Last night, the skies over Basel were shining yellow. It was Sahara dust! Saharan dust, carried by prevailing winds from the deserts of North Africa, reaches Basel (and Switzerland in general) in springs or autumns, imparting a unique atmospheric phenomenon to the city. This fine particulate matter, composed of mineral dust and sand, can travel thousands of kilometers across the Mediterranean before settling over Basel, tinting the skies with an otherworldly hue and often causing a hazy appearance. This year, Switzerland witnessed a staggering 180,000 tonnes of dust. While this occurrence adds an unusual touch to the cityscape, it also highlights the global environmental connections. Sahara is not as far as you think! Be ready for more news about #culturescapes and #sahara very soon! #saharadust #saharadustsunset #saharadesert #northafrica #wind #climate

Alex Baczynski-Jenkins is back in town! Fewer things make us happier than #culturescapes artists coming back. If you didn’t have a chance to see their mesmerizing performances in @kunsthallebasel during #culturescapes2019poland, don’t miss your chance now! Alex Baczynski-Jenkins does not choreograph performers, movements, or scenery. He choreographs relations and communication beyond words. In Untitled (Holding Horizon), performers move in and out, quicker or slower to the blaring beat. The darkness of the space envelopes them and unites with the audience. On the threshold of visibility and invisibility, a dizzying dynamic of collectivity, intimacy and dependence emerges. Over the course of three hours, during which the audience can come and go as they please, the performance develops a community-building and trance-like power through repetitive, slightly shifting rhythms and evokes changing associations: a ghostly gathering, a coming together in resistance or mourning, the faded memories of a rave.  🗓️ April 3-4, 19:00, Kaserne Basel @kasernebasel @baczynski.j 📸 Alex Baczynski-Jenkins. Untitled (Holding Horizon), 2018 Photo: Spyros Rennt Alex Baczynski-Jenkins, performance view, Untitled (Holding Horizon), 2018, Such Feeling, Kunsthalle Basel, 2019. Photo: Diana Pfammatter/ Kunsthalle Basel Alex Baczynski-Jenkins, performance view, Untitled (Holding Horizon), 2018, Such Feeling, Kunsthalle Basel, 2019. Photo: Diana Pfammatter/ Kunsthalle Basel Alex Baczynski-Jenkins, performance view, Until a thousand roses bloom (with Warsaw in the background), 2018, Such Feeling, Kunsthalle Basel, 2019. Photo: Diana Pfammatter/ Kunsthalle Basel #dance #twilight #queer #relationships #warsaw #basel

“Shores of Sahara-Sahel: Waves, Forms, Futures,” the autumn symposium of Institute Art Gender Nature HGK Basel FHNW @hgkbasel_institutkunst, held in collaboration with the #culturescapes2023sahara festival, was a wealth of knowledge and visions. It was devoted to the artistic and cultural productions, lines of political and aesthetic thought, and epistemologies of the Sahara and the accompanying Sahel. Now, all its performative lectures, readings, and discussions are available online. Do not miss an opportunity to review or discover for the first time the multiple stories of the Sahara/Sahel, seen as both an ancient space of connection, circulation, and trade—from its northern to its southern shores, its dunes and volcanic mountains to its lusher savannahs—and as a contemporary site of exchange between strikingly singular societies and communities on all sides of the desert. With contributions by Phoenix Atala, Kateryna Botanova, Binta Diaw, Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi (crazinisT artisT), Yarri Kamara, Mohamed Sleiman Labat, Benaouda Lebdai, Rania Mamoun, Yara Mekawei, Kettly Noël, and Temitayo Ogunbiyi, among others. Moderated by Chus Martínez @the_chus_martinez and Quinn Latimer @ql_ql_ql_ql. Link in the bio ☝🏼 📸 Temitayo Ogunbiyi by Gerta Xhaferaj / Institute Art Gender Nature HGK Basel FHNW #culturescapes #sahara #art #festival #music #performance

Do you any trees here? No? Just wait because they are coming! The European Festivals Forest, an initiative that #culturescapes is a part of, and the Icelandic Forestry Office planted 3,000 Alaskan aspen and stick pine seedlings at the end of last year. Another 6,000 trees are coming up later this year. Among them is a Culturescapes hectare with 2,500 trees! 🌲🌲🌲 The trees are planted in the land of Kollabær in Fljótshlíð, Iceland. The annual average sequestration in the field is expected to be around 20.6 tons of carbon dioxide. The Festivals Forest is a carbon sequestration project. It celebrates the power and creativity of the festivals industry coming together to lead a progressive call to climate action. In 2023, the project grew to fourteen festivals plus three touring companies, which will plant over two hectares in 2024. 📸 Valgerður Erlingsdóttir @festivalsforest #culturescapes2023sahara #iceland🇮🇸 #forest #carbonfootprint #climatechange #trees

What a wonderful surprise!🎉 “Sahara. A Thousand Paths Into the Future” and its brilliant designer, Gaile Pranckūnaitė, got a diploma from the 32nd Lithuanian Book Art Competition, held during Vilnius Book Fair, in the category of Art Publications. The last two #culturescapes anthologies, the Saharan and the Amazonian, were designed by Gailea Pranckūnaitė @buster0friendly and printed by Petro ofsetas @petroofsetas in Vilnius. We could not be happier with this collaboration! 👏 “Sahara: A Thousand Paths Into the Future,” edited by Kateryna Botanova @katya_botanova , Yarri Kamara, and Quinn Latimer @ql_ql_ql_ql , is devoted to the ideas, images, poetics, politics, fictions, and movements of this vast desert and its myriad voices. The thinkers, artists, poets, choreographers, composers, activists, elders, novelists, historians, and translators whose voices and sensibilities score and structure this anthology create a more full-spectrum and polyphonic sense of what the Sahara means, in all its waves and forms. If you still don’t have a copy, it is never too late to get one from @sternbergpress_official! Follow the link in the bio ☝️ #culturescapes2023sahara #sahara #reading #book #artbook #vilnius #vilniusbookfair

Taita Hernando Chindoy, a governor of the Inga nation in Colombia and a participant of Culturescapes 2023 Amazonia, is back in Switzerland. Years ago, Chindoy set the stage for the emergence of Wuasikamas—Guardians of the Earth 🌎. Wuasikamas is a practice centered on a profound respect for human and nonhuman life, which allowed Inga to initiate a process of territorial defense, conservation practices, and autonomous governance. The principles of Wuasikamas helped to reestablish traditional Inga chagras, or Indigenous gardens filled with medicinal and edible plants, in which conservation, learning, and spirituality are practiced within each family. 🌱 Chindoy is a great advocate and enabler for “pluriversities”—educational initiatives that question Western ideas of the world and promote multi-perspective Indigenous and other knowledge systems. He is a representative of the international pluriversity initiative Ëconeêrã. Last weekend at the Engadin Art Talks, he spoke about the harmonization of knowledge, biospirituality, and the Indigenous work to heal the damages done to Earth in the last 500 years. Next week, February 7 at 18:00, he will discuss pluriversities at the Museum der Kulturen Basel (in Spanish with German translation). You can always listen to him speaking with an artist, Felipe Castelblanco, and a cultural promoter, filmmaker, and musician of the Kamënstá nation, Ayênan Quinchoa Juajibioy, during Culturescapes 2021 Amazonia on our website. Link in bio ☝️ And our amazing book “Amazonia. Anthology as Cosmology” which contains his interview is still available at Sternberg Press. @hernandochindoyinga @museumderkulturenbasel @engadinarttalks @felipecastel #culturescapes #culturescapes2021amazonia #amazonia #amazonas #colombia🇨🇴 #inga #biodiversity #indigenous

Whether you saw or missed the concert by amazing Keziah Jones last year with #culturescapes2023sahara, this podcast 🎙️ is not to be missed! You can hear the famous Nigerian musician speaking about the very beginning of the “Blufunk,” his now legendary sound, a mix of blues, funk, and Yoruba rhythms. 🎸 He also recalls his early days playing music on the streets of London and Paris, his melancholia of being an emigrant that became a base for his music, and the fact that he was a visual artist first. For him, the images are sonic, and the music is visual. And much more. Recorded by Safiya Omar @groovy_she during Jones’ talk in collaboration with the Center For African Studies at the University of Basel, this interview is a unique insight into the great musician’s philosophy and life. Many thanks to Henri Michel Yéré for leading and supporting this collaboration! Listen through the link in the bio! ☝️ @keziahjonesofficiel @zasb.unibasel #culturescapes #culturescapes20years #keziahjones #music #blufunk #nigeria #lagos

Speculative fiction wins! 📚🎉 Wole Talabi, a Nigerian writer and a contributor to the Culturescapes anthology “Sahara. A Thousand Paths Into the Future,” has won the 2022 Sidewise Award for Alternate History in the category of best short-form alternate history. The award was announced at the end of 2023. Talabi won the 2022 Best Short-Form Alternate History award for “A Dream of Electric Mothers” published in “Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction” and reprinted in the Culturescapes anthology. This piece draws us into a world of African artificial intelligence, in which an artificial memrionic supercitizen speaking with the multiple yet unified voices of electronic ancestors has been created to advise a country’s government. “Sahara. A Thousand Paths Into the Future” is still available through @sternbergpress_official 📸 Ola-Tokunbo Aworinde, 2018 @katya_botanova @ql_ql_ql_ql @yarrikamara #culturescapes #culturescapes2023sahara #africa #speculativefiction #fiction #nigeria #literature #sidewiseaward

The year started with the wonderful news! 💫 Two of Culturescapes 2023 Sahara artists—Yasmine El Meleegy and Nolan Oswald Dennis—are shortlisted for the Future Generation art Prize. Congratulations! 🎉 The biannual event is the only prize for the young generation of artists with a global dimension and guided by an open, free, and democratic application process. Supported by an eminent board, distinguished jury, and outstanding selection committee, the Prize brings together the best of the art world to champion a new generation of artists. The exhibition with all twenty-one shortlisted artists will open in August 2024 in Pinchuk Art Center in Kyiv, Ukraine. And the winner will be announced by the end of the year. 📸 Yasmine El Meleegy. Nolan Oswald Dennis. @yasmineelmeleegy @data_body @forspacech @kunsthallebasel @futuregenerationartprize #culturescapes #culturescapes2023sahara #arts #futuregenerationartprize