Catalogue

At a moment when political systems and infrastructures change at an unprecedented pace and direction, I think it is essential that we refine our tools to understand, navigate, and surpass conditions that are adversarial to the common good. New forms of intelligence—artificial and beyond—are urgently needed as we consider the practices and processes that shape our understanding and relations to the world. Over the next two years at the Vera List Center, we endeavor to (re)define such practices, framed under the umbrella of our two-year investigation, Matter of Intelligence, our 2025–2027 Focus Theme.

We launch this Focus Theme with the Vera List Center Forum 2025: Matter of Intelligence, presented October 17 & 18 at The New School. This catalogue provides various entry points offered by the VLC Forum: from the introduction of the 2025–2027 VLC Fellows—Moriah Evans, Mashinka Hakopian, Joyce Joumaa, and Kira Xonorika—to a roundtable discussion among the fellows and VLC curators Carin Kuoni and Eriola Pira; from a keynote lecture by Matteo Pasquinelli to Sandra Erbacher and Ruth Estévez’s lecture performance (question–repeat–failure–record), which extends itself into the pages of this publication by way of a visual score. And in a prelude of what’s to come, this year’s VLC Forum announces the recipient and fellows of the 2025–2027 Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Social Justice, who will participate in next year’s VLC Forum.

Matter of Intelligence approaches intelligence as a subject of inquiry with tangible, material implications. It considers intelligence not as an abstract concept but as something that manifests—whether through human cognition, natural processes, or artificial systems—and actively shapes our understanding and relations with the immaterial and physical worlds. In an echo of its etymological roots in legere (Latin, to collect), two years of Matter of Intelligence brings together and links different forms of intelligence, of being and knowing. Art provides the transdisciplinary lens for this expansive consideration of intelligence and its multiple manifestations, including art itself as intelligence and an intellectual activity.