Friday, October 17, 2025, 15:00 (EEST)
Art Academy of Latvia (K2 building), Kalpaka bulvāris 13 / Zoom
Yvonne VOLKART (CH). Plant Intelligence – Towards a Vegetal Aesthetics.
In conversation with Bo ZHENG (CN) (joining online)
In her keynote talk, Volkart will discuss her thesis and the foundations of her proposed Vegetal Theory, in which she argues: If we want to change the dominant lifestyle and begin to co-compose the world with plants, we must learn from them, think with them, and act with and through them. Also, in the arts. Her talk will continue in conversation with Zheng Bo, a Hong Kong–based artist (joining remotely) whose work is devoted to more-than-human vibrancy – investigating the past and imagining the future from the perspectives of marginalized communities and marginalized plants.
Yvonne Volkart (Switzerland) is an art and media theorist, lecturer and head of research at the Institute Art Gender Nature (IAGN), Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW, and principal investigator of the SNSF-funded research project Plants_Intelligence. Learning Like a Plant (2022–2025), which in its current closing stage is the main partner in this year’s RIXC festival edition.
Zheng Bo (China) is learning how to live a good life on planet Earth, a life that is ecologically just, vibrant and beautiful. Plants are his teachers: ferns in Taiwan, mosses in Scandinavia, grass trees in Western Australia, date palms in the Arabian Peninsula. In recent years his practice has received support from institutions such as The Huntington, Göteborgs Konsthall, Gropius Bau, Jameel Arts Centre, and Kyoto City University of Arts Art Gallery. In return, he has nudged these institutions to move beyond an anthropocentric conception of art.