Studying is an expression of the need to understand. It reveals the desire for self-knowledge of one’s own desires: of how to grow as an artist and as a person, and how best to contribute to the social world in which one lives. Yet there is a growing wave moving toward the total disregard for such socially oriented understanding. The blind impulse, the denial, the cry of personal ambitions, all taken without considering the collective creation of values, appear to have taken over—together with capital—the public space. The democratic legislation in force that supports a peaceful and egalitarian coexistence between individuals and collectives is constantly ridiculed or ignored—simply—by the political powers and media that reproduce this ungenerous energy.

In this context, the value of education—and especially public education—seems to be a duty rather than an option. An education provides the time to develop the values that might help create a meaningful and dignified life, an artistic practice worthy of being part of an egalitarian society and sensitive to the problems of the most marginalized. Being an artist today is a very big project. It means affirming the complexity of perception against those impulses that want to colonize intelligence, to instrumentalize every human capacity toward profit for the few.

The Institute Art Gender Nature HGK Basel FHNW is an organism. It is a life form constituted by multiple independent parts—teachers, students—functioning together as a whole. The seminars, carefully proposed by each faculty member—Phoenix Atala, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Onome Ekeh, Astrit Ismaili, Roman Kurzmeyer, Quinn Latimer, Chus Martínez, Filipa Ramos, Mathilde Rosier, Yvonne Volkart, and Uriel Orlow from February 2026—emerge from each teacher’s practices and passions. They, our technical experts, and guests from various fields, are all there to help our students gain a comprehension of their works’ possibilities, but also of its social and political contexts. Supplementing our seminars are numerous activities, including our symposia series ((Link: https://dertank.ch/symposia/)), which emerges from imagining future collective scenarios for art and culture, poetics and politics. We also produce a podcast series and the online publication series Wild Papers…, each of these are integral features of the larger atmosphere our MA generates. Our technical workshops, too, are an important asset of our study program, offering digital tools to wood, metal, and sculpture workshops. Addressing our relationship with nature and our responsibility to the planet also implies understanding how art and artists might work in ways less damaging to life.