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Creative Time Announces Special Performances, Talks, And Workshops At Art Basel
By: A.A. Cristi Jun. 11, 2018
Creative Time is pleased to announce the programming schedule for Basilea, the organization's first international public art project, commissioned by Art Basel. The talks and workshops will be free and open to the public on the Messeplatz starting today, Monday, June 11, and running through Sunday, June 17.
FULL PROGRAMMING SCHEDULE
DAILY ACTIVATIONS (JUNE 11 - 17)
Daily | 10:00AM - 8:00PM Gravel | Lara AlmarceguiArtist Lara Almarcegui orchestrates a large scale installation of gravel deposits from an active quarry, and has created a guide to abandoned quarries throughout the City of Basel. Growing daily in increments of 250 tons (mirroring the average volume of gravel extracted from a Basel quarry), the work serves as an invitation to reflect on the consequences of our extractive relationship to the land. The guide is free and available to the public on site at Basilea.
Recetas Urbanas led by architect Santiago Cirugeda, is working with local and international volunteers to collectively design and build a multi-purpose civic structure, using locally sourced and second-hand materials. Participants learn from and teach each other through collective exchange and collaboration. The civic structure is open to all and activated by programs and performances. Daily | 10:00AM - 11:00AM Opening Session | Isabel Lewis, Nuno Damaso, Ursula de Almeida Goldfarb
Guided by martial arts and Chinese medicine specialist Nuno Damaso of Taekwondo Schule Basel, this open public session will work with principles of Qigong and Tai Chi. These advanced forms of energy work are explored collectively and guided to incorporate rather than shut out or ignore the sensory input of the urban environment. The session on June 14 will be guided by acupuncturist and Tai Chi specialist Ursula de Almeida Goldfarb of Tao Arts Basel. Interested participants should meet promptly at 10am at the Basilea information point and will be led to the rooftop of a neighboring building. Daily | 12:00PM - 1:00PM Slow Walk | Isabel Lewis
The public is invited to use the Messeplatz to practice a collective choreography of slow and silent walking amidst the frenetic activities of socializing, comings and goings that occur outside of the fair. Using a slowed-down but otherwise non-stylized walking movement we are challenged to take time to enter into a reflective state bringing attention to breath, presence, and heterogeneous temporality. Interested participants can meet Isabel Lewis at the Basilea information point for a short introduction on Carolyn Dinshaw's notion of the "queerness of time" at the start of the hour. The end of the hour will be signaled by a prominent percussive aural cue. The Slow Walk can be spontaneously joined at anytime. Daily | 2:00PM - 3:00PM Activating the Messeplatz, Sonically | Isabel Lewis, Colin Hacklander
Activating the Messeplatz, Sonically is a site-specific score by composer and drummer Colin Hacklander performed by Tarren Johnson, Marquet K. Lee, Flora Kountouriotis, Zuzanna Ratajczyk, Lea Kieffer, Jella Dehn, Michael Helland, and Zinzi Buchanan. Through sound-based interaction with the surrounding objects, architecture and space, the performers pursue sonic activation of the Messplatz through physical production and also activation through awareness as they investigate unique instances of reverberation, electromagnetic fields, and 'sonic givens.' The result is an embodied, interpretational, event-based composition that cultivates attentive listening through various auditory modalities in a public context for both performers and observers. Isabel Lewis has developed an accompanying set of simple instructions for heightened reception of Hacklander's sonic activation. All interested participants should gather at the Basilea information point at 2pm to receive instruction. Daily | 3:00PM - 4:00PM Open Space | Urban Methodologies | In Conversation Monday | Open Space Tuesday | Open Space Wednesday | Urban Methodologies with Recetas Urbanas | Santiago Cirugeda
Led by architect Santiago Cirugeda, Recetas Urbanas is working with volunteers to collectively design and build a multi-purpose civic structure, using locally sourced and second-hand materials. Participants learn from and teach each other through collective exchange and collaboration. Thursday | In Conversation: Smell-researcher Sissel Tolaas and Isabel Lewis
Lewis and Tolaas speak about Tolaas's work with urban space. Tolaas has often worked with the likes of architects, environmentalists, and even commercial companies to create "smellscapes" of different cities, including Berlin, Paris, Shanghai, Mexico City, Singapore, Stockholm. She's been doing this since the early 2000s and already has smell profiles of 52 cities in her library. Altogether, she has a collection of more than 7,000 scents from various projects in her Berlin laboratory. When asked if it would be possible with eyes closed to navigate one's city Tolaas responded, "Yes and in a very sophisticated way. We are equipped with amazing software that helps us navigate, understand, and communicate with the world." Friday | Urban Methodologies with Recetas Urbanas | Santiago Cirugeda
Led by architect Santiago Cirugeda, Recetas Urbanas is working with volunteers to collectively design and build a multi-purpose civic structure, using locally sourced and second-hand materials. Participants learn from and teach each other through collective exchange and collaboration. Saturday | Open Space with Anna Minton - Writer, Journalist and Reader in Architecture at the University of East London Sunday | Open Space with Claire Tancons -
Curator, Writer, Researcher, Sharjah Biennial 14 Curator Daily | 4:00PM - 5:00PM Parkour Focus | Isabel Lewis, Arvo Losinger
Led by Arvo Losinger from ParkourOne. Open invitation for people curious about Parkour will be introduced to the practice through basic exercises that highlight important core principles. Parkour is a bodily practice that, in Isabel Lewis' view, forms specific and intimate relations with urban space. Lewis will gather the public at the Basilea information point to introduce her take on the practice, drawing connections to the notions of Jane Bennet's "thing power" and Donna Haraway's "making oddkin" and "cultivating the capacity to respond." Participants can wear regular street attire. Daily | 5:00PM - 7:00PM Urban Flourishing Workshop | Isabel Lewis, Colin Hacklander
In this workshop participants enter into Isabel Lewis' practice with a focus on public expressions of care and sociability and opportunities to listen in an expanded sense -- to sounds, voices, to the vibrations of urban material: urban lives and nonlife. Lewis incorporates influences from dance, performance, active listening practices and Parkour in a hybrid new bodily praxis developed over the last months with collaborator Colin Hacklander and Basel locals that the artist calls "urban flourishing." It is a practice of attunement for the body that suggests alternative modes of engagement with our built environment than those otherwise proposed to us in today's highly regulated and standardized forms of urban existence. Please meet at the Basilea information point at the start of the hour. June 11 & June 12 | 7:00PM - 8:00PM Stochastic Activation: Basler Trommeln
At the closing of the daily activities on the Messeplatz composer and drummer Colin Hacklander presents an original score made for multiple Basel drum "cliques," engaging the centuries-old tradition of Swiss Rudimental Drumming and its unique Basel-born iteration. Participating Fasnacht drummers gather and then spread throughout the area evincing the specific sonic identities of the Messeplatz within a stochastic composition of individual drum hits before reconvening to present traditional drumming from their repertoire. Basel drumming appears in Lewis' contribution to Basilea as one of the locally occurring physical practices that for Lewis offers the opportunity to reflect upon traditional and contemporary forms of togetherness and kinship between human and nonhuman agents.
Monday | Colin Hacklander and Drum Clique Schnurebegge
Tuesday | Colin Hacklander and Drum Clique Naarebasch June 14 & June 15 | 6:00PM - 7:00PM Stochastic Activation: Basler Trommeln
At the closing of the daily activities on the Messeplatz composer and drummer Colin Hacklander presents an original score made for multiple Basel drum "cliques," engaging the centuries-old tradition of Swiss Rudimental Drumming and its unique Basel-born iteration. Participating Fasnacht drummers gather and then spread throughout the area evincing the specific sonic identities of the Messeplatz within a stochastic composition of individual drum hits before reconvening to present traditional drumming from their repertoire. Basel drumming appears in Lewis' contribution to Basilea as one of the locally occurring physical practices that for Lewis offers the opportunity to reflect upon traditional and contemporary forms of togetherness and kinship between human and nonhuman agents.
Thursday | Colin Hacklander and Drum Clique Muggedatscher
Friday | Colin Hacklander and Drum Clique Schnurebegge
CONVERSATIONS ON MESSEPLATZ
1:00PM - 2:00PM In Conversation Wednesday, June 13 | Daniel Häni and Isabel LewisDaniel Häni - The Basic Income film director, entrepreneur, co-founder of the Basel culture and coffee house
Isabel Lewis - Basilea Artist Born 1966 in Bern, Häni is an entrepreneur, co-founder of the Basel culture and coffee house «unternehmen mitte» and co-initiator of the Swiss popular initiative «For an unconditional basic income» which launched a referendum in 2016 and triggered a worldwide media response. His artistic work appears under the label "First World Development". Häni joins artist Isabel Lewis to discuss his work and film The Basic Income. Thursday, June 14 | The New Story: Creative Practices In Journalism
Ingrid Burrington - Writer, Artist, Author of Networks of New York: An Illustrated Field Guide to Urban Internet Infrastructure
Surya Mattu - Artist, Engineer, Journalist, Researcher at MIT, Journalism Resident at Eyebeam
Serena Danna - Managing Editor-In-Chief for the Italian edition of Vanity Fair
Marisa Mazria Katz - Journalist, Eyebeam Editorial Producer and Kickstarter Fellow With the slow erosion of boundaries and the opening of opportunities for journalists and artists to blend information practices and aesthetics, we are seeing new forms of what constitutes a story, as well as new applications, both responding to and helping to build local and global communities. This hybridized form of art practice has led to a cross-pollination of methods, creating more robust and necessary new forms of investigation and reporting. This is particularly true when it comes to networks representing connections between physical infrastructure or information sources or institutions. These complex objects are not only products of human design, but sources of real power that can be questioned. Eyebeam ensures artists are at the center of the invention and design of our shared future. Friday, June 15 | Self-Construction, Self-Governance
Santiago Cirugeda - Architect, Basilea Artist
David Juarez - Architect, Founding Member of Straddle3
Patti Anahory - Architect
Moderator: Baharak Tajbakhsh - Architect Can we formulate architecture as a platform for a public inquiry? And, if so, how would this question be defined collectively? Baharak Tajbakhsh leads a conversation in which architects Patti Anahory and David Juarez together with architect Santiago Cirugeda discuss the active role we have as citizens to intervene, reflect upon and transform a given environment. Saturday, June 16 | On Wastelands and Mineral Rights
Anna Minton - Writer, Journalist and Reader in Architecture at the University of East London
Emily Scott - Assistant Professor, History of Art & Architecture and Environmental Studies, University of Oregon
Manuel Herz - Architect
Moderator - Lara Almarcegui - Basilea Artist What happens to an extraction site once it is no longer of use? And, who is responsible for its development and its return to the community? Experts Anna Minton, Emily Scott and Manuel Herz join artist Lara Almarcegui in a panel that invites us to reflect upon the decision-making and journey behind the transformation of a green area into a wasteland. Sunday, June 17 | Techne Techno Tech
Isabel Lewis - Basilea Artist
Claire Tancons - Curator, Writer, Researcher, Sharjah Biennial 14 Curator
Catherine Wood - Senior Curator, International Art (Performance), Tate Modern, London
Moderator - Andrea Lissoni - Senior Curator, International Art (Film), Tate Modern, London This panel brings together scholars and curators with artist Isabel Lewis in a discussion of her inquiry into the meaning of contemporary rituals of gathering. Lewis' contribution to Basilea is series of public workshops that assemble and interweave a selection of techniques from contemporary dance, performance, moving meditation and Parkour, into a hybrid new bodily praxis.
ART WORLD TALK, ACTIVATING PUBLIC SPACES
JUNE 16, ART BASEL HALL 1.1, AUDITORIUM
Saturday, June 16 - 3:00 pm - Art Basel Hall 1.1, Auditorium
Isabel Lewis, Artist, Dancer, Electronic Music Producer, Enrique Fontanilles, Artist, Basel/Mulhouse/Cazalla de la Sierra, former professor HEAD, Senam Okudzeto, Artist, Writer and Lecturer, Moderator: Elvira Dyangani Ose, Senior Curator, Creative Time, and Lecturer in Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths, University of London, London
What happens to an extraction site once it is no longer of use? And, who is responsible for its development and its return to the community? Experts Anna Minton, Emily Scott and Manuel Herz join artist Lara Almarcegui in a panel that invites us to reflect upon the decision-making and journey behind the transformation of a green area into a wasteland.'Basilea' Opening hours
May 23- June 17 | 10am - 8pm
Messeplatz, Basel
Basilea is free and open to the public
What makes a city? Basilea invites you to reflect on a city's possibilities through a series of immersive projects connecting the City of Basel, its residents and the 95,000+ fairgoers attending Art Basel. Basilea is conceived by artists Lara Almarcegui, Isabel Lewis, and architecture studio Recetas Urbanas led by Santiago Cirugeda, and is is curated by Elvira Dyangani Ose. Basilea is a project by Creative Time, commissioned by Art Basel, and Creative Time's first international public project and the first collaboration between the artists. The project aims to create awareness of the active role we, as citizenry, have to intervene and alter any given urban environment, at an individual and collective level, encouraging discussions about the use and ownership of public space. The project includes a collectively built structure, a large-scale installation, and a series of workshops, events and occasions. Recetas Urbanas led by architect Santiago Cirugeda, is working with local and international volunteers to collectively design and build a multi-purpose civic structure, using locally sourced and second-hand materials. Participants learn from and teach each other through collective exchange and collaboration. During its construction and upon completion, the civic structure will be open to all and activated by programs and performances. Following the close of Art Basel, the structure will be relocated and given to one of the local organizations that participated in its construction, thus extending the significance and utility of the project long after the fair is over. Surrounding Recetas Urbanas' civic structure, artist Lara Almarcegui orchestrates a large scale installation of gravel deposits from an active quarry, from June 11 - 15. Growing daily in increments, mirroring the average volume of gravel extracted from a Basel quarry, the work serves as an invitation to reflect on the consequences of our extractive relationship to the land. In conjunction, Almarcegui encourages you to visit Basel's abandoned quarries using her publication which contains information about these 'wastelands' now awaiting a new function. The publication is free and available to the public on site. Drawing upon her training in cultural criticism, dance and philosophy Isabel Lewis has conceived a series of workshops and occasions engaging the public through new modes of addressal, inviting us to rethink notions of 'self' and 'community'. The work facilitates spaces for experimentation and play, where members of the public determine their own trajectories and levels of engagement. The public workshops which will take place on the Messeplatz in the weeks leading up to and continuing through the week of the fair function as a meeting point for practices that, in Lewis's view, can form situated and intimate relations with urban space. For her contribution to Basilea Lewis works closely with Berlin-based percussionist and composer Colin Hacklander who leads the sonic activations creating opportunities to listen in an expanded sense-to sounds, music, and the vibrations of urban material: urban life and nonlife. Hacklander introduces an original score made for multiple Basel drum "cliques," engaging the centuries-old tradition of Swiss Rudimental Drumming and its unique Basel-born iteration. At the closing of the daily activities participants spread throughout the area, evincing the specific sonic identities of the Messeplatz within a stochastic composition of individual drum hits before reconvening to present traditional drumming from their repertoire. About Lara Almarcegui
A champion of neglected and forgotten sites, Lara Almarcegui's work carefully catalogues and highlights a particular location's tendency towards entropy. Working at a time of widespread urban renewal in Europe, Almarcegui reflects upon the continent's built histories and extractive relationship with the land, and has even worked towards these sites' legal protection. As Spain's representative to the 55th Venice Biennial, she filled the interior of the pavilion with massive piles of building rubble similar to those used during its construction. Almarcegui has exhibited internationally, including the Barbican Art Centre, London (2009); HKW, Berlin (2015); Athens Biennale (2009); Gwangju Biennale (2008); Sharjah Biennale (2007); The 27th São Paulo Biennial (2006); Seville Biennial (2006); Liverpool Biennale (2004); Lyon Biennale (2017); Manifesta IX, Genk (2012); and TRACK, Gent (2012). Almarcegui lives and works in Rotterdam, Netherlands; and is represented by Gallery Mor Charpenter in Paris, Ellen de Bruijne Projects in Amsterdam, and Parra & Romero in Madrid and Ibiza.
About Isabel Lewis
Trained in literary criticism, dance and philosophy, Isabelle Lewis' work takes on many different formats: from lecture-performances and workshops to music sessions, parties, installations, and what she calls "hosted occasions." She has created works around topics such as open source technology and dance improvisation, social dances as cultural storage systems, collaborative creative formats, future bodily techniques, and rapping as embodied speech acts. Her work has been presented at the Tate Modern London (2017); Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève (2014); Ming Contemporary Art Museum Shanghai (2016 - 2017); Liverpool Biennial (2014); Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (2015); Frieze London (2014); Tanz Im August Berlin (2015); Kunsthalle Basel (2014); Serpentine Galleries (2012); Dia Foundation, New York (2016); and Palais de Tokyo Paris (2016). Lewis is Berlin-based, born in the Dominican Republic and raised on a man-made island off the coast of southwest Florida.
Recetas Urbanas (Urban Recipes) is a design and advocacy collective of architects, lawyers and social workers founded by architect Santiago Cirugeda. The collective, known for self-built projects that rely on local participation to complete mobile structures using locally sourced, second and third-hand materials. Activating different areas of urban reality, their projects are at the same time highly functional, legally provocative, and exploit the legalities surrounding the occupation of public space. Since its founding in 2003, Recetas Urbanas has worked with over 2,500 individuals internationally, of different social backgrounds, abilities and ages. Recetas Urbanas has undertaken projects around the world at cultural spaces including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Castellon de la Plana, Spain (2005); the Venice International Architecture Biennale (2016); Goteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art; and La Carpa, Seville (2010 - 2014). Recetas Urbanas is based in Seville, Spain. About Creative Time
Creative Time, the New York based public arts non-profit, is committed to working with artists on the dialogues, debates, and dreams of our time. Creative Time presents the most innovative art in the public realm, providing new platforms to amplify artists' voices, including the Creative Time Summit, an international conference convening at the intersection of art and social justice. Since 1974, Creative Time has produced over 350 groundbreaking public art projects that ignite the imagination, explore ideas that shape society, and engage millions of people around the globe. Since its inception, the non-profit organization has been at the forefront of socially engaged public art, seeking to convert the power of artists' ideas into works that inspire and challenge the public. Creative Time projects stimulate dialogue on timely issues, and initiate a dynamic experience between artists, sites, and audiences. For further information, please visit creativetime.org. About Art Basel
Founded in 1970 by gallerists from Basel, Art Basel today stages the world's premier art shows for Modern and contemporary art, sited in Basel, Miami Beach and Hong Kong. Defined by its host city and region, each show is unique, which is reflected in its participating galleries, artworks presented, and the content of parallel programming produced in collaboration with local institutions for each edition. Art Basel's engagement has expanded beyond art fairs through a number of new initiatives. In 2014, Art Basel launched its Crowdfunding Initiative which has catalyzed much-needed support for outstanding non-commercial art projects worldwide and so far has helped garner pledges in excess of USD 2 million in support of around 70 art projects from around the globe - from Bogota to Ho Chi Minh City, San José and Kabul. For Art Basel Cities, launched in 2016, Art Basel is working with selected partner cities to develop vibrant and content-driven programs specific to the individual city. Connecting them to the global art world through Art Basel's expertise and network, Art Basel Cities supports its partners to develop their unique cultural landscape. For further information, please visit artbasel.com.
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