currently, it covers over 25 million hectares. Perhaps it is, as the scientist and environmental activist Andrés Carrasco called it, America’s revenge.

5.45 pm Q & A

6 pm
Insert by the students of the Institute Art Gender Nature, Basel Academy of Art and Design Basel FHNW

6.15 pm
Concepts of Nature and Ethics
Lecture by Nadia Mazouz, Professor of Practical Philosophy at the ETH

The ethics of nature more generally as well as of non-human animals and of plants depends on how they are conceptualized. It also depends on the chosen ethical approach. Especially the different versions of anthropocentric, biocentric or holistic perspectives on nature and non-human living-beings lead to very different evaluations and recommendations. This presentation will provide a systematic overview of ethical approaches depending on such a conceptualization.

6.45 pm Q & A

7 pm
Plant Witnessing and Listening to Plant Echoes
Artist’s lecture by Uriel Orlow

Plants do not simply form an inert, passive backdrop against which historical events take place, rather they are active participants in history and politics. How do we engage with their more-than-human witnessing, how do we listen to plants’ ‘echoes’ from past and present? I will present some of my recent work which engages with plants as witnesses and asks what restitution to nature might mean.

7.30 pm Q & A

7.45 pm End of the Symposium with Apéro

Biographies

Ursula Biemann is a Swiss artist and theorist, whose practice centres on fieldwork, often in Indigenous territories, and the creation of networks between different fields of knowledge. Her work reflects on diverse forms of environmental degradation and its related historical and contemporary forces, creating through her videos, books and installations critical perspectives on the dynamics of extractivism and also proposing alternative eco-centric and knowledge-based modes of engagement with the world. Her latest field research took her to the South of Colombia where she is involved in the co-creation of an indigenous University for biocultural knowledge for which she generates video archives, exhibitions and the online platform deveniruniversidad.org. The newest video work and artist book Forest Mind (Spector 2022) emerge from this collaborative context of bridging western and indigenous knowledge systems.
geobodies.org

Roosa Laitinen is a Finnish plant scientist. After working for fifteen years at several Max Planck Institutes in Germany, she is now Associate Professor at the University of Helsinki. Her primary focus lies in unravelling the mechanisms that govern how plants respond and adapt to ever-changing environmental conditions and investigating their role in evolution. In her research, she uses Arabidopsis thaliana, of the mustard family, which is known as a model organism for plant genetics and molecular biology. This small, fast-growing plant naturally grows in various habitats across the world, making it an ideal subject for understanding adaptive traits.

Nadja Mazouz is Professor of Practical Philosophy at the ETH, Zurich. Studied physics at the Technical University of Berlin; philosophy at the Technical, Free and Humboldt Universities of Berlin and Leipzig University. Doctorate (Dr. rer. nat.) at the Fritz Haber Institute, Max Planck Society and the Free University of Berlin, 1999; Doctorate (Dr. phil.) at the Institute of Philosophy, University of Stuttgart, 2003; research assistant at the Universities of Stuttgart, Tübingen, Dortmund and ETH, Zurich; several research visits at the School of Philosophy, Australian National University, Canberra; Habilitation in Philosophy at the Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences, ETH, Zurich, 2016; Professor of practical philosophy, University of Marburg, 2017 – 2021; since 2022 Professor for Practical Philosophy, ETH, Zurich.

Julia Mensch is a visual artist based in Berlin. She studied at the National Art University in Buenos Aires and at the Hito Steyerl’s class at the UdK, Berlin. Currently she is a PhD Candidate at Bauhaus-Universität, Weimar and part of the research project Plants_Intelligence. Learning Like a Plant funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and hosted by the Institute Art Gender Nature, Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW. Her work is an intersection of text, drawing, installation, public events, photography, video and lecture performance. Her practice deals with the history of Socialism and Communism, and with environmental sociopolitical conflicts in Latin America confronting the exploitative conditions of the land and beings since colonization, and throughout neocolonialism.
She has taken part in several international residency programs and exhibitions, including Savvy Contemporary and NGBK (Berlin), Museo Nacional de Grabado (Buenos Aires), Shedhalle (Zurich), Kunsthalle Appenzell, Art Biennial Sesc_Videobrasil (São Paulo), BienalSur (Buenos Aires), among others.

Christiane Meyer-Stoll is Chief Curator and Member of the Executive Board at the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein. She curated the exhibition Parliament of Plants I (2020) and Parliament of Plants II (2023) in collaboration with co-curators.

Uriel Orlow is a visual artist and educator. Orlow’s work has been presented at numerous international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale (2011), Manifesta 9 (2012, Genk, Belgium) and Manifesta 12 (2018, Palermo), and biennials in Berlin, Dakar, Kochi, Taipei, Sharjah, Moscow, Kathmandu, Guatemala and elsewhere. Solo exhibitions include Castello di Rivoli, Kunsthalle St Gallen, Kunsthalle Mainz, State of Concept Athens and others. In 2023 he received the Prix Meret Oppenheim / Swiss Grand Prix of Art. Monographic publications include Conversing with Leaves (Archive Books, 2020), Soil Affinities (Shelter Press, 2019) and Theatrum Botanicum (Sternberg Press, 2018). He teaches at ZHdK, University of the Arts, Zurich, University of Westminster, London and Maumaus ISP, Lisbon.

Linda Schädler is Head of the Graphische Sammlung ETH Zürich (ETH’s Collection of Prints and Drawings) since 2016. She has curated several exhibitions with an interdisciplinary approach, as for example, Irene Kopelman. On Glaciers and Avalanches. In Search of Glaciological Traces (2018) and Lara Almarcegui. Deep Inside – Out (2019). Previously, she was a postdoctoral fellow for the Chair of Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of Zurich and for the Chair of the History of Art and Architecture at the ETH Zurich. Before her dissertation James Coleman and the Anamorphosis. The View from the Side was published in 2013, she worked at the Kunstmuseum Basel and the Kunsthaus Zürich. She is the Curator of the exhibition The Politics of Plants, Insert in the exhibition Parliament of Plants II.

Patrícia Vieira is Research Professor at the Center for Social Studies (CES) of the University of Coimbra in Portugal. Her fields of expertise are Latin American and Iberian Literature and Cinema, Utopian Studies and the Environmental Humanities. Her most recent book is States of Grace: Utopia in Brazilian Culture (SUNY UP, 2018) and her most recent co-edited book is The Mind of Plants: Narratives of Vegetal Intelligence (Synergetic, 2021). She is the recipient of a European Research Council Consolidator Grant to work on a project titled ECO – Animals and Plants in Cultural Productions about the Amazon River Basin.
eco.ces.uc.pt
patriciavieira.net

Yvonne Volkart is head of research and lecturer of art theory and cultural media studies at the Institute Art Gender Nature, Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW. She also holds a teaching position at Zurich University of the Arts and works as freelance curator and art critic. From 2022 – 2025 she directs the SNSF-research project Plants_Intelligence. Learning like a Plant. This fall, her monograph Technologies of Care. From Sensing Technologies to an Aesthetics of Attention will be released at Diaphanes, Zurich.

Parliament of Plants II

SNFS project by Yvonne Volkart, Felipe Castelblanco, Julia Mensch, Rasa Smite

A guest at Parliament of Plants II

Opening Thursday 4 May 2023, 5.30 pm
Exhibition 5 Mai – 22 October 2023
Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz

In the context of the exhibition Parliament of Plants II, the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK Basel FHNW cooperates with the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein. Following on from the exhibition Parliament of Plants (2020/2021), Parliament of Plants II unfolds a network of collaborations from various disciplines, with guest contributions as inserts. One of these is the research project Plants_Intelligence. Learning like a Plant in collaboration with representatives from various fields of knowledge, which in this framework demonstrates the common interests of art and science.

Plants_Intelligence.
Learning like a Plant

Plants_Intelligence. Learning like a Plant (2022–2025) is a new research project of the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK FHNW, supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation SNSF for four years. The project led by Dr. Yvonne Volkart (Head of research at the Institute Art Gender Nature) asks from the perspective of art whether the recognition of vegetal forms of intelligence might lead to other methods of knowledge generation, coexistence, breeding and ultimately to new, “intelligent” forms of plant and agricultural culture?

In addition to Dr. Yvonne Volkart (project leader, vegetal thinking), the project team includes Dr. Felipe Castelblanco (postdoc, artistic research), Julia Mensch (PhD, artistic research) and Dr. Rasa Smite (artistic research).

The research partners of Plants_Intelligence. Learning like a Plant are proven experts in the discourse of plant intelligence. They are responsible for advising on content, methodology, and interdisciplinary discussion. The implementation of curatorial projects will be developed and realized with the cooperation partners. Partners in Switzerland are Dr. Monika Messmer (Deputy Head of Department of Crop Science, Group Lead Plant Breeding, Research Institute of Organic Agriculture FiBL Frick), Dr. Ines Goldbach (Director Kunsthaus Baselland) and Sabine Himmelsbach (Director HeK House of Electronic Arts, Basel). International partners include Hernando Chinoy (Legal Representant Indigenous Territorial Entity Atun Wasi Iuiai-AWAI, Inga Nation, CO), Prof. Ursula Damm (Head of the Media Environments chair, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, DE), Prof. Dr. Birgit Schneider (Professorship for Knowledge Cultures and Media Environments, Department of European Media Studies, University of Potsdam, DE), Prof. Dr. Katja Tielbörger (Head of Plant Ecology / Director Botanical Garden, University Tübingen, DE), Heraldo Vallejo (Legal Representant FUNDACION TIERRA DE SELVA y la comunidad NODO DE PENSAMIENTO ANDINOAMAZONICO, MUNICIPIO DE MOCOA, CO), Marcos Ezequiel Filardi (Director Museo del Hambre, Buenos Aires, AR), Kathrin Meyer (Director Museum Sinclair-Haus (Stiftung Kunst und Natur GmbH), Bad Homburg, DE) and Dr. Raitis Smits (Director Rixc, Riga, LV).

More information: plants-intelligence.ch

Phenomenal Ocean
The Podcast

A podcast series produced by the Art Institute and TBA21–Academy.

We have been collaborating with TBA21–Academy for some years now in our common pursuit of a non-binary understanding of the coexistence of culture and nature, of us and the ocean.

The first six episodes of Phenomenal Ocean were released in spring 2020. In addition to Chus Martínez, head of the Art Institute, and Markus Reymann, director of TBA21–Academy, the conversations include marine scientists Skye Morét and Marzia Rovere, geneticist Alexander Tarakhovsky, writer Ingo Niermann, and Francesca Mussi, a researcher in international law, as well as artists Julieta Aranda, Elena Mazzi, Marco Roso, Teresa Solar, and Lena Maria Thüring. The recordings for Phenomenal Ocean were made during The Current II, Summer School and Convening #2: Phenomenal Ocean, both held at TBA21–Academy at Ocean Space in Venice in September 2019.

Listen to the podcast here or subscribe to the channel on Apple Podcasts.

PHENOMENAL OCEAN

Led by Chus Martínez

Summer School #2
23 September – 27 September 2019
With Chus Martínez, Markus Reymann, Teresa Solar, Lena Maria Thüring
María Montero Sierra, Marion Ritzmann

Public Events: The Current II Convening #2
28 September 11:00 – 18:00
Julieta Aranda, DIS, Amanda Coulson, Elena Mazzi, Skye Morét, Francesca Mussi, Katrin Niedermeier, Carrol Khadija, Ingo Niermann, Tabita Rezaire, Marzia Rover, Teresa Solar, Lena Maria Thüring, Alexander Tarakhovsky, Studierende Art Institute HGK FHNW / School for Curatorial Studies Venice

Ocean Space, Chiesa di San Lorenzo, Campo San Lorenzo, Venedig
academy.tba21.org

→ Video: contribution of the Summer School students
→ Video archive

The Summer School in Venice is a very important part of a collective conversation about the ways we envision culture today and the implications these ideas have on climate emergency, the ocean, and policy making.

Traditionally, we are presented with different worlds: the world of economic interests, the world of pragmatism and utility versus idealism, the world of art as insignificant with regard to real social developments and change—and this can be extended to the notion of humanity itself. When it comes to climate emergency, we say that it concerns humans equally. But is that so? Is it accurate to hold those creating pollution and selling their waste and those that have no chance to react? This Summer School could be viewed as having two parts: one oriented towards knowing more about how rising sea levels and tourism are affecting Venice, and the other addressing the aforementioned questions at the convening on Saturday 28 September, in which the students participating in the Summer School will play an active role. Additionally, a selected view of the 58th Venice Biennale 2019 through the lens of climate issues will serve as an exercise in including art and artistic practice in this debate.

Participants: Hamza Amleh, Vela Arbutina, Céline Maria Brunko, Nadine Cueni, Damien Juillard, Leah Joséphine Nehmert, Jacob Ott, Diogo Pinto und Studierende der School for Curatorial Studies Venice

Summer School 2019

The Rare Ability to Become Ocean — A method for Ocean literacy

Istituto Svizzero, Rome
14 – 21 July, 2019

Public program Friday 19 July 2019 6 to 9pm

The question of Nature has been placed at the core of the Art Institute’s curricula in Basel for more than three years already. We became aware that the questions related to Nature and those on Gender contain interchangeable notions in many respects. For this reason, we have been inviting special guests to our seminars such as scientists, philosophers and artists, who are capable of creating a context where issues of nature as well as climate related topics can be addressed together with the rise of social movements.

Historically, social justice and natural justice were different categories. This has contributed to the general perception that we could prioritize one over the other. Yet, the way we advocate for awareness, change and the rights of Nature has been using far too much the form of a patriarchal order: «Save the Ocean!» This reveals a hierarchy over the elements as well as the acknowledgement that the Ocean cannot save itself from us.

Therefor it would be wrong to think that when ones say “ocean,” one names a “subject.” One should be more radical and know that to say “ocean” today is to say “art.” Art without the burden of institutional life, without the ideological twists of cultural politics, art as a practice that belongs and should belong to the artists, art facing the urgency of socializing with all those who care about life. In other words, to say ocean is to replace the historical notion of the avant-garde with a code that is not determined by form and the invention of new gestures, but by an investigation into the substance of life, identifying this as the mission of art.

The aim of the meeting is to understand and respond to the research conducted in the ocean as in creating a situation to convey this through art. Together we will try to develop a new way of thinking about the seas, as well as a space inside education and art to address crucial questions on the future of life.

The Summer School is lead by Filipa Ramos with support of Alice Wilke as Research Assistant. Activities include a seminar by Amy Franceschini, a studio visit with Cesare Piestroiusti and a visit to the environmental organization Marevivo.

Public program
Friday 19 July, 2019, 6 to 9pm
Picnic at Villa Borghese, Rome
with performances, environmental actions, sound contributions and readings

THE WAVES OF THE OH!S
AND THE AH!S

The Current II led by Chus Martínez

24 – 27 September 2018, Summer School #1
28 – 29 September 2018, Convening #1
Chiesa di San Lorenzo, Venice, Italy

TBA21–Academy, in collaboration with the Art Institute HGK FHNW, presents two days of performances and lectures curated by Chus Martínez, expedition leader of the second cycle of The Current; the first of three annual Convenings exploring the theme Spheric Ocean.

With Diva Amon, Julieta Aranda, Cecilia Bengolea, Claudia Comte, Francesca von Habsburg, Marah Hardt, Donna Kukama, Chus Martínez, Eduardo Navarro, Ingo Niermann, Markus Reymann, Mathilde Rosier, Georgia Sagri, Christina Tony.

Participants to the Summer School #1 from the Art Institute include: Nora Berman, Anastassia Chaguidouline, Anna Diehl, Michael Etzensperger, Martina Henzi, Christopher Hunter, Jain Nikhil, Danielle Küchler, Till Langschied, Kaspar Ludwig, Simone Steinegger, and Jan van Oordt. Raffaella Naldi Rossano, and Luca di Bernardo from Fondazione Morra, Napoli, as well as Claudia Cisnero, Circe Irasema, and Berenice Olmedo from Fundación Alumnos47, México DF. The summer school is mentored by Ingo Niermann, Mathilde Rossier and Georgia Sagri, with the special participation of Dayne Buddo and Joan Jonas.

TBA21–Academy leads artists, scientists, and thought-leaders on expeditions of collaborative discovery. Founded by Francesca von Habsburg and led by Director Markus Reymann, the Academy is dedicated to fostering a deeper understanding of the ocean through the lens of art and to engendering creative solutions to its most pressing issues. TBA21–Academy commissions interdis- ciplinary research that catalyses engagement, stimulates new knowledge, and inspires artistic production. Established in 2011, the nonprofit’s programme is informed by a belief in the power of exchange between disciplines and in the ability of the arts as a vessel for communication, change, and action.

Commissioned and produced by TBA21–Academy
with the support of Art Institute, FHNW Academy of Art and Design, Basel

→ Free admission by registration only: academy.tba21.org
→ Download flyer The Waves of the Oh!s and the Ah!s

The program...

Think about the Ocean as you think about a relationship. We know that humans are bad at being faithful, inﬁdelity has a tenacity that faithfulness can only envy. If you ask about Nature or the Ocean, everyone would be ready to declare their love, or our dependency, and yet we cheat on the seas, on water, on resources, on the images, on life. Ocean Adultery has many forms, and historically it has been—as Anthony Burgess describes it—«the most creative of sins». We deplore the many times and many ways we were unfaithful to the Ocean, and yet pro-hibition only fuels the eagerness with which we consume our forbidden apples —or better said, our forbidden waters, ﬁsh, corals, sea beds, and human lives… We need to face this: If we keep failing to meet our own standards, the solution is simply to try harder. This exercise cannot happen without thinking through a question: Who is the injured party? One would say the Ocean, but would that be to demonize our actions without pausing to explore our motives? Without learning how to weather its occurrence?

Inspired by the history of fear, power abuse and its relation to the elements rather than only to the humans, and drawing on the thinking of many poets, writers, and philosophers about the importance of the complaint to raise aware-ness, the ﬁrst day of our convening will be structured as a lament: a collective performance where activists and artists give body, form, and voice to what we lament. Lamenting the Ocean, but also current forms of inequality, considering how gender and racial inequality are in complete entanglement here.

On the second day, the lamenting voice will raise an Awe. Admiration, reverence, a series of acts, performances, and lectures on the issues we admire, on all in life that bring us to this strange space of generosity, since to admire means to go out of oneself.

The Night of Ohs!

Day One: Friday 28 September, 2018

19:00	Markus Reyman & Francesca von Habsburg Welcome
19:20	Chus Martínez The Ohhhs! The Ways to Complain, Part I – A manifesto
20:00	Marah Hardt Sex and the Seas or How We Are Not Able To Mate With the Sea, a Pity – Lecture
21:30	Georgia Sagri The Creation of the Wave, Part I – Performance (approx. 30 minutes)

The Day of the Ahs!

Day Two: Saturday 29 September, 2018

11:00	Chus Martínez The Ways to Awe!, Part II – A manifesto
11:30	Mathilde Rosier Sensing the Seas – Performance and screening
12:00	Ingo Niermann, Chus Martínez, Julieta Aranda Three Proposals of Understanding All We Need to Change in Us to Become the Sea – Lecture
13:30	Break
15:00	Claudia Comte The Day that Wood and Matter Wanted to Become Salt Water – Performance
16:00	Donna Kukama The Ways We Sing and Move to Become Ocean, the Ways We Remember to Be Ocean – Performance (approx. 120 minutes)
18:00	Interval
19:00	Marah Hardt Sex and the Seas or How We Are Able to Mate with the Sea, a Luck! – Lecture
20:30	Cecilia Bengolea The Creation of the Wave, Part II – Closing performance, music, joy, drinks

ON OCEAN INTELLIGENCE

Master Symposium in collaboration with TBA21–Academy

12 April 2018, Symposium (Open to the public)
13 April 2018, Workshop (Only for master students)

With Julieta Aranda, Fernando García-Dory, Francesca von Habsburg, Ingo Niermann, Chus Martínez, Markus Reymann, Teresa Solar

The new interest in nature is not naming a new trend, but the necessity to expand our public space inhabiting it, not only with the institutionalized presence of art and culture, but with questions that represent a transformation on the way we think about the role of art and artists in the invention of a new ground to sense the future. Nature, and so the Oceans, name a complete revolution in the way we sense, in the way we relate organic and non-organic life, in the way we understand gender, generative life, power and life.

The first day of the symposium will be dedicated to sharing the context and the experience of «To Find the Vegan Lion», TBA21–Academy’s first The Current expedition under the leadership of Chus Martínez that took place March 9 – 24 in New Zealand. Francesca von Habsburg, founder of TBA21 and Markus Reymann, director of TBA21–Academy will introduce the program they initiated almost a decade ago on the relationship of art and artists with the understanding of the Oceans. The participants of this first expedition were: Julieta Aranda, Claudia Comte, Francesca von Habsburg, Eduardo Navarro, Ingo Niermann, Markus Reymann, Albert Serra, Teresa Solar and Roman Bayarri as cameraman. Some of them will be present this day and will share their experiences but also discuss the general conditions of a program aimed at creating a different relation with scientists, with the environment and the role art and artists play in expanding traditional notions of experience.

The program...

Symposium

April 12, 2018, Atelier Building, room A 0.11
With Julieta Aranda, Francesca Habsburg, Chus Martínez, Ingo Niermann, Markus Reymann and Teresa Solar

Part I: On Spheric Ocean
Francesca von Habsburg, founder of TBA21, and Markus Reymann, director of TBA21–Academy, will present the work of their foundation, their investment in creating a new working and research ground for artists and scientists, as well as their initiative to open a permanent art and research space on the Ocean in Venice. They will also introduce Patricia Francis, with whom they are currently working. A short series of presentations, and round table will follow with: Julieta Aranda, Patricia Francis, Francesca Habsburg, Chus Martínez, Markus Reymann and Teresa Solar. Moderation: Ingo Niermann

Part II: Dialog about the Agency of the Ocean
Julieta Aranda, Ingo Niermann and Teresa Solar, Summary and Discussion

Workshop

April 13, 2018
With Julieta Aranda and Fernando García-Dory

The second day of the symposium will be dedicated to two subjects: «The Ocean» and «The Land». One group will work with Julieta Aranda, whose work addresses energy, the politics of water as well as the capacity of some animas to change form. She will reflect on the importance of seeing nature and the oceans as a crucial expansion possibility for artistic research and artistic practice, but she also will link nature with the development of technology and the question of time.

Fernando García-Dory has been investing a great deal of his practice to understanding the role of non-urban knowledges and practices. He has been in contact with farmers and shepherds all over Europe and other parts of the world to understand the ancient routes of animals, traditional ways of growing plants in water – aquaponics –, and he is currently developing the collaborative platform INLAND, that combines cultural and farm production recovering a desert village in the mountains of Northern Spain amongst other actions. Art production and sustainability go hand in hand in his thinking.

Video: Chus Martínez: «Short Introduction»

Video: Francesca von Habsburg: «Thyssen-Bornemisza-Art-Contemporary-TBA21»

Video: Markus Reymann: «TBA21 Academy»

Video: Chus Martínez: «Expedition #1: To find the vegan lion»

Video: Teresa Solar: «Work Presentation»

Video: Julieta Aranda: «Work Presentation»

Video: Ingo Niermann: «Work Presentation»

SPHERIC OCEAN

The Current II led by Chus Martínez for TBA21–Academy

An expedition to North Islands, New Zealand
academy.tba21.org/sphericocean
9 – 24 March, 2018

With Julieta Aranda, Claudia Comte, Francesca von Habsburg, Eduardo Navarro, Ingo Niermann, Markus Reymann, Albert Serra, Teresa Solar

I decided to name this three-year cycle on artistic intelligence, philosophy, science and nature the Spheric Ocean. The Ocean is spherical because it is not beside the earth nor below it, but all around it. Its form is not what our eyes see, or not only. Its reality cannot be separated nor told apart from anything else on the lived earth, and therefore it poses a demand on us: the need for a philosophy to help us exercise the Ocean. It is difficult to describe what we are aiming for. I would say we are aiming for a philosophy more than anything else. It would be wrong to think that when one says «Ocean», one is naming a «subject». One could be as radical as stating that to say «Ocean» is, today, to say «art». Art without the burden of institutional life, without the ideological twists of cultural politics, art as a practice that belongs and should belong to the artists, art facing the urgency of socializing with all those that care about life. Or, in other words, to say «Ocean» is to replace the historical notion of the avant-garde with a code that is not determined by form and the invention of new gestures, but by an investigation of the substance of life, identifying this as the mission of art.

Read on...

At first sight there are «things» that can only be described in positive terms, like the Ocean. It is beautiful how some experiences of nature—of the Ocean—remind us that to live means first and foremost to feel the world around us. But sensibility is not just a faculty, sensibility is much more than that: it is an organ that both senses ourselves and others, and our life is through and through a sensible life. So, being at sea, I cannot but think of the many ways we need to—we must—rehabilitate sensible existence from its marginalization at the hands of modern philosophy, art, and politics and that the only way to do so is to create the conditions for philosophy, art, and politics by defining the ontological status of experience, of organic and inorganic intelligence.

The Ocean is making me aware of its philosophical status. Being at sea is being in an atmosphere, and being in an atmosphere is a very powerful image of thought, one that immediately calls for a challenge of the distribution of disciplines in the human sciences and humanities. I imagine a philosophy of the Ocean, a philosophy of plants, a philosophy of animals, as part of a philosophy of life that will, then, be entangled with all the developments in the philosophy of consciousness. I know that many think action is first, but how can we act differently if we are unable to deeply think/sense differently? Logically speaking, no real difference can emerge from a doing that only perpetuates or corrects and reforms past doing. Also, how can doing be separated from Modernity’s stubborn pretension to see the human spirit as achieved only through the material production of objects and their exchange, that is, material culture? So, doing cannot survive without an Ocean of conditions for biological existence… I see all this water and feel a monstrous urge to reunite all thinkers and artists to meet here and start this new school of sensing intelligence.

And the next question arises: is the Ocean an art space? Or a future space within the arts? We will be addressing this paradoxical question at The Current Convening and Summer School upcoming September.

Chus Martínez

About TBA21-Academy and The Current
TBA21–Academy, founded by Francesca von Habsburg in 2011, and drawing on her experience as a producer of cross-disciplinary art installations and socially engaged cultural programming, leads artists, scientists, and thought-leaders on expeditions of collaborative discovery. TBA21A–Academy under the directorship of Markus Reymann is guided by its mission to foster a deeper understanding of the ocean through the lens of art and a belief in the power of exchange between disciplines to engender solutions for the ocean’s most pressing issues. Chus Martinez will envision three expeditions of The Current ’s second cycle. The Current is TBA21–Academy’s three-year field study programme for artists, cultural agents and scientists. Its aim is to value the crucial role artistic intelligence plays in understanding the radical reality of our climate, as well as to help us engage emotionally and cognitively with the ocean and all who inhabit it.