Who’s a Pussy now?
The Kremlin’s least favourite band, Pussy Riot, stopped by in Basel on Tuesday night for a charity concert to raise money for Ukraine. Around 400 people gathered to watch them rock out to a set of intense punk music and hyper-political lyrics (with English captions on a screen), which declared that “Putin peed his pants”, among other things. Members of the group have been arrested more times than they can count, which they detailed during their performance. They also provided concertgoers with handy advice should they ever be apprehended by the police, like “agents of the state always wear pointy shoes”. The evening ensured that the horrors of Russia’s aggression remained front and centre during Basel’s art week. But importantly Pussy Riot provided some hope too: “We are living in the Russian Revolution. The one in 1917? No, the one happening right now.”
Art Basel Highs & Lows
Hip-hop superstar Chance the Rapper, who previously turned up at Expo Chicago in his hometown in April for a collab with Gabonese painter Naïla Opiangah, was at Art Basel yesterday to debut his latest music video. Now working with another Gabon-born artist—the photographer Yannis Davy Guibinga—the artwork featuring Chance’s new track The Highs & The Lows screened in the fair’s Conversations auditorium last night.
Herbert W. Franke’s MONDRIAN computer program in the Tezos NFT Lounge Photo: Daivd Owens
1970s tech meets Tezos
One of the most techy works at Art Basel this year is a program written more than four decades ago for one of the first home computers. Austrian physicist Herbert W. Franke’s MONDRIAN (1979) was a homage to the Swiss artist’s canonic geometric compositions. Franke, now 95, minted his pioneering piece on the Tezos blockchain and it is now on view in the Tezos NFT Lounge at Art Basel. The piece is part of an exhibit where visitors can create a digital wallet on the spot to mint editions of four generative artists for free at the scan of a QR code in the space with Franke's piece.
K is for…
It was the coolest club in Art Basel—and you’ll probably didn't get in. For three hours last night as part of Unlimited Night, which kept the oversized art section of the fair open until 10pm, the artist and composer Ari Benjamin Meyers staged the performance-cum-installation K Club, which took the form of an “exclusive, solo nightclub experience”, he said. Fairgoers were invited to line up under a neon K hanging from the ceiling, where a tattooed bouncer named Timmy awaited. He chose whether people were deemed worthy of entry—a decision that ensured only “the most interesting people” are invited for the special encounter, he said. Meyers is tight-lipped about what happened after this, but promised it to be a transporting experience that broached conversations around access and belonging in the art world. Eek.
A rendering of the planned extension at Zürich airport Courtesy of Bjarke Ingels Group and HOK
The Swiss go BIG
Basel-bound dealers and collectors flying into Zürich this week often found themselves waiting in hours-long lines to get through customs, as the elegant but under-size airport found itself quickly overwhelmed. But relief is on the way, with the announcement on Wednesday that a team led by Danish architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) and American firm HOK have won the competition to design a new Dock A terminal at Zürich Airport. The vast new terminal, which won’t open for another decade, will be made predominantly of locally-sourced timber (amply equipped with solar panels) and feature a dramatic, pyramid-like central atrium. The architect Bjarke Ingels calls the overall effect, “A simple yet expressive design—rooted in tradition and committed to innovation—embodying the cultural and natural elements of Swiss architecture.”