15 9 2024 Fhnw Civic Pati Grabowicz Lowres 021 Welcome to CIVIC, Dreispitz, Tram-Stop: Freilager (Picture: Pati Grabovicz)

JANUARY

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Civic 9878 Open House 2024: Let's play marbles together! On January 17 and 19, Lea Bongni, Jasmine Noemi Jetzer and Marina Klein-Hietpas invited us to build a marble run.
This year's theme for OPEN HOUSE: EXCHANGE IS THE MOST PRECIOUS THING WE HAVE!

FEBRUARY

The Tender Reading Training reading series took place on Tuesdays in September and October 2023 at CIVIC in cooperation with CoCreate. Ariane and Laura, who already knew each other from readings and interviews, wondered whether a reading series could be organized differently than in the classic water glass scenario: an author reads, a moderator asks clever questions, a glass of water stands next to them, everyone listens attentively. How can this format be broken up? How can reading and writing be experienced as a sensual, physical activity.

MARCH

The NEXA* AWARD was initiated to make projects by HGK Basel students on the topic of sustainability more visible in a transdisciplinary way and to promote them.

Freilager Speeddate: Freilager Platz, a creative hub (and homebase to our campus) nestled in the fringes of Basel, is still a delightful mystery even to its habitual denizen. HGK has myriad studios, workshops, and departments— and most of us are wondering “What is everyone else up to”? The speed date was organized by Martin Wöllenstein, Sara Løve Daðadóttir and Onome Ekeh.

APRIL

WE ARE FOREIGN AND WE ARE EVERYWHERE: NETWORKS FOR SYSTEMIC CHANGE by Foreign Legion (Vera Sacchetti & Matylda Krzykowski) was a 4-day CoCreate Workshop (2 - 5 April 2024) for students. Including following guests: María Inés Plaza Lazo (Arts of the Working Class Magazine), James Taylor-Foster (ArkDes), Ananda Jade, (Hybrid Project Space). There was a live stream by Radiohr on 3 April 2024, 10 - 4 PM.

Marcial Koch & Connor Muething from Masterstudio Scenography continued with their mobile hot dog trading post in CIVIC!
Hot dogs were available for a fixed price OR as part of a bargained exchange. When bargaining, anything & everything could be proposed as long as it truly reflected how one values a hot dog. The results were be documented as part of an ongoing project.

MAY

Ask A Librarian: By invitation of Matylda Krzykowski, Artistic Director of CIVIC at the Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW, the media library appeared in CIVIC on Freilagerplatz from May 21 to 24, 2024. It became a pop-up media library, temporarily opening up an additional meeting zone. (Graphic: Elena Palumbo)

3 20240805 Text Civic Billboard Jury On a May morning last year, the CIVIC Billboard jury came together in a meeting room on the 1st floor of Basel Academy of Art and Design: five students from each institute, one employee, one alumnus, one former employee and an external guest. 78 submissions, each printed on a sheet of A3, subtitled with a short abstract, hung on the wall, presenting 78 answers to the question: HOW TO FOOL THE FUTURE? The result of this anonymous project competition would transform the external facade of the pavilion a second time.

JUNE

Basel Dialogues is a new critical book series from the Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW. Published every two years, Basel Dialogues centers conversation and the dialogic form to give insight into the voices that animate the contemporary academy and the most vital questions of the day. Gleaned from the five institutes that constitute the campus of the Basel Academy of Art and Design, the conversations shed light on the ideas and conditions, forms and materials, and poetics and politics that contemporary artists, architects, designers, thinkers, filmmakers, writers and other hybrid practitioners are most concerned with, both in theory and practice, within the academy and beyond it.

Martin 8926 "Yellow is a huge entity living at CIVIC. It only opens up once a lifetime"....
This was: YELL, LOW HIGH - A spatial transition by Masterstudio Scenography ICDP students Marcial Koch, Adelina Malekova, Jimena Martel Bidegain, Connor Muething, Renê Salazar and Martin Wöllenstein during Art Basel Week. (Photo: Martin Wöllenstein)

Np 07 24 Cmlb 25308 Hdr
Np 07 24 Cmlb 25126 Hdr Machine Teaching Commons was a one-day symposium and exhibition presenting key outcomes of the smuc.kitchen project. The participants engaged in critical discussions and research-based art and design practices across the three areas pertinent to the project. (Photo: Nicolas Petit, CC BY-NC 4.0 by Scaling Material Urban Commons)

JULY

Dsc 7689 Last year in July, CIVIC was closed for several weeks! 200 liters of blue paint transformed the former white and sterile floor into a joyful indoor swimming pool. (Photo 1: Anita Muçolli. Foto 2: Selva Meyer)

AUGUST

Civic Billboard 2023 Linsu Weber Detail (1) In August 2024, we participated in Kunsttage Basel with our CIVIC Billboard, designed by Linus Weber (Photo: Linus Weber)

SEPTEMBER

15 9 2024 Fhnw Civic Pati Grabowicz Lowres 036 NEXT GENERATION at CIVIC: We bid farewell to our graduates in CIVIC, celebrating them with cold beverages, homemade ice cream, an open bookshop and 4 different DJ sets. (Photo: Pati Grabowicz)

Just in time for our NEXT generation event, our beloved Messy Kiosk received a new mirrored look and was covered with the names of all graduates and their institutes, designed by Elena Palumbo. (Photo: Pati Grabowicz)

OCTOBER

15 9 2024 Fhnw Civic Pati Grabowicz Lowres 117
Photo 2024 10 09 17 24 35 2 NEW CIVIC BILLBOARD: Last year's winner was Laura Tobler (second from left), which convinced the jury with her proposal "POSTPONE IT!"
The photograph is inspired by a headline from Tagesanzeiger (Swiss-German newspaper), introducing a new trend: Social Freezing (freezing of egg cells [oocytes] for non-medical reasons). If we think of the future as decay, we try to fool it with a freezer. We play with time: slow it down, stretch it. Laura is fascinated by the idea of a huge freezer and curious about how the one in her shared flat currently looks. (Photo: Pati Grabowicz)

Mesh

Mes H2 First MESH Festival at Dreispitz: During five days last October, students from the Bachelor program in Process Design at HyperWerk IXDM, alongside Anna Laederach, Fiona Nhieu, and Selva Meyer, transformed CIVIC into an inviting and interactive space. The Welcome Point was situated in CIVIC and provided detailed information about the festival program while engaging visitors with its key questions:
How do we want to live together? What kinds of solutions and spaces do we envision? What tools are truly essential?
(Photos: Matylda Krzykowski)

1 Civic Hotline Connor Muething CIVIC HOTLINE by Connor Muething!
The CIVIC is an entry point, an active portal. Often busy and crisscrossed with pedestrians, its many faces and functions tend to swirl around, perhaps getting lost or overlooked. But when such a space is altered—the floor painted a lush shade of blue (NCS S 1050-R90B)—it illustrates a high level of care and attention to the activities occurring inside. Both in celebration of that gesture and as a reaffirmation of the CIVIC ethos, two posters were needed.

POSTER 1: CALL +41 61 228 45 67
The first poster inaugurates the CIVIC hotline. Pull a slip from the poster, put it in your pocket, and call the number at your convenience. What you will find there is an extension of the CIVIC; a non-physical space to engage, experiment, criticize, etc.

POSTER 2:
The second poster gives us a 36 day lesson in what it means “to civic”.
Each day, one step will be crossed off until we are left with CIVIC, the verb.
(Photo: Connor Muething)

NOVEMBER

Landing 1500x758px Cf CIVIC Forum is a new informal format at the HGK Basel that takes place twice a year at CIVIC. It is aimed at all students and staff and provides a framework for discussing topics, questions, and concerns that are important to people at the HGK. The content for the joint meeting is collected anonymously or by name. It took place for the first time on November 6, 2024. (Graphic: Gil Fontimayor)

70959 a D4 090 a 44 Aa B A63 B D5 E223808 Cf 2 CIVIC Lunch was initiated by CIVIC Artistic Lead Matylda Krzykowski and CIVIC Project Lead Anita Muçolli. We came together and cooked Bigos, a hearty Polish dish, invited people of the HGK to join us, and had lunch together. (Photo Anita Muçolli)

DECEMBER

CIVIC x ICDP Industrialdesign: CIVIC Lamps!
As part of the CIRCULAR DESIGN module, 5th semester Industrial Design BA students have designed unique lamps, especially for CIVIC. (Photo 1: Anita Muçolli)

OPEN HOUSE TV

IMAGE DROP 2024

OPEN HOUSE TV 2025

CIVIC hosts: Sister Library

CIVIC BILLBOARD 2025

CIVIC FORUM

PLACE at EASE

CIVIC x +380Collective