Kunsttage Basel 2026

Kunsttage Basel are three days during which more than 60 institutions in Basel open their doors around a shared program: exhibitions, guided tours, performances, and encounters. This year, the Fondation Fernet-Branca is part of the program and welcomes you in Saint-Louis: the perfect opportunity to extend your artistic explorations across the border!

Opening hours:
Friday 28th August, 1 pm to 6 pm
Saturday 29th August, 11 am to 6 pm
Sunday 30th August, 11 am to 9 pm

Weekend programme:

FRIDAY 28th AUGUST, AT 4PM
Guided tour led by the Fondation's Artistic Director, Olga Osadtschy

SATURDAY 29th AUGUST, AT 2PM
Tour and creative workshop
Paint, textile, clay, drawing – and you, right in the middle of it all.

In this workshop inspired by the Tempesta exhibition, we work with the exhibition's materials and explore how bodies, space, and matter interact with one another.
No experience necessary – just curiosity

SUNDAY 30th AUGUST

• 2PM, Guided tour led by guest curator Daniel Kurjaković

  Join guest curator Daniel Kurjaković for a guided tour of the Tempesta exhibition. He will lead you through the works on display and share his unique vision of this remarkable exhibition.
  A rare opportunity to explore the ideas and behind-the-scenes of an exhibition conceived at the heart of the Fondation Fernet-Branca.

Performance Day x Kunsttage Basel continues the multisensory and sculptural language of the international group exhibition Tempesta (May 24 – September 20, 2026), expanding it into time-based and performative forms. The program takes up the corporeality embedded in the exhibition’s works — not as a motif, but as a site of perception and orientation. It invites audiences to enter distinct experiential spaces, dwell within different modes of (self-)exploration, and move through open-ended passages.

• 4PM, the wizard is not real, 45 minutes
  The performance the wizard is not real is a poetic and grotesque attempt to move through sadness without freezing it; to give form to melancholy without surrendering to it. 
  Soberly equipped with a microphone and a table, lisa laurent cries. Not actual tears of release, but tears that become sonic, corporeal, and expressive material through which shifting inner states are traversed. The performance unfolds like a failed symphony of stifled screams, sighs, and silence, in which emotion becomes sound, gesture, and rhythm.
  the wizard is not real does not seek resolution. Instead, it inhabits disorientation, consciously lingering in the cracks between emotional overwhelm and fleeting moments of clarity. Through exaggerated burlesque gestures, fractured movements and recurring, swelling sound motifs, lisa laurent creates a porous language that transforms moments of discomfort, absurdity, and emotional overflow into sensory encounters and a more tender relationship with one's own limits.
  
  lisa’s performances create situations that unsettle perception, heighten sensory experience, and encourage deeper awareness and connection through emotional intensity and vulnerability.
  Accompanying the performance the wizard is not real at Fondation Fernet-Branca, Pauline Coquart presents a text developed specifically for the context of Tempesta, offering an introductory approach to the work. The program is curated by Wiebke Wiesner.
  
  
  Presentation of lisa laurent
  lisa’s primary medium is choreography. The work explores the representation of lisa’s own body through a lens of reflexivity and self-derision. With a particular interest in the tension between control and exposure, lisa engages in a continual dismantling of form – physical, emotional, and spatial.
  Alongside choreographic work, lisa has collaborated with, among others, Cindy Van Acker and was a member of the La Ribot Ensemble, contributing both to new creations and to the artist’s repertoire. lisa also works as a dramaturg and external collaborator for artists in the performing and visual arts, including Baptiste Cazaux, Thibault Lac, Giulia Essyad, Pauline Coquart, and Antoine Weil. From 2024 to 2026, lisa is an associated artist at Sévelin 36. In 2025, lisa received the Swiss Performance Art Award for the wizard is not real.
  
  With the participation of: lisa laurent (choreographer and performer), Pauline Coquart (artist and writer), Wiebke Wiesner (Co-curator Performance Day x Kunsttage Basel)
  
  French-spoken introduction by Pauline Coquart
  No registration required
  Free entry
   

• 7PM : Oiseau de Nuit

  Oiseau de Nuit is a multidisciplinary performance that brings together electronic music and acoustic music, live vocals, as well as contemporary dance into a single narrative. Conceived as an immersive experience, the work explores the dialogue between contemporary electronic sounds and acoustic instrumentation, creating a unique artistic language.

  In this special 30 minute version, developed for Fondation Fernet-Branca, the audience follows the emotional journey of two protagonists during a night of celebration. Through seven interconnected scenes, the performance explores anticipation, euphoria, encounter, trance, vulnerability, and the return to reality. Music, movement, and space interact to create a sensory experience that invites the audience to become fully immersed in the story.

  Beyond the festive experience, Oiseau de Nuit explores what brings people together. It speaks of fleeting encounters, shared emotions, the search for freedom, and those suspended moments that leave a lasting impression on our lives. The performance invites the audience to experience nightlife not only as entertainment, but as a space for encounter, transformation, and collective emotion.

  Music: Théo Toussaint – Music composition and sound design, Pauline Cutulli – Vocals, Hugo Coulanges – Acoustic music composer, Luc Pachot – Acoustic music composer, Armand Sztykgold - trumpet, Victor Fimbel - trumpet, Melanie Wahizi - trombone, Etienne Chimits - trombone, Timothée Lansu - bass trombone, Cyril Ackermann - percussion.
  Dance: Erwan Jemmot – Choreography and contemporary dance, Marc Comellas – Contemporary dance
  
  No registration required
  Free entry