Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.When the German curator Stefanie Hessler visited Basel last autumn, she was struck by the number of empty storefronts along the city\u2019s main street. The proliferation of \u201cFor Rent\u201d signs is a familiar sight in many cities whose fabric has been fundamentally altered by the pandemic, including New York, where Hessler is director of the Swiss Institute, a tastemaking downtown contemporary art space.The vacancies inspired her vision for this year\u2019s edition of Parcours, Art Basel\u2019s platform for art in public places. Twenty-two artists will occupy some of the empty spaces as well as functioning shops that are more likely to be frequented by locals than globe-trotting art collectors. For example, the Stockholm-based artist Lap-See Lam, whose work is often inspired by the Chinese restaurant her family operated in Sweden, will present a video installation inside the local mall\u2019s food court.\u201cPublic space is changing so deeply,\u201d says Hessler, looking every inch the curator in an oversize blazer, as we have tea in the library of the Swiss Institute a few weeks ahead of the fair. \u201cWe\u2019ve changed how we shop, how we buy groceries, how we interact with one another.\u201dFittingly for Art Basel, many of the works in Parcours engage with themes of consumption, commerce and the circulation of goods, people and information. Amid the racks of a clothing store, Poland-born artist Joanna Piotrowska will install large freestanding photographs of hands clutching trees and caressing rocks, a nod to the fashion industry\u2019s extractive relationship with nature. Malaysia-born artist Mandy El-Sayegh and a group of performers will endeavour to enter a trance-like state inside her installation on the mall\u2019s top floor \u2014 a reference, Hessler says, to \u201cthe connection between spirituality and shopping\u201d.This is Hessler\u2019s first time organising Parcours. (The section\u2019s veteran curator, Samuel Leuenberger, is focusing his attention this year on Agnes Denes\u2019s project on the Messeplatz.) Galleries apply to participate and finance their own projects; all the works are for sale. Around half of them are new, developed with their unusual sites in mind.It is easy to be sceptical about projects like these, which, if done poorly, can feel like a safari for billionaires to witness locals in the wild. Hessler says she felt a \u201cresponsibility of not just plopping down a project\u201d but rather encouraging visitors and Basel residents alike to \u201cexperience the place where you are\u201d. It is a principle that has guided much of her work, including as a curator of biennials in Athens, Oslo and Montreal. As a graduate student, she invited artists to create work about domesticity in her Stockholm apartment. For her final Masters project, she collaborated with the Swedish artist Cajsa von Zeipel to install a sculpture of a futuristic woman masturbating in her bed; Hessler slept on the floor for a month.This iteration of Parcours tinkers with the traditional format in several ways. For one thing, the venues are mostly privately owned. (Art Basel confirmed that some proprietors will be paid for their spaces, but declined to specify how much.) While previous editions brought art to remote corners of the city, Hessler is installing almost all the works along a central 700-metre stretch of Clarastrasse, which runs from the fair\u2019s grounds to the Rhine, so they can be experienced in one fell swoop. By bringing art inside local businesses, \u201cI hope it doesn\u2019t feel like art tourism only,\u201d she says. Perhaps a student will unexpectedly encounter Piotrowska\u2019s photographs on a shopping trip and become inspired to pop inside the vacant pharmacy nearby to view works by the French artist Pol Taburet.This iteration of Parcours required close collaboration not only between Hessler and the artists, but also between the art fair and small-business owners. Hessler visited more than 70 venues in order to land on the final list. Sometimes, she or Art Basel staff simply walked into a store cold and made the initial pitch. From real-estate agents to casino operators to the owners of a local distillery, \u201cI\u2019ve met so many people in Basel that I never would have met,\u201d she says.Was there any concern that regular Baselites might be put off by having their day-to-day haunts or shops interrupted by art and art people? Hessler says many of the venue-owners, who had themselves been to Parcours before, were \u201cmostly really excited\u201d about the collaboration and potential new visitors.One of the more intimate collaborations is between the London-based artist Alvaro Barrington and the owner of Tropical Zone, a shop for imported African goods ranging from hair dye to vegetables. The store \u201cis serving the immigrant community\u201d, Barrington says, \u201cand that experience of community and identity has always\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009informed my work.\u201d Inside the shop, Barrington will erect a wooden structure inspired by his grandmother\u2019s home in Grenada and hang his paintings next to the normal inventory, which will remain accessible to customers. After all: if Art Basel\u2019s clientele can turn cultural experiences into shopping, why can\u2019t the city\u2019s residents turn shopping into a cultural experience?Parcours runs June 10-16, artbasel.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.When the German curator Stefanie Hessler visited Basel last autumn, she was struck by the number of empty storefronts along the city\u2019s main street. The proliferation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-111008","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111008"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":111009,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111008\/revisions\/111009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}