Spring Symposium, The Political Dimension of Language

The Political Dimension of Language
Spring Symposium
27 – 28 May 2026
On-site and online
Auditorium D 1.04, Tower Building, HGK Basel FHNW
https://live.hgk.fhnw.ch/iagn-symposium

As part of the symposium series Gender and Equality in the Arts

With contributions by Sinzo Aanza, Anchan/Anna Daučíková, Skye Arundhati Thomas, Heike Geißler, Annelyse Gelman, Mayte Gómez Molina, Sophie Jung, Louis Lüthi, Ingo Niermann, Heather Phillipson, Mark Turner, and Simone White

Moderated by Chus Martínez and Quinn Latimer

The symposium is open to the public and will be held in English.
Free admission.

Language does not just give name to the world, it produces it. Should we want to make a new world—and we do—we will have to begin with language then. The spring symposium at Institute Art Gender Nature HGK Basel FHNW on 27 and 28 May 2026, is devoted to language in all its ancient and nascent scenes and technologies. How does literature, its ambient forms and practices, shape cognition? How do narrative, metaphor, and linguistic ambiguity allow us to think beyond hegemonic ideas of progress, to feel and imagine from multifold poetics and continuums? What does language do—spoken, sung, written, seen, debased, incantatory, human or non—to our bodies and societies? The Political Dimension of Language brings together poets, artists, scholars, novelists, and filmmakers—writers all—whose own irradiating languages examine and embody such questions. Moderated by Chus Martínez and Quinn Latimer, the symposium is part of the biannual symposia series on issues of artistic practice and the social, held at Institute Art Gender Nature since 2018.

Following the first day of the symposium, on 27 May 2026, from 5.30 pm, a group exhibition curated by Sincerely will open at Atelier Mondial in Basel/Münchenstein. The exhibition is on view until 7 June 2026, and is a collaboration between Atelier Mondial and Institute Art Gender Nature HGK Basel FHNW.