Following the RIXC Art Science Festival 2025: Plants Intelligence in Riga, featuring the exhibition opening on 16 October 2025, the ‘Plants_Intelligence’ symposium will take place from 31 October to 2 November 2025 at the Basel Academy of Art and Design (HGK) FHNW.
The symposium marks the conclusion of the four-year research project Plants_Intelligence. Learning Like a Plant, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and hosted by the Institute Art Gender Nature (IAGN) at HGK Basel FHNW.
It will bring together the project team — Yvonne Volkart (Principal Investigator) and artists Felipe Castelblanco, Julia Mensch, and Rasa Smite — who will discuss their findings in dialogue with leading theorists, scientists, artists, curators, activists, and the audience.

The symposium will bring together key representatives of the discourse and present its findings for discussion. It brings together the artistic team (Yvonne Volkart, Felipe Castelblanco, Julia Mensch and Rasa Smite) with research partners such as Birgit Schneider and Katja Tielbörger, theorists such as Giovanni Aloi, Michael Marder and Jeremy Narby, and activists such as Florianne Koechlin with an interested audience.

Theoretical, artistic and experimental formats open up the discourse on plant intelligence and show how plants can be approached aesthetically and politically as intentional and cognising beings.

The detailed programme can be viewed here.

Participation in the symposium is free of charge and possible both on site and online. Registration can be done here. Online participants will receive a stream link before the event.

More information
https://plants-intelligence.ch/save-the-date-symposium/

PROGRAM:
Friday, October 31st
HGK Basel, Aula D1.04
13:00 - 14:30
Part I: Concepts of Plant Intelligence

Intro by Yvonne Volkart: What is plant intelligence?
Keynote by Birgit Schneider: Anthropomorphism in a Feedback Loop. On Speaking with Plants and Machines

15:00 - 18:00
Part II: Ingesting-digesting: Intelligence Within

Felipe Castelblanco (Part 1): Borrachero Dreams
Keynote by Jeremy Narby: Learning from Teacher Plants
Discussion with Jeremy Narby moderated by Felipe Castelblanco
Ayënan Quinchoa and Heraldo Vallejo: The Indigenous Pan-Amazon Perspective (Online), introduced by Felipe Castelblanco
Screening: Ayënan Quinchoa Juajibioy
Lecture Performance by Julia Mensch: Kiwicha

18:30 - 21:00
Part III: Plant Companions at CIVIC
Marcos Filardi: Museo del Hambre (Online), introduced by Julia Mensch
Metabolizing Yearba Mate by Camila Chebez. KIOSK
Curated Dinner and Performative Input by KOMA Culture Studio: RE-ROOTED

Saturday, November 1st
HGK Basel, Aula D1.04
9:30 - 12:15
Part I: Aesthetics and Politics of Plant Intelligence
Intro to Day 2 by Yvonne Volkart
Florianne Koechlin: Plant whispers: How Plants Communicate and Network
Keynote by Giovanni Aloi: The Lawn Condition: Thinking with plants and soil

12:30 - 13:30 Lunch

13:30 - 16:30
Part II: Plants_Intelligence Artistic Research
Intro by Yvonne Volkart
Julia Mensch: Amaranth as Political Agent
Katja Tielbörger: Decision-making in plants–An experimental approach
Rasa Smite: Light Sensing. Flower as Antenna and Attractor
Felipe Castelblanco (Part 2): Plant Movement(s)
Kathrin Meyer: Among Plants: Intelligence and Subjectivity of Plants as Starting Points for Changing Relations?
Yvonne Volkart: Closing remarks
Screening: Ursula Damm

16:30 - 20:00
Part III: Plants_Intelligence at Freilager-Platz & CIVIC
Valentina Vetturi: Mimosa Pudica. Collaborative lecture performance at Freilager-Platz
Guided Tour through Plants_Intelligence exhibition at CIVIC:
Julia Mensch and Sofia Viola, Listening Session / VR showcase by Rasa Smite / Videos by Felipe Castelblanco
and Plants_Conversations / Relaunch of Insert (online journal) and Unter Pflanzen Magazine
Harmonisation: Synesthetic Ritual with Marilu Pacheco
Dinner (Soup and Finger Food) by KOMA Culture Studio

Sunday, November 2
HGK Basel, Studio Kino - Ground Floor.
11:00 - 13:00
Cognizing Systems

Noelia Billi: Plant Intelligence and the Aesthetics of the Artefactual Sensorium (Online)
Keynote by Michael Marder: The Soil as the Unconscious: A Thick and Opaque Image of Plant Intelligence

THEME

Against the backdrop of the current wasting of the world, we must think of other ways—vegetal ways—of worlding: ways that do not consume the world, but re/produce it. Co-Composing it with plants, we might learn to learn like them. Also, in the arts.

The team Plants_Intelligence approached this task by building on the speculative interdisciplinary discourse of plant intelligence. This discourse has been held since around 15 years at the fringes of botany, neurosciences, philosophy, and art. It is challenging and mindblowing, because scientific research can now prove what has been known to alternative plant knowledge for a long time, namely, that plants have capacities; that they behave and learn, cognize and process, produce and shape. We conceive plants as assemblages of physical and chemical materialities, of forces and efficacies that generate life far beyond human scale. They are actors in ecological concatenations and relational events. As such, they are situational, and responsive. They distinguish themselves from animal modes of making worlds, while also being affiliated with them and with us.

Together, and including different perspectives and approaches, we discuss what the recognition of the intelligence of plants implies for artistic questions and the formulation of an aesthetics and politics of the vegetal that tries to overcome our culture of wasting the world.

* In the open air. Wear warm clothes.