Art Basel will return to its home city of Basel next week in its 55th year anniversary, welcoming 289 galleries from over 40 countries to display their works on an international scale. Directed by Maike Cruse, the fair will open with VIP previews on June 17th and 18th, with public viewing days from the 19th through the 22nd. 

The fair presents its usual programming, several of the recurring sectors include Unlimited, which focuses on large-scale contemporary art, Feature, which spotlights 20th-century artists, and Statement, which exhibits works by rising artists. The newest sector to grace the stage this year is Premiere, where galleries will display works created within the past five years from up to three different artists. 

One of Basel’s most expansive, interactive aspects is Parcours, which installs site-specific art sculptures, concepts, installations, and more throughout public and private spaces in the city. Free and accessible to the public, Stefanie Hessler, the sitting director of New York’s Swiss Institute, is curating Parcours for the second year in a row. Acting as a convergence point between the art fair and neighborhood churches, cafes, department stores, offices, parking garages, etc, Parcours takes the beauty of the art fair historically found in Messe Basel and unfurls it down Clarastrasse, across the Rhine River to the other end of the waterfront, with a new project on Münsterplatz this year. 

The theme of this year's Parcours exhibition is Second Nature, which illuminates artists and artworks that obscure the differences between the natural and the contrived, a concept which explores, according to Hessler, “the various interpretations of [Second Nature] which originally means gestures or habits that have been performed so often that they become part of our nature…they become natural or considered no longer distinguishable from the original.” She continues, “the way in which I am conceiving Parcours this year is to think about nature–artificial nature as well, as having been altered by humans to the extent that the divide between nature and artifice becomes obsolete or blurry.” 

A few of the many site-specific pieces to look forward to include that of Yu Ji, who is displaying sculptures made of wax, cement, and coral at the Rheinfelderhof Hotel, activated with daily, fresh-baked bread made by a local bakery and available for visitors to enjoy. 

There will also be a large video installation by Sturtevant, the conceptual artist known for her copies of other artists' works. The film “Finite Infinite” (2010) will be displayed in the Merian underpass, showing a dog frantically running in a loop that repeats every nine seconds. Of this work, Hessler says, “It’s really about the frantic [nature] of images as they proliferate and repeat over and over again on the internet, which is something that [Sturtevant] became very interested in at a later part of her life.” 

Thomas Bayrle will create a functioning shop inside the Manor department store, recreating an installation from the late 60s where he made raincoats which he imprinted with what he calls SuperForms: repeating images that are composed together to create a larger picture or a larger image. “Again, we see this idea of proliferation of images,” says Hessler, “or the repetition and serialization of images, and of production commodification as really essential to his work.” Bayrle has created a limited edition of 800 raincoats, which are on sale in an actual shop in Basel. 

There’s also Himali Singh Soin & David Soin Tappeser of Hylozoic/Desires, who are making a project for Münsterplatz, which is a large-scale installation 80 meters long and two and a half meters high, in the shape of the inland’s custom line, a barrier built in the 1930s installed by the East India Company and later upheld by the British Empire across the subcontinent. Hessler explains: “It was initially installed to intercept smugglers from smuggling salt and to reinforce the salt taxation that the British had imposed on India. A part of this wall, which was 4000 kilometers long, was composed of a natural hedge. Different plants were planted to create a wall, and the artists used the leaves that originally composed the hedge to create the dyes for this fabric work…it's a perfect installation with cotton fabric dyed and imprinted with blocks printed by the artists. It's really an installation addressing nature as a resource to be extracted from,” she says. 

In the conversation below, Hessler elaborates on her inspiration for the Parcours theme, the significance of interacting with the immediate community, and considers how art institutions can interact with public space. 

What did the initial idea for the Second Nature theme look like for you? And how has interacting with different artists and different people, and even different public spaces, altered your initial idea for what [Parcours] might look like this year?

I've been working on questions of the environment and nature for a long time in my curatorial work. Also, at the Swiss Institute, we have a large focus on environmental questions, where we ask artists to make interventions in the institution, to make us more sustainable, and so this question of nature has been with me for a long time. 

When working in Basel and in these public spaces, and also in my private spaces, I became interested in thinking about this dichotomy between private and public–but also other binaries, and other dichotomies or supposed juxtapositions, of which, of course, nature and culture are one. That led me to think that these divides between private and public, especially in these storefronts and other spaces that we're using in Basel, are not so divided between private and public. And the same is true for the divide between nature and culture, where, in terms of the digital environments, our interactions with the digital world have become so very second nature, but also how our actions as humans are directly changing nature and changing climate. 

That's how I began to think about repetitive behavior. Behavior that becomes culture, that becomes the norm, which becomes ingrained in cultures–rituals, which we sometimes don't really question, to the extent that I believe we should, in order to create change. 

So the idea for Parcours really began there, to think about what ways are there to address, and perhaps unravel, the things that have become second nature to us, and to complicate that and to reopen that, and think about how behavior might shift if we introduce artistic projects that pose questions and potential for rethinking. Rethinking our relationship with that which we consider natural, be it ingrained habits or our alterations of the natural world. 

There's an interesting term called “path dependency,” which comes from economic theory. It suggests that once you've chosen a certain path–for example, fossil fuel dependency– and you've invested significantly in a certain economic or infrastructural or technological system, the more you invest in it, and the more you build upon it, the harder it becomes to stop going down that path. So, you become sort of dependent on it, but at the same time, following that exact path is also going to lead to our own demise. 

What ways are there to rethink the repetition and continuous following of that same path that we're set out to follow? And I believe that artists can really help us, you know, open up new ways of thinking and even just asking new questions, and that's what I hope Parcours will also be able to contribute.

‍When you're planning to install an art piece in the public sphere, what does that conversation look like? What is the dialogue with a shop owner, or employees at the department store, or these people whose everyday is now going to be welcoming this art presentation for the time that Art Basel is happening? What are the obstacles? 

We need to involve so many different people in Basel. Shop owners, they're going to use an apartment this year as well, we're using the department store, we're showing a work in a church, and also outside in a public space. All the conversations are very different. It completely depends on the kind of work that we're showing. 

Generally, people are really excited and very curious, and they love to know more about what we're doing. They know, of course, Parcours, and many of them have experienced Parcours in the past, and it's exciting to try and find solutions for each of the artworks together with the owners of the various sites and locations, but also with the artists and the galleries. 

We're going to have one work by Constantina Savitzanos, which is a sound piece using ultra-low frequencies, and that will be shown in a garage that is part of a residential building. That conversation was with the owners of that building as to whether they are open to having the sound piece there, and the person who lives in the apartment above, in fact, approached us and wanted to be a part of Parcours. She was really excited and said, “No problem at all to have the sound here.” 

Then there's Francesco Arena, who is making an installation with three functional swings, so there are health and safety discussions. The work will be shown in a public space, so you know, how do we make the space safe for users and for the swings to be accessible for people? 

There's Athena Galiciades, who is creating a shelter for plants and for sculptures, and also a resting place for visitors, and so that will also be a public space. Then there's a conversation about how the wind affects the sculptures or the overall structures. 

It’s all really different, which I find very exciting. I love working with artists on site with projects as well as new commissions, precisely because you get to be involved in these kinds of processes. And it's never the same, it's always completely different. And generally, I would say that people at Basel are very curious and very open and excited about being part of Parcours. 

It makes me wonder what life would be like if every city were always like this, where art was always so intertwined with public spaces. What do you think about that? What do you think are the ways that art institutions can make themselves more interactive with the public? Do you think that's even the responsibility of an institution, or do you think it's the responsibility of the local community?

I feel that what's great about Parcours is that it is an offer to engage with art in public spaces or in private spaces. Last year at the Swiss Institute, we did the Energies exhibition, which took place in our museum and also in the neighborhood. We collaborated with various other neighborhood institutions, also a community garden, and we installed a mural by an artist called Otobong Nkanga in the courtyard of a residential building, which is still there and is accessible. 

I feel that being porous as an institution towards public space and meeting people where they are at is a great way to broaden the dialogues that art can foster, and also to invite people to learn about a new artwork at a place where they don't expect it– where they have a completely different mindset, or expectation, than if they were to enter a museum where they would expect to find art. And I love these hybrid formats, I think it's really powerful to bring art to various locations. 

The way that I'm conceiving Parcours is very process-based, so the projects are really site-responsive. They're really sought for the location, and invited with a specific location in mind for an artist. I feel that in that sense, they're really integrated in the local fabric, for example, Selma Selman's piece is an installation consisting of upright Mercedes car hoods, referencing an Eastern European practice of burying the deceased with objects that they value during their lifetime. This installation will be shown in the altar in a church in Basel, which is beautiful because it references directly the kind of memorial, but also turns an object of individual grief into a monument for collective mourning and reflection, and it will be accompanied by a soundscape and by a smellscape. 

It was amazing that the church invited this piece to be shown there while they're still using a church for their service, and art in public space like that really offers a site for reflection and to bring together various communities and various audiences, which wouldn't perhaps otherwise meet. 

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Written by Franchesca Baratta