If you’re planning to spend the weekend in Basel, here’s a little taster of what to look out for. Art Basel’s program has not only included visual arts: large importance has been given to other artistic expressions. “Art on the Stage” is one such example; this project was in collaboration with Theater Basel, and Wednesday saw the presentation of Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset’s Drama Queens,as part of the series curated by James Hoffmann.
Movie has been investigated as another medium of artistic expression, “Art Film” is a long-week program of movies about and by artists, closing on Sunday, curated by the film scholar Mark Glöde, collector This Brunner and artist John Armleder.
June 6 will see the presentation of Derek, a portrait of Derek Jarman, featuring Tilda Swinton by Isaac Julien, 8pm; at 10pm will be Daft Punk Electroma by Thomas Bangalter, Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo. Sunday June 8 at 10 pm will be Traite de bave et d’eternitè by Isidore Isou (all films will be shown in the Stadtkino Basel – entry from Steinenberg 7).
Art Basel Conversations has already seen the discussions between Lawrence Weiner and Jorge Pardo, along with the debate entitled “Forming Cultural Institutions in Eastern Europe” – participants were Joanna Mytkowska, Director of the MOMA, Warsaw; Magda Kardasz, curator of the Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw; Zdenka Badovinac, Director of the MOMA, Ljubljana; Vit Havranek, curator and project leader of Tranzit, Prague.
June 6 will see “Collection, Protecting, and Projecting New Media Art,” with Pamela Kramlich, Kramlich Collection San Francisco; Christoph Blase, head of the Laboratory for Antique Video Systems of the Center for Art and Media, ZKM, Karlsruhe; Pip Laurenson conservator, head of time-based media conservation, Tate, London; Stuart Comer, Film and Video Curator, Tate, London; moderator Chrissie Iles Curator, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
June 7 will be “Working from the Edge of the Global Art Market,” participants include Orly Benzacar, Ruth Benzacar Galeria de Arte, Buenos Aires; Pi Li, Boers-Li Gallery, Beijing; John McCormack Starkwhite Auckland, Aukland; and Gregor Podnar, Galeija Gregor Podnar, Ljubljana/Berlin, with Phil Tinari, founder of Beijing editorial studio Office for Discourse Engineering, as the moderator.
(Each of these seminars will be hosted in the Art Unlimited hall from 10 to 11 am).
Every day the “Art Lobby”, from 12 to 7, will be seven different encounters in which the public have the opportunity to engage with various topics of discussion. So far, topics have been “Teaching the Future,” a conversation with Tom Eccles and Daniel Birnbaum; “Book signing with artist and singer Patti Smith;” “Open Future – New Trends in the Tel Aviv Art Scene,” with Klaus Biesenbach, Dr. Andrew Renton and Smadar Shefi; “Book launch and artist conversations – two artists / two books” with Pietro Roccasalva, Alessandro Rabottini, Barry Schwabsky, Victor Man, Cluj-Napoca, with Hans Ulrich Obrist.
June the 6, is “Professional Day,” a day long program dedicated exclusively to an international art-specialist audience: curators, art dealers, collectors, and artists. 70 Galleries will show special activities: solo exhibitions, performances, lectures, and presentations of artist books. Click thorugh the following link for more details about the features of this day http://www.art.ch/go/id/kar.
It is also worth looking out for the various museum shows: the “Monika Sosnowska / Andra Zittel” exhibition at Schaulager. TinguelyMuseum is presenting the exhibition “Art Machines – Machine Art,” an illustration of machines that produce their own art, from Tinguely to Damien Hirst. The Kunsthalle Basel have two parallel exhibitions: Ahmet Ögüt “Mutual Issues, Inventive Acts” and Aleana Egan “We sat down where we had sat before.” At the Beyeler Foundation is “Projekt Sarah Morris, Black Beetle,” which will exhibit Sara Morris’s long mural Black Beetle, showing her interest in origami and Japanese paper-folding techniques, In parallel, the Foundation is planning a program of Morris’s films on New York and WashingtonDC and Los Angeles. Furthermore, Kunstmuseum Basel is hosting “Fokus: Olafur Eliasson.”
