The launch of INSERT #7: Plant Intelligence – Towards a Vegetal Aesthetics will take place at the Old Botanical Garden, Palm House (entrance at the corner of Talstrasse/Badweg, 8001) Zurich, Switzerland on Thursday, August 28, 2025, from 18:00 to 21:00. The Apéro will be organized by KOMA Culture Studio.

As part of the launch, guest editor Yvonne Volkart will introduce contributions by Giovanni Aloi, Noelia Billi, Ursula Damm/Michaela Ott, Matthew Fuller, Ayênan Quinchoa Juajibioy/Natalia Uribe Macías, and Cate Sandilands. Artistic researchers Felipe Castelblanco, Julia Mensch, and Rasa Smite from the research team Plants_intelligence will also present their work, followed by video screenings by the Pan-Amazon Media Collective and a lecture performance by Julia Mensch.

The new issue of INSERT and its public launch form part of the research project Plants_Intelligence. Learning Like a Plant (2022–2025), funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and hosted by the Institute Art Gender Nature, Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW. The research team consists of Yvonne Volkart, Felipe Castelblanco, Julia Mensch, and Rasa Smite. The launch of this issue is done in collaboration with the Botanical Garden of the University of Zurich. INSERT is a publication of the research focus Cultural Analysis in the Arts ZHdK.

Plants are capable of acting in the world and display nuanced forms of intelligence: they perceive and adapt to their surroundings, and actively shape their bodies and environments. They communicate and cooperate, make decisions, solve problems—and even play.

Issue #7 of INSERT brings together current interdisciplinary discourses on plant intelligence from the perspective of aesthetic theory and practice. Artists, philosophers, indigenous media activists, art and media theorists, as well as biologists seek modes of articulation, media, methods, and traditions that view plants as sensing, acting, flexible—intelligent—beings. How do they research plant forms of perception and making of worlds, and how do they relate to them? How could an adequate and political plant aesthetics be formulated if we define it as something that is closely connected to the way plants exist and behave? 

Accessibility & Seating
Please use the wheelchair-accessible entrance at the corner of Talstrasse/Badweg. Note that the gate will close at 7:00 p.m. Seating on site is limited; guests are encouraged to bring their own—such as a bath towel, pillow, or yoga mat.

EDITORIAL #7: Plant Intelligence – Towards a Vegetal Aesthetics
YVONNE VOLKART

Days Are as Grass. On Karel Miler’s “Felt by Fresh Grass,” Plant Intelligence and Expanded Aesthetics
MATTHEW FULLER

Jajañe—Chagra—Garden
FELIPE CASTELBLANCO
AYÊNAN JOHN QUINCHOA JUAJIBIOY and NATALIA URIBE MACÍAS

Open-Air Laboratory. An Approach from the Perspective of Plant Aesthetics
NOELIA BILLI

Aroma Colorado
JULIA MENSCH

Forest. Suite for the Anthropocene
CATE SANDILANDS

Speculative Conceptual Strategies
GIOVANNI ALOI and YVONNE VOLKART

Dividual Interweavements. Linguistically and Algorithmically Staged
URSULA DAMM and MICHAELA OTT

AI Herbarium. Flowering Plants as Inventors of Their Own Existence
RASA SMITE

Editors of this issue: Yvonne Volkart and Dominique Raemy, general editors: Sigrid Adorf, Noëmie Stähli, Julia Wolf

More information:
https://insert.art/

Plants_Intelligence project:
https://plants-intelligence.ch/about/