Basel Dialogues 01 - Real Intelligence

“We talk—we always have.” So begins Real Intelligence (and Other Flows and Fictions), the first volume of Basel Dialogues, a new critical book series from the Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW. Featuring recent conversations among artists, architects, designers, poets, historians, filmmakers, academics and other hybrid practitioners within the context (and sometimes campus) of the Basel Academy, Real Intelligence (and Other Flows and Fictions) is philosophical, fervent, and sometimes funny. Its winding conversations concern issues of intelligence, the documentary gesture and the real, the poor copy of coloniality, and fiction as a form of design. Flows—of images, peoples, waters, capital, and language, as algorithm or liquid—are repeatedly evoked, suggesting the speed at which our ideas move. In every case, though, the issues articulated transcend discipline, suggesting that the most imperative concerns of the present moment inevitably cross fields and form, just as those speaking mostly do.