Paying For Drinks at the Open Bar
Basel Diary Day 7/8: Our party, an apology, and getting asked for drugs
🎢 Read Day 6 of the Basel Diary here 🎢
🚗 Read Day 5 of the Basel Diary here 🚗
🍔 Read Day 4 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.
It’s a real disaster. I had written yesterday’s post, slaving away through half a hangover and week’s worth of missed sleep, and I just never got the chance to post. And on the week mark too! Day 7! Well, now with the benefit of hindsight, I can tell you what happened.
I won’t much bother with Friday morning — I ate breakfast and went to the main fair. Sure, I caught up with a few people, but nothing to write home about. The comments were uniform: attendance had dipped, sales were slow. It was a certain turn from the mood earlier in the week. Maybe the momentum of the fair hadn’t continued, or maybe people got tired of telling their own white lies.
I had made a habit of spending my afternoons over at June Art Fair, the smallest of the (reputable) fairs happening in the city. Besides featuring a number of friends, they had coffee and a gelato stand, so I couldn’t ask for much more. It was as good a place as any to wrap up that day’s dispatch and while away time before a performance a friend and I had decided to go.
The Parcours programming activates spaces throughout the city: shopfronts, hofs, etc. The Mandy El-Sayegh performance we had gone to was happening on the third floor of a mall, adjacent to an H&M. While I had reservations about how well it could all be staged, El-Sayegh and Co. pulled it off with aplomb. Perhaps this is both the blessing and curse of today’s iteration of contemporary art: so much goes towards making spaces “blank” that their actual locale’s might as well not be anywhere at all. I will say, I particularly liked the nice white sweatsuits Mandy’s dancers wore — I don’t know enough about dance to comment on the thing itself, but they all sure did look snazzy. I mentioned this to one of them in what I thought was a clever comment, but their quizzical facial expression told me otherwise.
After getting some food, I headed over to the bar (?) project space (?) where our event was being held. Like many who ended up coming that night, I practically ran into it before I realised where I was. Adjacent to some kind of shipping hub, you’re as likely to mistake it for an office as you are an event space. (Spoiler alert: the night enjoyed an extended soundtrack of cargo trucks.)
The whole thing started quietly; I introduced myself to the bartender who directed me towards a small table with a pitcher of vodka cranberry and platters of watermelon and feta (uh…sure, why not?). Alright, I thought, this is all very nice. I ordered myself a drink expecting an open bar — there was, after all, the guts of £1800 spent between us — only to be met with an outstretched hand. Cash or PayPal only. Having neither on me, I politely excused myself to the water cooler like an embarrassed freshman at a frat party. It was going to be a long night.
The space itself was large, with a gallery space/dance floor in the back, and yet as people piled in they all stayed within a 20 ft. square, crowding the bar and pushing up against the windows. Outside the smoke grew so thick as to be suffocating, but eventually we all drank enough that even breathing became a secondary concern. Most interactions were merely a glance of acknowledgement, a pat on the back. In darker corners gallerists gathered largely to commiserate (the more fortunate were closer to the bar), but the mood stayed light.
Once the train got rolling, it never really stopped. A gallery assistant, having never met me, hurriedly called me over to ask if I had cocaine; she, as she put it, “was absolutely fiending for it.” Flattered she thought I might be of help (particularly in a city like this), I said no but offered to keep an eye out. I thought it a strange way to introduce oneself, but such was the situation. In the gallery, mid-2000s grime music blared from the speakers — my friend had found himself DJing, to the delight of all the British present, and maybe to the chagrin of everyone else. Turns out not all culture travels. Behind me, a glass table shattered.
Despite probably being single-handedly responsible for drinking most of the vodka cranberry (they put out several more coolers, which I promptly dispatched), I kept myself together. Sure, my words likely got a little slower as the night drew on, but nothing I couldn’t attribute to run of the mill exhaustion. Eventually, it became clear that there was simply no room for people in my condition: we had entered the portion of the night where bad decisions were made, decisions that required a kind of drunken complicity the more sober among us simply didn’t have. I put myself on a bus home.
*
And like that, my Basel-ing was done. I woke up so tired and so sick of drinking, I swore off seeing anyone altogether until the evening. I drank only iced tea (!) at dinner and ate a salad. I actually set my alarm.
In doing so, I reflected on the week with a mixture of gratitude and disappointment. I walked around the fair once more, and it was now customary to hug people goodbye, as if at summer camp (I’ll write you!). But instead of going back to a wildly different paradigm, we all see each other in our respective cities next week, only a matter of months before we do this — in some capacity — all over again. For the galleries who had come and made money, all of the extracurriculars constituted a bonus; a kind of victory lap while collectors lined your pockets during business hours. For those who had not, these weeks take on an altogether different pallor, exercises in humility and keeping a stiff upper lip. It costs thousands to just be in the room, so anything beyond that adds insult to injury.
The now standard report is that the market remains “soft”; it’s been another tough outing. And yet, as I’ve come to understand, the logic of just avoiding the costly fairs altogether is besides the point. At home your chances are often close to zero; at a fair, at least you’ve put yourself in the game. As I write this, I’ve now packed up my things and am ready to get back to London; there’s a busy week of events to attend to. Just more of the same.