🍔 Read Day 4 of the Basel Diary here 🍔
🚽 Read Day 3 of the Basel Diary here 🚽
🎎 Read Day 2 of the Basel Diary here 🎎
The Basel Diary Series is daily reportage from the Basel art fairs from June 9th to June 18th for the Season 4 Episode 6 vertical. The gallery will be exhibiting at Basel Social Club from June 9 - 16.
The early morning sounds of Basel are not unlike those of any other city, but the clatter of cement mixers and jackhammers was annoying nonetheless. It was the first morning that I didn’t have to see anyone for a few hours – unlike staying with friends, I owed my host no polite greeting, and so I savoured not having to make small talk before coffee. Needing to respond to far too many emails, I took myself to the local cafe, enjoying breakfast and a cappuccino in the sun. How Euro of me.
Rule number one of Basel: Pay for nothing you can get for free, or at least cheaply. With almost perfect timing, as I took the last sip of my coffee, I got a reminder for a brunch I had apparently RSVP’d to weeks before. There goes 20 bucks on breakfast. Realising that if I moved quickly, I might be able to just make a head start on lunch, I jumped on the tram, heading north. Was I full? Yes. Did I really want whatever they were serving for my next meal? Not particularly. But God gives his toughest Basel battles to his strongest art warriors, and when a sandwich and drink will set you back 15 CHF, I tried to see it as a blessing.
The blessing was hard to suss out when the tram left me in the lot of a car dealership. As great as I’m sure the Basel Toyota showroom is, it did not have an Art Basel brunch, so I ended up having to gracelessly hop a fence and wander a bit before I found the secluded institution. I would feel worse about this were I not almost immediately asked when I arrived if I too had gotten lost in a maze of Japanese-made hatchbacks. Fortunately, it seemed we had all arrived scot free, and this was worth celebrating with the rolls and cream cheese they had available. (Spoiler alert: I felt sick and still ended up having lunch later, so it was a lose-lose.)
Now that the main fairs’ two preview days were over, the common assumption became that Wednesday would be Basel Social Club’s busiest to date. I made my way over on the bus, stopping at the local grocery store to pick up beer, resolved to both not pay for another beer truck drink, and to be in demand when others realised they hadn’t thought so far ahead. Knowing that everyone was likely already all Basel-ed out, free drinks would prove a useful calling card. On the flip side, this did in effect leave me brown-bagging an art fair, but having read the room (or the field) over the rest of the week, I figured I wasn’t the first and wouldn’t be the last.
As it turns out, the supposed hoard of collectors and curators never really materialised. A few reporters came past and I showed them around my work, but that was hardly an afternoon’s work. It’s great to discuss work that I’m enthusiastic about, but with one work, any more than ten minutes and we’ve covered everything there is to be said. Eventually, a few more gallerist friends arrived, but we ended up talking more about their imminent vacation to Italy than art, which frankly was a welcome departure. Satisfied that we had taken everything a day spent at the fields could give us, we made our move towards a private drinks reception in the centre of the city.
For once in what has been a rather diffuse week, we seemed to find all of our friends in one place, and with an open bar for Aperol spritzes, we stayed for as long as the tab allowed us, and bit longer still. It boggles the mind that this – laughing over drinks with your friends – could constitute work, but these events become exercises in discretion: learning when to push your agenda and when to crack jokes (and sometimes both). One gets better with practice, and people tend to become more amenable after a few drinks, but these casual conversations are always rife with potholes.
Once sufficiently drowsy, we meandered our way to a house party being hosted by an ex-London artist, and while we thought it might be a quiet gathering for friends (and maybe friends of friends), the courtyard of the townhouse was packed. Our hosts knew the score, though – they had a cellar full of prosecco and ample bread and cheese. As it was a house party after all, I at one point got roped into being an ad hoc server, a bottle of prosecco in both hands, serving anyone who put a glass in front of me. This took my plan to share beers with people to a new level; I’d be crowned mayor of the fields had I brought this instead of beer in my bag. Amidst the chaos, it was maybe the first time this week that I actually had fun; for a moment, the professional air of the moment faded, and it was just a garden party – thankfully, no more and no less.
Eventually the need for dinner arose and we found a kebab shop, where I was appalled to find the Swiss put salad in their döner boxes (yuck). There were plans for future stop, but my new roommate (with the key) had finally made his way to the flat. The next party would have to wait.