[spectre] CONF: Plant Intelligence (Basel, 31 Oct-2 Nov 25)

[Andreas Broeckmann LEU]

From: Yvonne Volkart
Date: Oct 9, 2025
Subject: CONF: Plant Intelligence (Basel, 31 Oct-2 Nov 25)

Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW, Oct 31–Nov 2, 2025
Registration deadline: Oct 27, 2025

The SNSF-research project Plants_Intelligence. Learning Like a Plant 
(2022-25) is coming to an end. In the framework of an international 
symposium, it brings together the artistic team (Yvonne Volkart, Felipe 
Castelblanco, Julia Mensch, and Rasa Smite) with leading theorists, 
scientists, artists, curators and activists to discuss its findings with 
the 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 cognizing 
beings.

Symposium language: English
Free Admission
Deadline of Registration: October 27: https://forms.gle/aLomhg4kxUr8HehPA

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.

Day 1: Oct 31
HGK Basel, Aula D1.04

13:00-14:30 Part I: Concepts of Plant Intelligence
This block of the symposium introduces the interdisciplinary discourse 
of plant intelligence in the framework of general definitions, and 
concepts of intelligence. Stating that plants behave creatively, 
flexibly, and physically, it asks what an aesthetics of vegetal 
intelligence must take into consideration.

13.10-13.30 Intro by Yvonne Volkart: What is Plant Intelligence?
13.30-14.30 Keynote by Birgit Schneider: Anthropomorphism in a Feedback 
Loop. On Speaking with Plants and Machines
14.30-15.00 Coffee break

15:00-18:00 Part II Ingesting-digesting: Intelligence Within
This block draws attention to fundamental modes of interaction between 
plants and humans via ingestion (as scent, nourishment, intoxication, 
etc), whereby the notion of intelligence helps
to sustain life-enabling relations along metabolic cycles, mutualistic 
and symbiotic patterns. This block opens up an experiential and even 
speculative realm, where nuanced modes of plant and human alliances come 
to the fore.

15:00 Intro by Felipe Castelblanco
15:15 Rodrigo Cámara-Leret: The Healing Forest Sensed by Indigenous People
15:45 Keynote by Jeremy Narby: Learning from Teacher Plants
16:15 Discussion with Jeremy Narby and Rodrigo Cámara-Leret, moderated 
by Felipe Castelblanco
16.45 Short Break
17.00 Input by Marcos Filardi: Museo del Hambre (Online), introduced by 
Julia Mensch
17.10 Ayënan Quinchoa and Heraldo Vallejo: The Indigenous Pan-Amazon 
Perspective (Online), introduced by Felipe Castelblanco
17.30 Screening: Ayënan Quinchoa Juajibioy
17.45 Break

18:00-21:00 Part III: Plant Companions
18.00 Lecture Performance by Julia Mensch: Kiwicha
19:00 Curated Dinner and Performative Input by KOMA Culture Studio: 
RE-ROOTED

Day 2: Nov 1
HGK Basel, Aula D1.04

9:30–12:30 Part I: Aesthetics and Politics of Plant Intelligence
Examining the behavior of plants, respecting them as living beings, and 
welcoming them as allies—whether by art, science or vernacular 
practices—is political: it‘s about opening up to other ways of being. 
Whereas the morning slot informs about both vegetal and aesthetic
strategies of overcoming challenging situations, so is the afternoon 
block fully dedicated to the artistic research of the team 
Plants_Intelligence and their partners.

9.30–10.00 Arrival and Coffee
10:00–10:10 Intro to Day 2 by Yvonne Volkart
10:10–11:00 Florianne Koechlin: Plant whispers: How Plants Communicate 
and Network
11:00–11:15 Coffee Break
11:15–12:15 Keynote by Giovanni Aloi: The Lawn Condition: Thinking with 
plants and soil
12.30–13.30 Lunch Break

13:30–16:00 Part II: Plants_Intelligence Artistic Research

13:30–13:50 Intro by Yvonne Volkart
13:50–14:20 Julia Mensch: Amaranth as Political Agent
14:20–14:30 Katja Tielbörger: Decision-making in Plants–An Experimental 
Approach
14:30–15:00 Rasa Smite: Light Sensing. Flower as Antenna and Attractor
15:00–15:30 Felipe Castelblanco: Plant Movement(s)
15:30–15:50 Kathrin Meyer: Among Plants: Intelligence and Subjectivity 
of Plants as Starting Points for Changing Relations?
15:50–16:00 Yvonne Volkart: Closing remarks
16:00 Coffee Break / Screening by Ursula Damm

16:30–20:00 Part III

16.30–17:00 Valentina Vetturi: Mimosa Pudica. Act #1: On Observation. 
Participatory plant observing at Freilager-Platz.
17.00–19.00 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
19.00–Harmonization: Synesthetic Ritual with Marilu Pacheco
19.30–Dinner (Soup + Finger food) by KOMA Culture Studio

Day 3: Nov 2
HEK Seminar Room

11:00–13:00 New and Old Cognizing Systems
In this block, we reconsider plants as protagonists and nodes of 
extended cognizing systems blurring the boundaries of plants, machines, 
bacteria, fungi etc. We discuss the new distributed intelligent systems 
effectuated by smart farming as well as the relations of plants and soil.

11:00 Welcome/Wrap up
11:10 Noelia Billi: Plant Intelligence and the Aesthetics of the 
Artefactual Sensorium (Online)
12:00–13:00 Keynote by Michael Marder. The Soil as the Unconscious: A 
Thick and Opaque Image of Plant Intelligence
13:00 Closing

Plants_Intelligence. Learning Like a Plant (2022–2025) is realized by 
Yvonne Volkart, Felipe Castelblan-co, Julia Mensch and Rasa Smite
Funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation
and hosted by the Institute Art Gender Nature, Basel
Academy of Art and Design FHNW
In cooperation with HEK House of Electronic Arts Basel

Reference / Quellennachweis:
CONF: Plant Intelligence (Basel, 31 Oct-2 Nov 25). In: ArtHist.net, Oct 
9, 2025. <https://arthist.net/archive/50840>.