The professorship aims to link the different ideas about research and different understandings of form, development and cause in science and art and to break down the functional separation of the disciplines. The program strives to bring art closer to scientific topics and ideas and wants to build an ongoing relationship between the arts and the sciences. After all, the scientific debates on emotions and the brain, the role of genetics in human memory, the origins of the cosmos do not just concern scientists, but also artists. To achieve the program objectives and to intensify the dialogue between science and art, the professorship will be accompanied by seminars, days-with-a-scientist, days of science, and a public lecture series.

“The collaboration between artists, engineers, and scientists has a long tradition; and at the Institut Kunst in Basel – here and now – we want to revive this history. We want to engage with and explore issues such as time, matter, life, information, position, exhibition and (re)presentation, structure, reality, experience, pleasure, consciousness, intelligence, sensuality and many others. We want to prepare the ground on which the two communities – of artists and scientists – develop topics and work on issues that are important for the future of knowledge. It is about creating an environment that facilitates experimentation with speculation,” says Chus Martinez, director of the Institut Kunst to explain the background of the professorship.

The Schering Stiftung makes possible the establishment of “The Next Society” professorship, since it is convinced that the boundaries and barriers between the disciplines hamper both artistic and scientific research. It is only through curiosity and an openness beyond one’s own discipline that something new can emerge. “The Next Society” helps create new forms of communication and teaching that have the potential of serving as a model for other art academies.