🐮 Read Day 1 of the Basel Diary here 🐮
🛶 Read SKC on Gaddafi and Berlusconi in Venice here 🛶
🔃 Read Anna Kornbluh on her latest book, Immediacy, or, The Style of Too Late Capitalism 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.
After an early night, I woke up clear-headed to an overcast Basel morning. Weighing the pros and cons of the suit I’d brought — pro: I’d pass as someone who could sell art; con: I might be mistaken for the farm’s lawyer — I opted only for the jacket and made sure I had enough room in my bag to discard if it proved a step too far. Concerned that I would arrive to find my mannequin a puddle of limbs, I got there early.
People arrived from 11, but for every bonafide art person it seemed that three families with small children filed in behind them. Maybe they had understood the whole thing as a kind of farmer’s market, where they could buy small batch schnaps and cured sausage; maybe even a puppet show for the kids. How disappointed they must have been to see it was only art.
Concessions — the standard Swiss sausages and beer — were slow to open where I was, so I decided to follow an LA gallerist who had marched off in pursuit of snacks. The fields have a small restaurant with snack trucks stationed about 15 minutes from the entrance, and so we ultimately made our way there, intermittently checking down stray paths to see if we could spot an intrepid sausage or beer vendor.
Maybe the farmer’s market just becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: if enough young families arrive, the whole place teems with strollers and parental scolding, puppet show be damned. Soothed by sausage and uninterested in walking the 15 minutes back to where I was before, I sat and read my book, waiting for something to happen — or for someone to notice my blazer and ask to see my work. Sitting close to the beer truck, I counted myself lucky, and had a few beers to see me until a gallerist friend arrived to pay for some more.
Eventually deciding that we could probably find cheap(er) drinks closer to the city centre, warmed against the evening chill by a hard-earned alcohol blanket, we made the hike to the bus. Aboard, I was shocked to see not only that Nikola Dietrich had been announced as the new Liste director, but that it constituted big enough news to be featured on the bus’ information screen. Both of these things made me sad: the latter because it made clear just how starved for news this city is, but the former because it signals a disappointing, albeit pragmatic turn for the fair. Previously heading up the Kölnische Kunstverein, the new director will forge strong connections with long-term funding and operational partners, but has no experience in the commercial world that the fair ostensibly caters to. Maybe I’ve fundamentally misunderstood, but the foremost purpose of the fair is to engage with its participants, no? It’s ignorant to suggest that funding is not going to be front of mind, but this feels like a failure to acknowledge the people who actually make up the fair’s import, at least culturally.
Sunday nights in Basel are slow, and so dinner was uneventful. It’s tough for much to go wrong with schnitzel. We stayed well beyond the meal though, game planning for the rest of the week. Occasionally a friend would emerge from the Messeplatz, mostly battered and bruised from install, or in the case of Stefan from Project Native Informant, impressively invigorated by the slog.
By the time I got home my hosts were a bottle and a half of wine deep into a discussion on the sweeping victories of the far right and Europe, so joined the fun (or collective mourning) before bed. It was the calm before the storm, yes, but the storm is definitely coming.