Basilea invites us to reflect on a city’s possibilities through a series of immersive projects connecting the City of Basel, its residents and the 90,000+ fairgoers anticipated to attend Art Basel. This project is conceived by artists Lara Almarcegui, Isabel Lewis and architecture studio Recetas Urbanas led by Santiago Cirugeda.

Basilea aims to create awareness of the active role we, as citizens, have to intervene and alter any given urban environment, at an individual and collective level, encouraging discussions about the use and ownership of public space. The project includes a collectively built structure, a large scale installation, a series of workshops, events and occasions. Basilea is free and open to the public.

There are two open calls to participate in Basilea, one with Recetas Urbanas and one with Isabel Lewis.

1. COME BUILD WITH RECETAS URBANAS

With more than twenty years of practice, Recetas Urbanas —in English Urban Recipes— has worked with more than 2,500 individuals from all around the globe and all kinds of social backgrounds, abilities and ages. During the three weeks proceeding Art Basel, and as an exercise in self-governance, Recetas Urbanas calls to work with local and international volunteers to collectively design and build a multi-purpose civic structure, using locally sourced and second-hand materials. Participants are invited to learn from and teach each other in a collective experience led by architect Santiago Cirugeda. During construction and upon completion, the structure will be open to all and activated by programs and performances that will culminate in a proposal for the structure’s future uses —such as handing it over to a local collective, association or school that will extend the meaning and usefulness of the project longer after the fair is over.

2. PARTICIPATE IN WORKSHOPS AND OCCASIONS WITH ISABEL LEWIS

Isabel’s Lewis’s contribution to Basilea is a new work for the Messeplatz that assembles and interweaves a selection of physical practices that can be found within the city of Basel. Participants are invited to join Lewis in a series of public workshops occurring on the Messeplatz in the weeks leading up to, and continuing through the week of the fair, that function as a meeting point for practices that, in Lewis’s view, can form specific and intimate relations with urban space. These workshops will constitute the foundation of a large-scale public choreography that highlights centuries-old, living traditions like Basler Trommeln and Tai Chi, and generates encounters between such historical practices and contemporary forms of bodily engagement like Parkour.

Find out more about the procets and how to get involved on Creative Times