Head of Research IAGN

Yvonne Volkart is responsible for the research development at the Institute Art Gender Nature, FHNW Academy of Art and Design in Basel. She is senior lecturer of art theory and cultural media studies and supervisor for master and PhD students. She also holds a teaching position at the Master of Arts in Art Education, Zurich University of the Arts. In addition, she is freelance curator and project leader at the Department for Art and Architecture, City of Zurich Public Works Office. She writes regularly for Springerin and other art magazines. She was a curator at Shedhalle Zürich, and a core-member of the cyberfeminist alliance Old Boys Network OBN. Currently, she is writing the monograph Technologies of Care. From Sensing Technologies to an Aesthetics of Attention (diaphanes 2022). Her concerns lie in the modes how aesthetic theory-practice, ecology, technology, science, and decolonial feminism come together and bring us in relation to the world. In her research projects, she engages with innovative approaches such as experimental workshops, audio walks, mappings, excursions, audio essays, texts and exhibitions to address people in manifold ways beyond academic modes.

Current reseach project: Plants_Intelligence. Learning like a Plant (2022–2025, funded by SNSF, led by Yvonne Volkart). Completed research projects include: Ecodata–Ecomedia–Ecoaesthetics. The Role and Significance of New Media, Technologies and Technoscientific Methods in the Arts for the Perception and Awareness of the Ecological (2017–2021; funded by SNSF, led by Yvonne Volkart); in this context, she co-curated the group exhibition and publication project Eco-Visionaries in collaboration with Karin Ohlenschläger (LABoral, Gijon) and Sabine Himmelsbach (HeK, Basel; 2018–2019); Times of Waste (2015–2018); RhyCycling. Aesthetics of Sustainability in the Basel Border Area (2011–2012, both led by Flavia Caviezel and funded by SNSF); Cyborg Bodies. The End of the Progressive Body, a section which Volkart headed for the internet platform Media Art Net (ZKM Karlsruhe/Institute Cultural Studies ZHdK, 2002–2005, led by Yvonne Volkart).