Kunsttage Basel

Friday, August 28, 4:00 p.m.

Guided tour with the Fondation's Artistic Director, Olga Osadtschy

Saturday, August 29, 2:00 p.m.

Guided tour and Tempesta creative workshop

Sunday, August 30:

Performance Day x Kunsttage Basel extends the multisensory and sculptural language of the current group exhibition TEMPESTA (May 24 – September 20, 2026) by expanding it into temporal and performative forms that engage with the corporeality and physical presence in space—both latent and manifest—embedded in the works on display.

• 3:30 PM: lisa laurent “the wizard is not real”
  In this context, the Fondation Fernet-Branca presents “the wizard is not real” by performer and choreographer lisa laurent on Sunday, August 30, 2026, specially adapted for the Fondation’s spaces. “the wizard is not real” is a performance as poetic as it is grotesque—an attempt to traverse sadness without freezing it in place; to give form to melancholy without succumbing to it; to inhabit a state of disorientation with clarity, and to grasp it as a living, unstable substance. At the center: crying—not as a realistic emotion, but as a sonic, bodily, expressive material. The performance unfolds like a failed symphony of stifled cries, sighs, and silence, in which emotion becomes sound, gesture, and rhythm. The relationship with the audience is direct. It is not a matter of explaining, but of opening a space where what is being felt out becomes visible: attempts, hesitations, breaks. This is a deliberately incomplete attempt to tame the void and transform both discomfort and excess into points of connection with the audience. Last year, Lisa Laurent received the 2025 Swiss Performance Prize for her work « the wizard is not real ».
  
  The performance is not language-based.
  
  Featuring: Lisa Laurent (choreographer), Pauline Coquart (artist and writer), Wiebke Wiesner (Co-curator of Performance Day x Kunsttage Basel)

• 7:00 p.m.: Premiere of "Oiseau de Nuit"
  During the evening, *Oiseau de Nuit*, an original production blending dance and electronic music presented by the bass couture association (Mulhouse), will have its premiere. “Oiseau de Nuit” is a multidisciplinary work born from a musical piece that combines the rhythm and diversity of electronic music with the warmth and power of acoustic music. As it evolved, it naturally incorporated a singer and four dancers. The project is an invitation to both sharing and introspection, to beauty and entertainment, to the abstract and the concrete, to dance and contemplation. Oiseau de nuit is a testament to what we observe in nighttime festivities: budding, fleeting, and fading loves, human behaviors, and everything we are capable of—and seek—to find an escape.
  
  Featuring: Théo Toussaint (Electronic music composer), Hugo Coulanges (Acoustic music composer), Luc Pachot (Acoustic music composer), Pauline Cutuli (Singer and lyricist), Erwan Jeammot (Choreographer), Jérôme Perez (Founder and Programmer of BC and Project Manager for “Oiseau de nuit”), Detlef Schulmann (Founder and Vice President of BC and Project Coordinator for “Oiseau de nuit”), Mariia Vashchenko-Horska (Project Manager for “Oiseau de nuit”)