L‘Echappée Belle, a digital escape – Regionale 25

Through Feb 2, 2025

In our hyper-connected everyday life, technology is predominantly in the hands of multinationals and their logic of the market. The production of the actual devices, and their consumption and disposal are increasingly becoming problematic in ecological terms. It is of the utmost importance to continue the search for alternatives in order to escape such a vicious circle, as well as to revitalize our lives and relationship with the natural world. The exhibition “L'Échappée Belle, a digital escape” invites us on a journey through digital society. It challenges us to step to one side, change our perspective, and breathe new life into both our everyday world and future.

Artists: Julien Clauss, Jingfang Hao / Lingjie Wang, Jorim Huber, Michele Janata, Till Langschied, Manu Meier, Alessia Sanna, Silvi Simon, Angela Staffelbach, Michel Winterberg, and Anne Zimmermann

Curator: Valérie Perrin

Esther Hunziker, Stefan Karrer, Alfatih – Swiss Media Art – Pax Art Awards 2024
Feb 15 – April 27, 2025
Opening: Friday, Feb 14, 2025, 19:00

Art Foundation Pax has been awarding the Pax Art Awards annually since 2018 in collaboration with HEK. In giving these awards, the foundation is both honoring and promoting Swiss media artists who use media technology in their work or reflect its impact. In September 2024, the Basel artist Esther Hunziker was the recipient of the Pax Art Awards’ main prize for her persuasive long-term work with art and technology. Two sponsorship awards have been given to the artists Alfatih and Stefan Karrer. In 2025, the artists will show new works within three individual presentations that have been made possible by the funding provided by Pax Art Awards. In her current works, Hunziker uses state-of-the-art AI tools for her fictional narratives and visual imagery. Alfatih works with a broad formal palette – ranging from interactive objects to CGI animated films. Stefan Karrer, in turn, has an astute sense for poetics and irony that he bitingly employs in critiquing contemporary digital and online culture.

Curator: Marlene Wenger

Other Intelligences

May 10 – Aug 10, 2025
Opening: Friday, May 9, 2025, 19:00

What forms of intelligence are there? What significance do they play in our understanding of ecology and society? The international group exhibition is dedicated to the different forms of intelligence: artificial, technological, but also the organic one of flora and fauna in their interactions within an ecosystem. The artists involved are investigating what intelligence can be in the age of artificial intelligence (AI) and what other forms of non-human intelligence could be relevant in forging our future. They explore how the synthetic brain of an artificial intelligence operates or how organisms from the animal and plant world sense and act, and what we can learn from other such intelligences.

So, what do ChatGPT and the rainforest have in common? Both are currently much discussed social issues. They represent the two areas, namely AI and the climate crisis, whose development will have a radical impact on the future of humanity. They are also representatives of two different, non-human systems of intelligence. In the exhibition we are seeking to examine both these aspects of non-human intelligence, as understanding of and empathy for other forms of intelligence are becoming the most important survival strategies for our species.

Artists: Alice Bucknell, Isabell Bullerschen, Patricia Domínguez, Exploring Conscious Territories (Susanne Hartmann & Elena Victoria Pastor), Joey Holder, Špela Petrič, and Yiming Yang, among others

Curators: Sabine Himmelsbach and Marlene Wenger

Quantum Visions
Aug 23 – Nov 16, 2025
Opening: Friday, Aug 22, 2025, 19:00

There was a time when we thought that reality was stable and predictable. But today we know that the universe is a space full of possibilities in which chance plays a major role. In the “Quantum Year” 2025, the exhibition "Quantum Visions" will be inviting us to rethink the physical world and explore the effects of quantum physics on society, philosophy, and art. In “Quantum Visions,” artists are presenting their ideas and concepts concerning a reality that is constantly changing and often contradictory. The exhibition sees itself as a "laboratory" in which knowledge is questioned and reinterpreted. Here, art and science meet to reflect together on the mysteries of nature and the universe.

The exhibition is being created in partnership with two European cultural institutions, the Tabakalera cultural center in San Sebastian, Spain, and the MU Hybrid Art House in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, while the Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC) in Spain, the Tekniker technology cluster in Spain, CERN in Geneva, and the Department of Quantum Physics at the University of Basel have been acquired as scientific research partners.

Artists: Libby Heaney, Joan Heemskerk, Ryoji Ikeda, Ayoung Kim, Adriana Knouf, Semiconductor, Elisa Storelli, Robi Voigt, and Z1 Studio, among others

Curator: Sabine Himmelsbach (with Monica Bello, Tabakalera, and Angelique Spaninks, MU Hybrid Art House)

Regionale 26

Nov 30, 2025 – Jan 4, 2026

Regionale is an annual group exhibition that has been developed in the context of a cross-border collaboration between 20 institutions across Germany, France, and Switzerland, focusing on local, contemporary art production in the three-country region around Basel.

The artists and works are selected via an open call. The final selection will take place in August 2025.