When people envision Art Basel, they tend to think of the ticketed show at the Swiss exhibition site Messe Basel, which features more than 280 leading galleries and 4,000 artists from around the world. But the international art fair offers even more to see in and around Basel. This includes public-focused projects such as Parcours, which transforms locations across Basel into site-specific sculptures, interventions, and performances, and Messeplatz, a public square used to exhibit art in front of Messe Basel.
Samuel Leuenberger, curator for Parcours, particularly appreciates how Art Basel’s public-focused art projects offer a taste of the fair to non-fair-goers. “The beautiful thing about Parcours and Messeplatz is that it still has an overlap with a crowd that is not contemporary art-related, and you always have this potential to convince or surprise people with something that they would never have thought they would like, or they would even look at,” he says.
Parcours specifically has been one of the highlights of Art Basel since its launch in 2010. “It’s much more complex than putting up a sculpture show,” explains Leuenberger. While each of the site-specific artworks are made by artists represented by galleries showing in the main fair, the motivations of these works are different. “It’s outside. It’s in the city. It’s in the Kunsthalle Bar. It’s in stores, private gardens and public institutions,” Leuenberger says, explaining that many galleries at Art Basel are beginning to realise the worth of art exhibited without commercial intent. “You can tell a great story, or you can make people read the works in a different context that you could never do in a gallery, white cube or exhibition space.”
This year, Leuenberger is also curating Art Basel’s Messeplatz, where a musical installation titled Der Allplatz (2023) by the Moroccan, Swiss-based artist Latifa Echakhch will be on show. “Messeplatz is very special because it’s the only project within Art Basel that is commissioned by the fair rather than its participating galleries,” Leuenberger says. Last year saw a participatory floor installation by the American conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner, who passed away in December 2021. This year, in collaboration with Luc Meier, director of Swiss Artist Residency La Becque, Echakhch will expand on her installation at the 59th Venice Biennale, which explored the relationship between music, memory and the body.
According to Leuenberger, Echakhch’s piece for the upcoming Art Basel show will serve as a “semi-deconstructed” stage for daily concerts. “It will be a messy, chaotic stage like if it was all broken or collapsed in the centre,” adds Echakhch. Much like works for Parcours, the structure is open to the general public and located where most people will naturally come across it. “She has created a landscape in three dimensions that will host a very lively music program,” Leuenberger says.
Echakhch has invited a number of well-known musicians to perform. While their tickets usually sell at a premium, in the case of Art Basel, they are free to all. The American composer Rhys Chatham is set to be one of the first performers, playing alongside artist and musician Robert Longo. There will be two to three concerts each day; at other points, the stage will remain empty for people to enjoy. “There’s all this time when nothing actively musical happens, where it’s just a place you travel through,” says Leuenberger. “If you want to take a break when it’s hot, you can sit on it, you can have a little corner of intimacy.”
Art Basel will also host various public programmes and activities outside of its main ticketed exhibition space to make the fair more accessible to a wider range of people. It’s an objective that Echakhch agrees with. “I have many friends who do not usually go to Art Basel, who are going just to hear the concerts,” she says. “That’s one of the goals: to open [the fair and my work] not only to the art world but to a more general audience.”
