On the morning of June 16th, a circle gathered in the Studio der Gegenwart at Kunstmuseum Basel that rarely comes together even in the dense schedule of Art Basel: SLEEK, in collaboration with the art platform CIFRA, hosted a breakfast in honour of Cao Fei, who is also featured on the cover of the current SLEEK issue #89, PLAY. The Beijing-based artist is one of the defining voices of a generation remapping the relationship between urban reality, technology and collective memory.
Among the guests was what could fairly be called a who’s who of the international art world. Max Hollein, director and CEO of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was present, as was Klaus Biesenbach, director of the Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin, and Christiane Paul, curator of digital art at the Whitney Museum of American Art, who has shaped the institutional engagement with new media for years. From Switzerland came Sabine Himmelsbach, director of Basel’s Haus der elektronischen Künste and one of the most prominent voices in the German-speaking media art scene. Artist duo Eva & Franco Mattes and media artist Mario Klingemann brought two practices that explore the relationship between art and digital culture like few others. Damian Chandler of Brunswick Arts, who advises museums, collections and cultural institutions around the world, offered the strategic perspective.
Cao Fei herself spent the entire breakfast with her guests, a rare moment of calm and conversation amid the rush of the fair. Listening to her, one met an artist who treats her own practice as an ongoing inquiry rather than an answer.
Special thanks go to CIFRA, with whom SLEEK co-hosted the morning. That a platform for new media, video and sound art ended up hosting it follows naturally from the work of an artist who has always mediated between the analogue and the digital.
It was a gathering that once again proved: wherever SLEEK and the international art world sit down for breakfast together, the conversation rarely stays on the surface.
A special thank you to CIFRA for their hospitality and for co-hosting the breakfast, and to Anika Meier for all the coordination.
All Photography by Arne Schirmer.