Artists forge new paths at Basel Social Club

Basel Social Club (BSC) shreds the playbook for a large-scale commercial art event. For its fifth edition, the week-long art platform and experiential project has taken over a huge former UBS training centre with works by more than 200 artists. Highly successful in generating buzz, it proves the effectiveness of “focusing on an experience economy, while keeping art at front and centre,” says its co-founder, Yael Salomonowitz.

While BSC is often labelled an alternative model to an art fair, it is perhaps more accurate to conceive of it as a platform for numerous alternative models outside of the traditional gallery system. One of the 30 participating non-profit spaces—just under 20% of total exhibitors—is the new Or Associations, an itinerant, non-profit artist association registered in Basel. It describes itself as “a pilot organisational model that centres artists’ practices and positions itself within the commercial art world, with an aim of creating a solidarity network between artists and a direct relationship with collectors”. Fifty percent of sale proceeds are used to fund members’ artistic practices.

Or Associations co-founder Gaby Sahhar says it was created as a way to “reclaim agency in a volatile market”, while also being able to better adapt to a shifting cultural landscape thanks to its itinerant nature, low overheads and Switzerland’s generous artist grant system.

Other members of Or Associations are no strangers to the commercial gallery system. Sahhar has shown with Arcadia Missa while founding members Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, who work as a duo, are on the roster of Amanda Wilkinson Gallery and have also shown at Thaddaeus Ropac. Starting the association does not come into conflict with their existing representation, they say. “In the traditional model you don’t know the other artists, or why you are grouped together,” Gawęda says. “You never know who is selling your work.” Sahhar says artists already do self-promotional work, maintain direct relationships with collectors and send out PDFs of their work so “we might as well get paid for it”.

Or Associations will have a pilot period of two years, during which it will present a solo exhibition of each of its members, alongside group shows and events. It intends to grow and expand its network through international dialogues with artists, writers and institutions.

Artist-run spaces proliferate during market dips and often formalise to resemble the structures they once attempted to replace. Salomonowitz acknowledges that breakdowns of traditional models are cyclical, but what is unusual about the present moment is “how long the current system is taking to be replaced”.

For the exhibitor Lorenzo Bernet, founder of Zurich gallery suns.works, it is not about having an answer, but about being receptive. “This is a laboratory,” he says of BSC. “We have to try many things until something sticks.”

This year’s edition of Basel Social Club features experimental work exploring all the trappings of office life—from microwaved desk lunches and water coolers to neckties and parking garages. Held in an abandoned multi-storey office building that once housed a training centre for the Swiss megabank UBS, the uninhibited programme offers the nightlife and DJ sets for which Basel Social Club has become known, while also examining what happens in the hours off the clock. A full schedule of exercise classes, a cold plunge and even on-site cosmetic injections blur the boundaries between work and leisure. The exhibition offers a timely probe into the absurdities of labour and productivity in the age of the gig economy, with particular relevance for workers in the cultural sector. The presentation quite literally poses the question: “Shouldn’t you be working?”

• Basel Social Club, Erdbeergraben 1, until 20 June