30 Percent Dandelion.
Blooming Relationships in the Vegetal Turn: Art, Science & Politics.

Thursday, 20.11.2025
Where: Kunsthaus Graz, Space 04, Lendkai, 8020 Graz

10:00–11:00 Welcome

Panel 1: From Herbarium to Alchemy – Early Modern Florals to Modern Ecologies

11:00–11:30 Robert Felfe: “‘Light Eaters’ – or: the Silent Agency of Plants in European Imagery”
11:30–12:00 Dagmar Probst: “Archduke Johann’s Icones Plantarum Alpinorum. Rare Plates for the Documentation of the Alpine Flora”
12:00–12:30 Discussion

12:30–14:00 Lunch Break

14:00–15:00 Roundtable I:
From Classifications to a Return of Holistic Thinking Moderated by Andreja Hribernik Martina Pöltl Martina Pöltl (Natural Sciences, UMJ), Peter Peer (Neue Galerie Graz), Reinhard Tuder (Open-Air Museum Stübing), Karin Leitner-Ruhe (Alte Galerie Schloss Eggenberg)
15:00–15:30 Etnobotanics Today – a Tea with Michaela Marx Leading into the Break

15:30–16:00 Coffee Break

Panel 2: Botanical Epistemologies

16:00–16:30 Hilal Alkin: “Developing a Multispecies Approach to Migration Through Art”
16:30–17:00 Isabel Kranz: “Flowers of Madness. Floral (Dis)order(s) in Contemporary Fiction”
17:00–17:30 Heide Bruckner: “Rooted Futures: Feminist Ecologies of Justice in Pacific Island Mangroves”
17:30–18:00 Discussion

18:00–19:00 Keynote Suzanne Anker: “After Eden – When Cristals Spawn Flowers”
 
Friday: 21.11.2025
Where: Universität Graz, Festsaal Meerscheinschlössl, Mozartgasse 3, 8010 Graz

Panel 4: Petals of Power: Capital, Coloniality, and Decolonial Art Practices

10:00–10:30 Sabine Flach: “Botanical Decolonisation. Art, Colonialism and the Politics of Planting in the Works of Precious Okoyomon, Otobong Nkanga and Rashid Johnson”
10:30–11:00 Anita Hosseini: “Capitalist Blooms: Digital Gaze, Floral Desire, and Colonial Continuities”
11:00–11:30 Katrin Nahidi: “Decolonial Blossoms: Perspectives on Nature and Art in the Works of Parvaneh Etemadi and Jinoos Taghizadeh”
11:30–12:00 Discussion

12:00–13:30 Lunch Break

Panel 5: From Bloom to Thorn: Sound, Modernism, and Artistic Roses

13:30–14:00 Julian Blunk: “Sleeping Beauty: On the Aesthetic, Historical and Political Dimensions of Thorns and Roses”
14:00–14:30 Susanne Kogler: “Listening to Flowers or How New Music Gets to Bloom”
14:30–15:00 Artist talk with Joiri Minaya: “Destabilizing Representations of an Imagined Tropical Identity”
15:00–15:30 Discussion

15:30–16:00 Coffee Break

16:00–16:20 Intro Cynthia Kok (LACMA, digital lecture): “Painting with Shells: Imagining the Global in Dirck van Rijswijck’s Mother-of-Pearl Panels”

16:20–17:30 Roundtable II:
From a Botany of Desire to Keeping up with Questions of Diversity and Collaboration. Moderated by Katrin Bucher Trantow - Barbara Müller (Museums Schloss Stainz), Katharina Krenn (Museum Schloss Trautenfels), Karl Peitler (Coin Cabinet, Eggenberg), Monika Holzer-Kernbichler (Education Modern and Contemporary Art, Kunsthaus Graz & UMJ)

17:30–18:00 Coffee Break

18:00–19:00 Keynote Marcello Di Paola: “From Cute to Obscene: The Blooming of Plant Philosophy”

Organisation: Sabine Flach & Katrin Nahidi

Die Konferenz ist eine transdisziplinäre Kooperation zwischen dem Institut für Kunst- und Musikwissenschaft, dem Arbeitsbereich ‚Zentrum für Gegenwartskunst‘ an der Universität Graz, dem Kunsthaus Graz und den Sammlungen des Museums Joanneum.