The 2025 edition of Basel Social Club (June 15–21) returns with its fourth presentation, taking over an unexpected new venue—a former private bank in the heart of Grossbasel. Known for transforming unconventional spaces into vivid centers of art and social engagement, the non-profit initiative has previously animated villas, factories, and farmland. Now, in perhaps its most conceptually charged location yet, Basel Social Club invites the public into over 100 rooms of a grand bank.
To create a space that is less of an exhibition and more of a multi-sensory atmosphere, Basel Social Club has partnered with Klaus Littmann’s FOR ART initiative, which seeks to reactivate the historic building on Rittergasse with artistic interventions until 2028. What unfolds inside is an immersive experience, where past and present intertwine. The former bank’s symbolic nature—its associations with wealth, secrecy, and commerce—becomes a backdrop for art that questions the very same systems on which institutions like this breed.
Basel Social Club’s Financial Theme
Photo by Fiona Rahn, courtesy of Basel Social Club.
This year’s theme is centered on the language of finance, value, and exchange. In this context, luxury, care, currency, and the boundaries between service and spectacle are blurred. Visitors can donate blood in a functioning blood bank in partnership with the Swiss Red Cross, sit for haircuts in a barbershop-meets-social forum by British-Jamaican artist Faisal Abdu’Allah, or attend an intimate dinner-performance hosted by the Museum of Us collective.
Every room in the sprawling building has been activated—some with performances, others with installations, salons, or participatory rituals. The daily program includes standout performances such as Alexandra Bachzetsis’s Undressed, Josh Johnson’s Interruption, and Leyla Yenirce’s Troubadour. Throughout the week, music, spoken word, and DJ sets continue until midnight, while works by other artists—like Anthea Hamilton’s The Squash and Jessie Holmes’s Mini Jobs: On Hospitality—unfold across several days.
Highlights and Wellness Activations
Courtyard photo by Lara Esqueda, courtesy of Basel Social Club 2025.
Casino salon photo by Lara Esqueda, courtesy of Basel Social Club 2025.
Among the special projects, BIJOUX SOLAIRES, presented by Sunsworks, transforms a former vault into a gallery of jewelry and objects by artists like Cinzia Ruggeri, Olympia Scarry, and Meret Oppenheim. Elsewhere, the Stick n’ Poke Tattoo Parlor offers hand-poked tattoos as ephemeral artifacts of art, collaboration, and identity, featuring designs by artists including Sylvie Fleury and Cudelice Brazelton IV.
The program also embraces new forms of wellness and exchange. Keen Wellbeing invites visitors to reset their nervous systems with breathwork, sauna, and ice baths, and Victoria Colmegna’s Homeopathic Pharmacy dispenses “hangover pills” to treat the exhaustion of over-socialization. Henna Bank, a participatory ceremony by aqui T, replaces financial transactions with human touch and generosity.
Must-See Presentations at Basel Social Club
Bijoux Solaires presented by Sunsworks, photo by Gina Folly, courtesy of Basel Social Club 2025.
Other stand-out presentations include Dahoon Nam’s Jeff Koons SPECIAL SALE, which sells balloon dogs at a fraction of the famous artist’s market value, poking at the inflated art economy; and Wishing Well by Remco Torenbosch, which reimagines the financial fountain as a site of hopeful ritual, reminding viewers that even amid critique, belief in change remains powerful. Collaboration with youth groups also plays a key role in this year’s Basel Social Club. In B-Town Kids, children from Dharavi in Mumbai and Basel use analog photography to document their lives, brought together in a visual diary that transcends geography and socioeconomics.
As guests move from the Casino Salon to Liquide Chamber‘s ambient soundscapes, from children’s book readings to NFT vault critiques, they’re by Basel Social Club encouraged to consider: What do we value? Who is art for? And what might we gain if we traded scarcity for care? At Basel Social Club, there seem to be no fixed answers, just possibilities, provocations, and plenty of room to dance and dream.
Anthea Hamilton, The Squash, photo by Lara Esqueda, courtesy of Basel Social Club 2025.
Anthea Hamilton, The Squash, photo by Lara Esqueda, courtesy of Basel Social Club 2025.
