Where is the dividing line between design and art? It’s a question that needs to be constantly renegotiated at a time when the creative world seems to be endlessly fluid. The Basel fashion designer Jacqueline Loekito is more interested in linking the two than in keeping them segregated: “Art and design both express something about the personality of whoever creates or acquires them. You just need to look at the visitors of Art Basel week to know that the two belong together. They’re very aware of how they dress. It almost feels like a fashion week.” Since Loekito’s early days in the business, which she spent in London, she has regularly bridged the supposed divide between various disciplines and shaken up rigid design dogma. Her last fashion collection, “Earthlings,” was presented at Kunsthalle Basel, a venue that normally shows contemporary art. She has also designed collections in collaboration with artists such as Eddie Hara and Tobias Gutmann, and regularly creates costumes for places like Theater Basel and Zurich’s Theater Neumarkt. Her nonconformism stems from her childhood in the vibrant but conservative metropolis of Jakarta, where she learned to break free of putative labels:

“Whenever anyone told me I had to do something a particular way, I would always consciously take another path. That was the only way I could feel free and actually breathe.”

She has now gone one step further for Kunsttage Basel and designed her own artwork—sort of. The rainbow flags adorning the plaza in the kHaus contain fragments of watercolors by her four-year-old daughter, Wilhelmina. It was an organic process, emphasizes Loekito, and she obtained permission just as she would with any other collaborator: “I didn’t want to force her to do anything, and I secretly hope she’ll become an astronaut or ends up doing something completely different from the cultural professionals she has as parents. So I was really nervous at the beginning when I asked if I could use her pictures.” The colorful works perfectly suited her vision of fluidity. Just like her mom, Wilhelmina likes things to be vibrant, and when you ask about her favorite color, she answers, “All of them.”

The rainbow flags are no coincidence. Loekito’s artistic expression involves showing her true colors. This is an uncompromising feature of her work, a motif that runs through the designs themselves and the choice of models for her eponymous label, which she established in 2018. They all question and consistently break free of gender-binary stereotypes, beauty ideals, and body norms, taking “freedom of dressing” as their motto. Apart from producing her own works, curating what others have created is also a recurrent element of her everyday life. As head of the MA Studio Fashion Design at FHNW, she often comes across works that she is more than happy to promote. “I believe in my students’ work, and I want to help them progress and make sure they get the visibility and recognition they deserve.” That’s why Loekito sees herself as more of an educator who supports her students than as a teacher. But she couldn’t imagine relying entirely on a more financially secure teaching role: “Creating fashion is like a kind of therapy for me, and one that I need in order to function. I’ll carry on until I’m a hundred years old and then just keep going.” In typical Loekito style, she doesn’t want to limit herself to a single discipline, which is why she’ll continue to push boundaries.

Text: Samara Leite Walt
Photos: Pati Grabowcz

They construct empathetic pinball machines, transform Basel city fountains into hot tubs, spontaneously open up a campsite on the theater square, and invite gallery visitors to sort screws according to their length and the type of head they have. The Hotel Regina collective, consisting of Balz Scheidegger, Dominik Dober, Quirin Streuli, Christian Holliger, and Max Praxmarer, has been operating together now for eight years. They all met when students at the HyperWerk at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW). “We were all interested in the same things—in making stuff, experimenting, and playing,” Streuli says.

The collective’s artworks are often seen in public spaces, where they invite people passing by in a rush to stop and stare for a moment.

“Many different things can happen when we put ourselves in the public realm. We come up with a proposition or hypothesis and then go out into the world to test it out,”

Streuli explains. “Where can weird moments arise? Where can we challenge people?”

Camping Sunny Side was enacted in August 2023. For two weeks, people were able to put up their tents right in front of Basel’s municipal theater, or rent camper vans, and to see the place from an entirely new perspective. Suddenly, this empty concrete space was full of energy and life. People peered sleepily from their caravans. Passersby cooled their feet in the Tinguely Fountain and stopped to play games of dice, laughing loudly as they did so. The collective is focused less on works of art and more on encounters with people: “It’s not about expressing anything with maximum precision or projecting our views onto the world. It’s about going out into the world and seeing what it does with us.” How people react and whether they take an interest in the unfamiliar things on offer is an unpredictable factor in the collective’s work. “It’s exhausting sometimes, but we learn such a lot,” Dober says. “The theater square has been there for so long, and no one has ever thought of spending time or hanging out there. And then suddenly there were people there who wanted to stay, and they were there voluntarily.”

Regina Hotel’s exhibition at Art Stübli Basel last year, We Accidently Made Eye Contact with a Mähkante in Our Basement, was the first time their work had been presented in an art space. “I’ve been asking myself for a long while what it is that makes an art space interesting. What tensions can be created there?” says Dober. “In an art space everything is pretty predictable. How art is consumed is very clearly controlled—you walk through the space from item to item and look at each in turn.” This also determines the quality of the experience, as people are more sensitive than usual because they know what to expect. In public, things are very different: “No one walks through the world and thinks, hey, this trash can in the park is in a different place than usual.” At Art Stübli, the collective broke with the typical conventions of galleries. Instead of consuming object after object at arm’s length, here visitors were asked to make music, be active, and walk around the artworks. “Some people did not know how they should behave in this space, as the classical routes they’d usually take through an exhibition were blocked. They just kept walking into things,” says Streuli. For many people, walking into or onto an artwork in a gallery would be the height of embarrassment. But at Art Stübli, this was exactly what they were expected to do. Maybe. Because what really happens with Regina Hotel’s art is always to a large degree in the hands of the viewer. “With this exhibition, we went in a new direction that we want to develop: we want to try to make more art. It is not about catering to people’s expectations but about creating a game,” reflects Streuli.

This playfulness also extends to the collective’s name. And there’s a couple of different stories associated with that. One is that during a stay in Mürren, the collective fell in love with the typography used by the Regina Hotel there, but as this particular font had been designed for the hotel and was only available for the letters of its name, the collective saw no other option than to use the whole name for themselves. But sometimes, when people ask about the name, they are told another story—that Regina, the queen, is the collective’s boss and the five men are just her apprentices. Whatever. The collective has a very flexible approach to names—you might get an email response from Reto Resi, or campsite reservations from Anne-Rose Dangereuse, artistic director. If you do, think twice.

During the Kunsttage Basel in September, Hotel Regina will be present at the Galerie Durchgang at Petersgraben 31. There the collective will develop an installation that involves sorting out screws that were once used by various art institutions and would normally be recycled. Gallery visitors are invited to stay a while and sort screws. Their reward for this will be to take their screws home. So, if you would like a break from all the visual impressions of conventional exhibitions, or if you urgently need a few screws for a DIY project, then you can have fun sorting screws at Petersgraben.

This interview was conducted with Dominik Dober and Quirin Streuli, two members of Hotel Regina.

Text: Philomena Grütter
Photos: Pati Grabowicz

Pam, aka DJ Qpaem, is shaking up the Basel club scene. What motivates this twenty-five-year-old student of business administration to spend her evenings as a DJ in packed nightclubs and bring her audiences there to states of ecstasy? Let’s find out.

Pam was born and grew up in Basel, and her first contact with music dates back to her early childhood. On weekends, her father would play his Bob Marley CDs first thing in the morning. The sound of reggae filled the whole house and got everyone going. And in the evenings, her father and his brother would DJ in clubs. So DJing is pretty much in Pam’s genes. Highlife songs from Ghana, where some of her family live, were also a big influence in her childhood.

A further milestone came when Pam wished for DJ equipment. “My brother and a few friends then got together to collect money and gift me a controller. That was a lovely surprise,” she remembers. That was three years ago, and Pam is still gaining experience for her performances in clubs. “I taught myself the different DJ tricks by watching YouTube videos,” she admits. And just six weeks after she first began to practice, she got her first request to perform—from a fellow DJ in Zurich. “At first, I thought it had come too soon. But then I realized I was ready to play in public,” she says.

Pam is now in her last semester and has some time to dedicate to furthering her career as a DJ. Right now, music is the most important thing in her life. The difference between her new nightlife and the subjects she studied at university is pretty stark, she reflects. But perhaps she will be able to later apply what she has learned as a student in the club music business, if, that is, she one day goes all in as a DJ and begins to work internationally. Recently, she has received booking requests not only from Basel clubs like the Viertel Klub, but also throughout Switzerland. Qpaem’s DJ style is a subtle mix of the currently popular Afrobeats, South African club sounds and Amapiano, and dancehall music.

For Pam, DJing for a live audience involves some stage fright. “Sometimes I’m very nervous before the gigs. I get stomachache, and occasionally I’ve had to take a pain killer,” she says with a laugh.

Pam is quite a shy person, but when she is behind her deck, she is in her element.

Then she comes alive and can let her extrovert side out. “It’s like a wave of energy that runs through my body,” she says. She likes to share her passion with the people on the dance floor. This very special connection and the euphoria of these moments are what motivate her to perform in public.

Pam would definitely like to DJ in Ghana one day, the country where her parents and grandparents grew up. In recent years, the music business has really been booming in Africa. You might say that “Afrobeats hype” is conquering the whole world at the moment. Pam feels most inspired by the continent’s female stars. They are her role models.

Text: Danielle Bürgin
Photos: Jana Jenarin Beyerlein

Form, color, and composition are the three basic elements Laura Mietrup uses to construct her geometric installations. The compositions’ different layers oscillate between the familiar and the abstract, firing the imagination in the process. During Kunsttage Basel (Basel Art Days), Mietrup will be showing new wall objects as part of her solo show at the see you next tuesday gallery.

The artist has lived in the Basel region for almost twenty years. She studied fine art in Basel and stayed in the city even while doing her master’s at Bern Academy of the Arts (HKB). She feels very much at home here: “This is my place of creativity and my environment,” Mietrup reflects with an air of satisfaction. Currently, she is a resident artist in the Atelierhaus Klingental, where she has a subsidized studio at the head of the south wing of the former barracks building.

The daughter of a cabinetmaker, Mietrup grew up in Rheinfelden surrounded by tools, wood cuttings, and sawdust. Later, she did an apprenticeship as a frame gilder. It is therefore perhaps not too surprising that her art is intimately connected with craftsmanship, visible in both her finely polished bodies and precisely worked details and in her tech-oriented and retro-futuristic subjects. “I make most of my works myself in my studio,” the artist explains. The level of precision is impressive. The surfaces of her sculptures are so flawless that they almost seem virtual, defying any kind of materiality and allowing the viewer’s thoughts to wander.

The objects, wall paintings, and drawings are vaguely reminiscent of everyday objects, which Mietrup skillfully abstracts and nests in one another, allowing them to merge into an ambiguous whole. The abstract bodies show the familiar and the unknown at the same time, without appearing generic. The artist wants her audience to interpret her works in their own individual way. They do indeed fire the imagination: a hanging orange drop resembles a bell clapper; white squares arranged in a grid evoke the oppressive atmosphere of an anonymous wet room; a rectangular volume with a colorful cylinder mimics an emergency button, challenging the viewer to press it. Mietrup puts the effect in a nutshell:

“The stories acquire a life of their own.”

Her art happens in a wide variety of media, from hand drawing, wall painting, and sculpture to collaborative sound installations. Like an architect, she orchestrates the intriguing balance between clarity and ambiguity, employing a precise formal language. The basis is provided by drawing combined with an archive of countless photographs and components. In addition, Mietrup also makes many models and prototypes before realizing her works in their final form. Right from the start, she always has in mind the spaces in which her installations will be shown. Ultimately, they are geometrical symphonies that harmonize ambiguity and clarity.

The musical analogy is no accident either. The artist has a number of musician friends with whom she often exchanges ideas, and she has a soft spot for the free music scene, especially jazz. Her art thus displays surprising similarities with experimental music. Just as improvisation is a central element in jazz, Mietrup develops her virtuoso constellations intuitively, starting out with very simple components. The title of her solo exhibition in the see you next tuesday gallery is a homage to the song “It Never Entered My Mind” by jazz legend Miles Davis.

Mietrup is continually fine-tuning the instrumentation in her orchestral compositions. Just recently, she challenged her previously static formal universe by introducing organic bodies, approaching their soft curves with a series of gouache paintings. “While I was drawing, I listened to a lot of John Coltrane,” she recalls. For the exhibition, she has translated the curved forms into sculpture and is also showing a series of wall compositions. All of which has one wondering what kind of fantasies Mietrup will inspire in us this time.

Text: Rik Bovens
Photos: Jana Jenarin Beyerlein

How do you organize peace in a time when a “like” on Instagram can cost you your career? A time in which wars and conflicts in many places prompt people to “demonstrate” their feelings and opt for one side or the other—be it online or out on the street? We observe people adopting stances, positions, points of views, attitudes. And when they fail to express a point of view or take up a position, we suspect cowardice—or at least a lazy reluctance to acknowledge their own privilege. What doesn’t have much room in this narrow space between street battles and online debates is peace. Has peace gone out of fashion, Isabel Prinzing?

Prinzing is thirty-four. Each year she organizes the Basel Peace Forum, which is attended by five hundred guests from all over the world. At this get-together in the city’s Kleinbasel district, diplomats, researchers, aid workers, activists, and artists discuss precisely this topic. Peace? What was that again? “If I base my answer on this annual meeting,” says Prinzing, “then it’s definitely ‘No, peace has not gone out of fashion.’” But it does have an image problem. Anyone in the West who closes their eyes and thinks of “peace” is likely to see one of the following images: a dove, two elderly men shaking hands, people waving flags, maybe someone singing a song. “We need to get away from these clichés,” says Prinzing, who just started her PhD on the visualization of peace.

“Peace is not a frozen screen saver from the ’68 generation. Peace is complex. And above all, peace work is constantly changing.”

The Basel Peace Forum has existed since 2017. It is the annual conference of Swisspeace, a foundation at the interface between peace research and peacebuilding in practice. The organization is independent, but associated with the University of Basel. It receives some public money from both the federal government and Canton Basel-Stadt. Prinzing has worked there since 2017—what she calls “almost an eternity.” Since then, Prinzing and the Basel Peace Forum have been trying to bring a breath of fresh air into the field of peace research. “Traditionally, peacebuilding has always employed the same actors,” she explains. The typical peacebuilder is an experienced person with an academic background and some connection to diplomacy or politics. “But peace needs other players too,” Prinzing believes.

Today, the Peace Forum is attended by artists as well as architects, urban planners, and sportspeople. Their perspectives on conflict are different and therefore valuable—n particular, because they focus on the details. Where are destroyed roads being rebuilt? Which places are important for a city’s DNA and for whom? Questions like that can’t be answered by people sitting at desks. That’s why Basel simply offers a forum for exchange. Neither the Basel Peace Forum nor Swisspeace has branches or offices in conflict zones. Instead, they forge partnerships in selected contexts. Prinzing calls it the “light footprint approach” to peacebuilding rather than the “White people saving the world” show. “Yes, we offer support, but we don’t tell anyone what they ought to do better—and anyway, in many cases the crucial expertise already exists locally.”

How can peace be put back on the radar? “There’s no easy answer to that,” she admits. At a social microcosm level, you can change things by not breaking off contact as soon as a conflict arises. “Keeping channels of communication open certainly helps.” In view of today’s global conflicts, Prinzing’s greatest wish is to have “a bit more time, time to take a deep breath before expressing an opinion on everything. That would be good.”

Text: Daniel Faulhaber
Photos: Pati Grabowicz

Andy Warhol once said that he never read, he just looked at pictures. His words have been used for the name of what is probably the most popular alternative art and design book platform during the Basel Art Fair week. We talked to the founders of I Never Read, Art Book Fair Basel about their ambivalent love of printed works and their significance in the digital age.

Johannes Willi and Eveline Wüthrich can be found every year in mid-June in the Rossstall hall and the yard of the Kaserne Basel, surrounded by zines, art books, accordion folds, posters, and other printed matter. Curator and art historian Wüthrich and artist Willi are the people behind I Never Read, Art Book Fair Basel. The platform’s beginnings are linked to their own story—it was born of their love for each other and their shared passion for art publications. “It’s somehow astonishing that we’re still doing this with so much love . . . and that we’re still together,” laughs Willi, when recalling the thirteen years that have passed since the platform was first launched. Just as their own relationship has become stronger over the years, their “baby” has changed significantly. No longer known to just a few insiders, it has become a firm highlight on the agenda of the Art Basel week. I Never Read, Art Book Fair Basel is certainly smaller than similar international fairs such as the African Art Book Fair in Dakar and the abC Art Book Fair Beijing, and Willi and Wüthrich have been able to preserve the freshness of their original project. Despite the fact that their portfolio now includes artists and publishing houses from all over the world, they are not uncritical toward the hype surrounding Art Fair week. “We wish to remain easily accessible and very diverse, and so we make space for returning guests as well as new initiatives by young designers who have not yet enjoyed a large platform. Given the climate crisis, it is not really a good idea to invite people from all around the world to Basel for a week,” says Wüthrich, about the dilemma that exists between the demand for a quality program and sustainability.

This approach is also seen in their design decisions;this year they have opted to reduce their ecological footprint by not producing any printed matter of their own. For a fair that celebrates publications, this is a very radical step. All communication is entirely digital, and invitations are recorded as songs and then sent via WhatsApp. These can then be heard as an album on Spotify, divided into groups of tracks such as “Invitation,” “Location,” and “Catalogue.” Willi is not concerned that potential visitors may not get their new communication concept or that they will lose their audience base. For their team, the format around the actual platform is a never-ending experiment with potential changes and their practicalities:

“We enjoy trying things out, seeing what happens, and learning from our mistakes, and this in turn provides good material for stories. The fact that all of this is so playful keeps us interested and motivated to keep going even after thirteen years.”

There is one question, however: When everything slips into digital mode, does that mean the advocates of “Print is dead” were right after all? Willi and Wüthrich take a pragmatic approach to the withdrawal of their own print media, as these are primarily just additional materials for exhibitors and visitors. The physical book remains essential, and it will survive. Art books, in particular, need a different approach to production, sales, and use—they are less ephemeral than magazines, have their own clientele, and are published in smaller editions. And there is a countermovement emerging alongside the increased numbers of podcasts and e-books. “This is shown in the success of so many art book fairs, where we can see how important physical books remain for the next generation.” Willi and Wüthrich see the charm of physical browsing and direct personal contact as further signs that print products and the fairs devoted to them will stay with us. “One of my favorite bookstores is 0fr. in Paris,” remarks Wüthrich, “I like it because it is so small, cramped, and full of books. Whenever I am in Paris I go there, more for the inspiration it gives me than to buy anything.” Willi has the final word: “Libraries are like this too. The book is a highly democratic medium and accessible for large numbers of people. When visitors then meet the people behind the books, an additional, very personal moment of sharing ensues, and that is what we love to facilitate.”

I Never Read, Art Book Fair Basel takes place from June 12 to 15 at Kaserne Basel. When Willi and Wüthrich are not “just looking at pictures,” they enjoy reading fiction. Their current tip: Sommer in Odessa by Irina Kilimnik.

Text: Samara Leite Walt
Photos: Pati Grabowicz

Our consumer society gives Tobias Kaspar a lot of material for his conceptual take on art. Born and raised in Kleinbasel, Kaspar presents sections of historical fabrics as oversized photo prints and canvases printed with screenshots from the online stores of well-known luxury brands with floral patterns. The artist deconstructs the mechanisms of global markets and highlights social stereotypes by placing them in a new context and showing his works in stringently enacted exhibition formats. His work is characterized by its tenderness, elegance, and precision and is often set around fabrics and textiles. The artist closely scrutinizes the fashion industry, showing how it engenders the desire for its ostensibly valuable products. Like a hacker, he accesses these systems of consumerism, appropriates their instruments, and adapts them to his own artistic production. Kaspar utilizes the production methods of the luxury goods industry (or even these goods themselves), imitates the corporate identities of exclusive fashion companies, and plays with copies and repetition. His projects can be understood as systemic compositions that he orchestrates like an art director. He has made an authorial brand of his own name, and in his exhibitions he deploys all-over prints of his own logo, adds this to discarded items of clothing as part of a swap-meet project, and also produces his own jeans collection. In all of this, Kaspar’s art undermines our understanding of authorship and the role of the creative artist.

In his most recent work, the artist goes a step further by bringing to market one year of his own living costs in daily units, using a cryptocurrency. Working together with Ugo Pecoraio, who is responsible for communication at HEK House of Electronic Arts in Basel, and the art strategist Andrea Lucia Brun, over the past year Kaspar developed the blockchain currency Day. This money originates in the project Rented Life, which Kaspar used to cover some of his own living costs during the pandemic. A group of art collectors paid for the artist’s vegetable basket, cleaning materials, and Pilates classes, and in return the artist produced a contractually agreed upon number of artworks. These were exhibited in 2021 at MAMCO in Geneva, and the Migros Museum of Contemporary Art thereafter acquired the contracts for its own collection and supported the further development of the project. Day now gives Kaspar his own system that can serve as a building block for elaborating his future artistic compositions. One of the first steps is the minting of an edition of 366 physical coins—one for each day of the current leap year. Each coin costs CHF 210, which corresponds to the artist’s living costs for one day. Day is launched at Art Basel:

The exhibition Day Flowers, which runs for the duration of Art Basel, sees Kaspar adding his personal artistic touch to the traditional florist Blumenhaus Mäglin on Clarastrasse. Although this show is very close to the fair premises, there will be no works on display or for sale. Instead, the typical range of flowers will be available, but the bouquets will be presented for a limited period in packing paper designed by Kaspar. When asked if a few of his Day coins might be traded under the counter, the artist smiles and remains silent.

Text: Rik Bovens
Photos: Pati Grabowicz

It all started on a hillside in Ticino. No, this isn’t going to be a piece about an artists’ colony on Monte Verità. Not far off, though. Just a few kilometers away and more than a century later, the artist couple Jeronim Horvat and Maya Hottarek—Basel residents by choice—fell in love with a dilapidated farmhouse in the tranquil village of Russo, and realized their own idea of a contemporary art residence in the shape of the community project Studio LaBola. Taken from the local dialect for the hill, the name la bola translates roughly as “fertile” or “a damp place.” This accurately describes not only the geographical situation of the building that is bordered by two rivers but also the soil around LaBola, which is very fertile. “Last year, we threw away the remains of some tomatoes behind the house, and now a tomato plant has grown up on that same spot. Melons and cucumbers also thrive beautifully there,” says Horvat. The artists’ community is thriving too. Horvat and Hottarek are still its core team together with the architect Yangzom Wujohktsang. In 2023, the first summer season, more than a dozen participants from a variety of disciplines and age groups accepted an invitation to come to this formerly barren place. For Hottarek, Studio LaBola is much more than a restoration project in terms of its underlying idea.

“We see the ruins, their maintenance, and their use as a studio and artist’s residence as a mutable sculpture around which a community is forming.”

Ticino as a magnet for people from the world of art and literature is hardly a new phenomenon. Fischli/Weiss, Max Frisch, Meret Oppenheim, and Sophie Taeuber-Arp were all drawn to Ticino at a certain point in time, along with many others: since the nineteenth century the area has attracted dropouts, anarchists, healers, and intellectuals. For a long time, its valleys served as a refuge for dissenters railing against the authorities. “It’s a very political place,” Hottarek says. “Many dissidents hid there during the Fascist era in Italy and were protected by people in the valley. There was also an anarchist movement, and you can still feel that spirit here today. What is more, unlike in the Valle Maggia, tourism hasn’t arrived here yet—in certain places there’s no cell phone reception. This contributes to the wild energy of the place.” But how did it go down with the locals when city folks from northwestern Switzerland decided to make the place their own? Horvat laughs: “Surprisingly well. We didn’t just barge in from one day to the next but took our time to become thoroughly acquainted with the valley and to actively approach the inhabitants. They’re actually very open to new initiatives by young people from outside, since the valley’s population is becoming ever older, and there’s a real shortage of new blood.” Through the couple’s many visits and conversations, the locals sensed that the artist couple were genuinely interested in creating something sustainable. “Last summer, we were invited to the village fete, and people greeted us on the street because by now they’ve got to know us,” Horvath continues. Hottarek adds, “I was actually born not far from here and spent a lot of time here as a child. That’s why I already knew the area and was able to rediscover it. Even though Basel is our base, and we travel a lot for our work, this place has come to feel like home.”

But before they got to that point, there were a number of obstacles to be overcome. Their “sculpture,” as they affectionately refer to it, is one of the oldest houses in the valley, and the previous three owners had done nothing to maintain it for a century. There had been plans to turn it into a museum. But the hillside on which the house stands is very steep, life in the mountain valley is tough, and projects initiated in the past were abandoned. Another sticking point was the financing. The association founded for the project has not yet received any grants for maintenance or for the artist-in-residence program and is financing the restoration itself. What’s more, the place itself is still a ruin, so it’s only possible to stay there in the summer. Given all these challenges, what motivates them to keep going? For Horvat, the answer lies in the village: “As a creative, I always have the best ideas when I’m there. I like Basel and I love city life. But in an urban studio, you sometimes feel as if you’re in a kind of tunnel that you can’t see the end of while you’re engaged in production. By contrast, the mountain valley and its rivers afford me the necessary distance to be receptive to new stimuli and to see things more clearly.”

There’s just one more question: How does their residence differ from others in Switzerland or abroad? Horvat explains, “What ultimately makes Studio LaBola what it is, despite our input, is the unspoiled nature of the place itself. It’s so remote, and that’s why it’s really nice to share it with other people, in harmony with its flora and fauna.” For him, nature is a mighty force, and humans have to fight for their place in it. There’s an old path nearby, he says, that hasn’t been used for fifty years. “Right now, we’re in the process of restoring and marking it.” This automatically fosters a greater awareness. Painters can’t just wash out chemical paints. They have to work with naturally biodegradable materials and what the place offers naturally, recycling things and sharing their knowledge with the participants. Last year, in addition to hiking trips and visiting the rivers, a series of workshops were held on how artists could supply their material requirements from what was available locally, and an expert showed them how to make drystone walls for building.

Despite their mountain valley project, the artist duo continues to be active in the Basel art scene with their own work and original initiatives. Alongside their own exhibitions, their next project will be a group exhibition at their main domicile and offspace Fondazione Housy. They are staging this side project together with their fellow residents in Kleinbasel. The exhibition will take place in cooperation with other galleries and artists in the art fair week from June 12 to 16, 2024.

Text: Samara Leite Walt
Photos: Pati Grabowicz

Thirty years ago, Margarita Gidion’s parents came from Kazakhstan to the Hünerberg district in Lörrach, Germany. The family’s situation was not easy and they moved around a lot, so soccer was a welcome distraction, particularly for Gidion’s elder brother. And although she didn’t like the game much initially, as a kid sister she always had to go along. Things are different today. The twenty-nine-year-old plays for FC Basel Frauen and has enjoyed a remarkable career, with periods at SC Freiburg, SGS Essen, FFC Frankfurt, and SV Werder Bremen. She is also world champion with Germany’s U20. “Emotionally, that was the best thing of all. It was when I really realized what team spirit means.” It was this team spirit that took them all the way to the final in Montreal in 2014, which the German team won 1-0 against Nigeria.

Today, Gidion brings her experience from fifteen years of top-level soccer to FC Basel. Young players benefit from this—women who are just twenty years old, as Gidion was back then. She says that “experience is not so much about age, but about how often you have done something.” The athlete has certainly experienced a lot in a career that has taken her the whole length of Germany and included encounters with diverse cultures and people, and seen her return back to her home region. Her normally open and cheerful tone turns serious and quiet when she speaks about racism, discrimination, attitudes to queerness, and all the internal pressure she has felt. These are issues she discusses during long bus trips with her fellow players, as well as with her own family. “When things suck on the pitch, then private stuff is also difficult. I go to gatherings and all people talk about is soccer. I’m just Maggi the soccer player, even if sometimes I don’t feel like talking about the game.” Right now, things are going well—her team is in the semifinals of the Swiss Women’s Super League (as of early May). This is Gidion’s current focus. Nonetheless, she has to start thinking about what will come after her career in sports—she has a degree in wholesale and international trade. Matters off the pitch are now becoming more important in her life. In her free time, she likes to photograph people with her camera and spend time outdoors, and she is also finally getting to know the city of Basel. “For me, Basel used to be like the elephant’s cemetery was for Simba in The Lion King”—a kind of forbidden land. For a young person without much money, the country next door was too expensive. But her view of the city has now changed. Today, she compares Basel with a meadow full of flowers. She enjoys the Rhine, and she is able to switch off at the Birs river and in the surrounding woods. She is interested in architecture and art, which in the past was certainly not the case. “Basel has everything you need … but the food is still much too expensive,” she jokes.

Gidion comes across as very relaxed and open-minded—this is also how she is at the photo shoot, for which she selected the Museum Tinguely as the venue. We come to talk about what soccer, art, and carnival have in common. Three things that make Basel special, that people rave about and identify with—culture! The artist Jean Tinguely, to whom the museum with its view of the Rhine is dedicated, was a builder of bridges between art and carnival, and in his twenty years as an active member of the Kuttlebutzer carnival clique he designed a number of legendary floats and all the regalia that went with them. Many fans still remember the FC Basel men’s team’s first participation in the Champions League in 2002/03. The game at Old Trafford in Manchester took place on the Wednesday of carnival week, and a number of fans stood at the gate wearing their carnival costumes. Gidion thinks of further connections, such as the extraordinary carnival soccer kit that is worn for the games at the time of the drey scheenschte Dääg (three most beautiful days), as carnival is also known. During our conversation in the museum, it becomes clear why she chose this venue. Tinguely’s credo was “Everything moves, nothing stands still”—a parallel to Gidion’s eventful life.

Text: Claudio Vogt
Photos: Pati Grabowicz

Alexia Thomas originally hails from Oberdorf in the Waldenburgertal. Chatting with her at Klara, a café in the Kleinbasel district, I soon realize that she has enough ideas and drive for several careers. At the young age of twenty-three, she is already a music producer, singer, and rapper, as well as a producing coach at Helvetiarockt and the HitProducer studio. As if that weren’t enough, she is also studying process design at the Basel Academy of Art and Design’s HyperWerk, and she recently curated music for the Dan Flavin exhibition at Kunstmuseum Basel.

Thomas started playing the piano at the age of nine, inspired by a friend. As she progressed, she received support and encouragement from her siblings and her godfather, who are also music lovers. She was sure from an early age that she didn’t want to be dependent upon others: “So I taught myself music production.” Her first audiences during private performances were sometimes disconcerted by the nonconformity of her works. “Special,” was a word they frequently used. But Thomas remained unfazed. Determined to tread her own path, she did not succumb to the temptation to do things a certain way just to please other people. To this day her music cannot be assigned to any genre and might best be described as “fusion.”

Her song “Before We Fall” feels like a hot summer night, while “Belong” has a dystopian quality. “Soundwaves” could be a track for a road movie. “Vulnerable,” on the eponymous EP released in 2022, describes how a young person feels when giving their first public concert, revealing the diverse facets of their personality in front of an audience, especially if that person has chosen an unconventional path. Thomas’s music requires her audience to be open-minded. The term “avant-garde” wouldn’t be out of place here, despite her youth, or perhaps precisely because of it. Part of that is her willingness to be vulnerable and take risks—notably at the launch for her EP Vulnerable, at the end of which she spontaneously began rapping in German. While it was totally unexpected, everyone got down.

“Alongside relaxing, organic music, I also love producing upbeat numbers with more energy.”

On that day, dudette was born.

When Thomas begins talking about her second project, dudette, her mood changes. The infectious gaiety with which she describes her work is now combined with a touch of mischievousness, wild gesticulation, and an even bigger smile. She says things like “the rest is history” and ends her sentences with “aight.” dudette might be another alter ego, but she is a genuine part of the person for whom music knows no genres or bounds. It’s almost as if Thomas wanted to avoid asking too much of her audience, and for that reason created this other channel for her tireless creativity. The first EP of her new dudette project was released in 2023, followed recently by “COOL CUZN” with the Basel rapper svmthoX. Could this be a summer hit?!

The first single “Welcome to Peace” from her forthcoming album Based on a Dream is due for release on June 21. The album’s fifteen songs also include collaborations with other musicians. “It is the beginning of a new era with dream pop, indie, and electronica influences, as well as lots of Alexia Thomas originals.” It will appear on the Forcefield Records label, a TINFA* collective from Bern who, like Thomas, are keen to deconstruct existing models. She will also perform some of the new songs for the first time at Gurtenfestival on Friday, July 19. Who knows, maybe dudette will make a spontaneous stage appearance as well.

Text: Claudio Vogt
Photos: Jana Jenarin Beyerlein

What does one do when making no progress and the text remains obdurate? Miriam Coretta Schulte asked herself this question about ten years ago, when she was studying Donna Haraway’s A Cyborg Manifesto. After graduating in applied theater directing and cultural studies, she came to miss discussions with others about her reading. As she recalls, “I was pretty new to Basel at that time, and I thought, ‘You can’t just ask people if they want to read with you.’” So she set a trap by making a happening out of her idea and mixing a drink that would suit each book that was to be discussed. The first participants were all friends with each other, and all of them had an interest in feminist issues, despite having different backgrounds in terms of their education, perspectives, and ages. They quickly decided that they should meet again. Thus began the Blasphemic Reading Soirées, known at the time under another name. Katharina Brandl was there from the outset, and she took the format beyond the circle of friends and opened it up to others. Schulte says, “It is important not just to talk to your own people. Feminist discourse concerns everyone, not just us.” But the structure of the Reading Group for Powerful Theories, as it was then called, changed over time. In her master’s thesis, Schulte addressed site-specific projects, and then the special drinks were dropped and the meetings came to focus on specific places and collaborators. “We quickly came to find the resonance of the text more interesting than the question as to which drink would be most fitting. Places talk to the senses more powerfully than a drink. Reading should be a collective, physical, and experimental experience.”

What remains to this day is the group’s performative approach to the often very demanding essays they read. Not a problem for Schulte: “We have come to trust in the structure we provide. And anyway, we have no need to do justice to all the different aspects of a text—we want to break it open and explore its nitty-gritty together. We create a social sculpture just in the act of reading together.” There are no stupid questions then, and (occasional readings in cemeteries notwithstanding) the word “blasphemic” in the name does not refer to any agenda in terms of content but rather to the group’s approach to reading, which is not academic in the traditional sense. In certain situations, it becomes evident that this ritual form of reading can also be explosive, and that the literature and theories discussed do not appeal to everyone. Sometimes, for example, self-proclaimed masculinists and people with very different political views have engaged in hate speech, uttered threats, and left other disconcerting messages in the build up to a reading. For Schulte, who today leads the platform together with performance artist Tyra Wigg and dancer and choreographer Alessandro Schiattarella, this has never been a reason to give up:

“The exciting and dangerous thing about reading is that it can lead to ideas. Every book can be incendiary if it falls on fruitful ground.”

Something that she and her colleagues Schiattarella and Wigg would agree on. When the collective assembles to talk about a text, these ideas and perspectives multiply. That creates new energies and realities.

After almost ten years, today is a good time to take stock and look back at the favorite moments in the thirty-one past editions. “There are so many of these moments, such as our Kinky Play Studio with ACDE Flash, a ‘sexploratory’ conceptual artist. She brought along lots of tools, and it was exciting to see how experimentation and reading were combined. The space displaced the written text, and we talked playfully about consent and pain. We tried out pinch pegs and pierced our skin with acupuncture needles. As organizers, we couldn’t predict in advance if people would go along with this.”

The group’s bucket list of venues includes a sauna and a hair salon, but the series will be discontinued in its present format this coming September. As the project falls through the cracks a bit and cannot be definitively assigned to a category like theater or music, there is no ready source of funding. The responsible funding institutions turn out to be particularly inflexible here. They do sometimes support special initiatives, but usually only as one-offs and not long term. “The present funding runs until the fall. Then we will hold what is likely to be our last soirée for the time being, which will also be a festival and a retrospective.” When the organizers first mentioned a possible end to their project, they received feedback that they ought to continue the soirées and that others wanted to get involved. “In its present form, with a lack of funds and given our own quality standards, we have to watch out that our labor of love doesn’t become self-exploitation. But, whatever happens, the idea will definitely live on and come back one way or another.”

Text: Samara Leite Walt
Photos: Pati Grabowicz / Tariq Bajwa

We enter Kathrin Siegrist’s studio in Klybeck. The room is bright and smells of paint, with pigments and brushes strewn over the surfaces, and a wooden bench standing in the middle of the space. On the ceiling in blue letters are the words: “WE were so many all ready.” Large canvases lean against the wall, on which different areas of color fuse into one another. These are what Siegrist is working on currently, inspired by a piece of woodland, a mecca for all kinds of plants, insects, and birds, located ten kilometers outside of Basel in Germany, where she often visits with her family. The artist pursues her research there: “As a painter, my main concern at the moment is to be informed by this situation.” The paintings are created in simultaneous stages and “grow at the same time, like in a garden.” Her approach is novel, a translation of methods that she observes in the forest and garden into the studio. Among other things, her work deals with the conversion of organic substances, similar to the process of composting—the “intuitive synergies” of material, light, and color, as Siegrist says. A luminous spring day unfolds in front of the studio window with its view of a treetop, a view which seemingly extends on to the canvases themselves. However, Siegrist’s art does not portray an abstracted version of existing things: “For me, it’s more that the painting arises out of a very specific situation and tells a story.”

A native of Basel, Siegrist can be found occupying different roles in various places around the city. Her artistic practice is rooted in painting. But she is also a curator, an archivist, an educator, and head of the painting studio at the Institute Art Gender Nature at the Basel Academy of Art and Design. These are all activities that she likes to group together as part of her artistic practice: “My work is a body in transition,” she explains.

In recent years, she has been working with textiles such as old parachutes. She uses them to make spatial interventions in places like the Fondation Beyeler and the Kunsthalle Basel. Their forms resonate with the existing architecture and fuse an organic softness with the functional, technical element dictated by the material. They give the impression of giant, supple bodies. And the ultra-light material has another advantage: in true Basel fashion, it can be packed into a bag and transported by bicycle. The artist elaborates: “These interventions are informed by thinking about soft landscapes, situations infused with care, agility, and cooperation.”

Together with the Institute Art Gender Nature and Basel Tourism, Siegrist is working on another interesting new format: organizing artist studio tours. Amid still-wet paint, models piled up on windowsills, and page markers spilling out of books used for research, visitors can pose questions directly to the artists and gain a unique insight into their working environments and methods.

On the tour at the end of April, we stepped through the doors of the Atelierhaus Klingental into the creative worlds of Laura Mietrup and Céline Manz, who spoke about materials, research processes, and what it means to be an artist in Basel.

“We want to create visibility for and access to the vital and bounteous organism of local artists, which is so important for the city,”

says Siegrist. Through the creation of new points of contact between artists and art viewers, the Basel art landscape is decentralized and more broadly accessible. The guided tours take place at monthly intervals in different locations. Part of the concept is that the names of the artists are not revealed beforehand. The June tour goes to the GGG Atelierhaus—that much we know—where artists such as Anastasia Pavlou and Golnaz Hosseini have their studios.

In many respects, Siegrist’s work stands for an interweaving of artistic practices and fields that are often conceived of separately. The community aspect is particularly important for her. “I am interested in and work with different forms of collaboration: not the purely individual nor the purely collaborative, but the mapping of the spectrum in between, beyond a dualistic principle,” she explains. Those words on the ceiling come to mind again: “WE were so many all ready.” “It’s a bit of a mantra,” she admits, smiling to herself, when it’s brought up. It’s a quote from a friend of hers, the poet Delphine Chapuis Schmitz. The “WE” in capital letters seems to hover permanently over Siegrist’s head, and not only in the studio. The relationality and mutual responsibility that it alludes to continuously inform her thinking and practice, as she works to establish new connections and create in-between spaces of exchange.

Text: Philomena Grütter
Photos: Jana Jenarin Beyerlein

A young woman is sitting onstage, pulling up her rhinestone thigh-high boots. It’s not easy to get into them, particularly when your body is still half wet. A look into the audience says it all: yes, this is going to take a while, and you can watch me.

Born in 1995 in Cologne, Nairi Hadodo is an actress, director, and playwright. She is a member of the Basler Compagnie at Theater Basel. The play Kim, currently playing on Kleine Bühne, Theater Basel’s smaller stage, is her first solo show as an actress, and she also directed the play, wrote the script, and helped design the costumes. When asked where she got the pluck for all of this, Hadodo answers, “That’s who I am.”

Courage has always been what drives her, says Hadodo.

“I’m not from a family that made art. I had to have the courage to do these things because that meant standing up for myself.”

For a woman with an immigrant background to go to acting school also meant that there would be many roles in film and television that she would never get. “That was because the casting was simply not progressive enough,” she explains. She was always aware of certain structural limitations within the profession, and from the outset she learned to create her own “islands” to operate in.

Kim had its premiere in March this year. The play is a study based on the most famous influencer in the world—Kim Kardashian. Some theatergoers will think to themselves: “I have nothing to do with this woman”, but whether you’ve followed the lives of the Kardashian clan in-depth from day one or the name belongs to a world you know nothing about, you will certainly have at least heard the name. “This woman has power, whether you like her or not,” says Hadodo. Kardashian, who, like Hadodo, has Armenian roots, has 363 million followers on Instagram. Time magazine counts her among the one hundred most influential people in the world. Her selfies have made her a billionaire. Kardashian is famous for being famous and thus a pop culture phenomenon who has engendered a whole generation of self-marketers. “You pass by a great opportunity if you refuse to take a look at these phenomena,” remarks Hadodo. “And not with smug adulation or with a middle-class sense of detachment.” The actress was clear that if she wanted to put something relevant to today on stage then it really had to be relevant to today.

There have to be more things that concern young women in the theater. It’s important that they assert their right to this space. “I like watching young women who want something,” Hadodo says, women who claim a space, a voice, and speak out for what’s important to them without needing to assert themselves personally or convince anybody—and without any need for perfection. That’s what this is all about: “It is not a matter of saying that as women we want to have intelligent texts to play. What we’re searching for here has a different emphasis: ‘My body is per se negotiated, and you can watch me negotiating it.’” In Kim, the remote plastic physicality of Kardashian is catapulted into the tangible here and now, into the ninety minutes of a female body’s presence and exertion on the stage. You can’t scroll down on this one. “I’m able to say: ‘Everything that’s happening here is not quite right for me, but you’re still listening to me.’ That is what I like about it,” Hadodo says. She doesn’t see Kim as her only play. “I already have the next five more in my head,” she says. Currently, Hadodo is also rehearsing Der Steppenwolf, directed by Lies Pauwels. From feminist self-negotiation and Kardashian-style attention grabbing to disenchanted masculinity and nonconformism? Hardly. Hadodo laughs: “Our director is a wonderful and very intelligent woman who brings feminism in on quite a different level. She is daring, and expects us to be courageous as well.” This is something that she is particularly interested in onstage—when people dare to put their own humanity on the line. “We need that all the time, and right now more than ever.”

Text: Philomena Grütter
Photos: Jana Jenarin Beyerlein

On a balmy Saturday evening in April, music is booming along Clarastrasse. There is a long line at the entrance to house number 50. People are gazing in anticipation at the open windows two floors up, where they can glimpse the outlines of a large number of partygoers. There are piles of shoes, bags, and coats in the stairwell. The building has been used for the past few months as a temporary “soft hotel.” The street level space serves diverse purposes, as a vintage store, an event space, a tattoo parlor, a textile shop, and a yoga studio, while the upper stories are used by artists and artisans. The Kollektiv Avalon has made its temporary home on the second floor, and here Ada Fischer, Lea Gessler, Naomi Gregoris, Hester Koper, Sandra Lichtenstern, and Anina Schwander host events that combine mindful bodywork, the enjoyment of music, wild dancing, and a passion for hosting.

“We want to create a space where our guests can feel safe and devote themselves entirely to the music and dance,”

Lichtenstern explains. The collective shapes this space with their own subtle assertiveness, freely following their creativity. With exuberant high-energy moments within “tender raves” to mindful experiences of delicate nuanced emotion within “soft happenings,” these six women cover a range that could hardly be more diverse. Their joint action provides opportunities for them to come up with new methods of perception, and a venue to try them out. “We act according to the pleasure principle—if we like something then we just do it,” notes Fischer.

The only thing that is fixed is the weekly date when Kollektiv Avalon meets to exchange ideas. Whoever has the time comes along to talk through past events, new ideas, or issues that are on their mind. Alongside these shared activities, two of them are entrepreneurs; the others are a gallery director, a curator, a psychotherapist, and a journalist. Nonetheless, or perhaps very much because of this, they nurture their own productive culture of discussion among themselves and inspire each other with their different views, experiences, and abilities. “We are all doers. As a collective we give each other support and the courage to reach out with our projects, even if it isn’t all perfect yet.” This is how Gregoris describes the group dynamic.

This evening in April, around 150 people are crowded into the four rooms (plus a smaller fifth one) of the flat. It feels like a party in a shared apartment: homely, bustling, and a little improvised. At the same time, it all feels very well planned. Kollektiv Avalon uses predominantly bright colors, and the rooms are welcoming and cozy. The floors are fitted with a pleasant, fluffy, cream-colored carpet, and the whole apartment is bathed in a warm, woozy light. The dancers are packed together—all with their shoes off. The atmosphere is open and energetic, but not in any way that is rough or overwhelming.

During Art Basel, the Avalon apartment will be quiet for a while. The collective will use it as a place to retire, and the partying is outsourced. This year Avalon is cohosting the happening Finally Saturday, curated by Benedikt Wyss, Art Basel’s own variety show. Very much in the spirit of the collective, Hotel Merian will become a meeting place and venue for the city’s shared party, with its diverse art scene and guests from all over the world. There will be art and music on this Saturday evening, and of course there will also be a fluffy carpet to dance on—that much Kollektiv Avalon already reveals.

Text: Rik Bovens
Photos: Jana Jenarin Beyerlein

Bebbi Zine was published for the second time in June 2024 to celebrate, promote, and connect the cultural scene of Basel during Basel’s art fair week. Initiated and published by the Verein Bebbi Zine, the magazine, which is available in print and digital formats, benefits from the kind support of Basel Tourism, Christoph Merian Stiftung, and Abteilung Kultur Basel-Stadt.

Authors
Rik Bovens, Danielle Bürgin, Daniel Faulhaber, Philomena Grütter, Samara Leite Walt, Claudio Vogt

Photographers
Pati Grabowicz, Jana Jenarin Beyerlein

Editorial Board
Sina Gerschwiler, Philomena Grütter, Samara Leite Walt, Claudio Vogt

Special Thanks
Chrissie Muhr, Kito Nedo