ART FAIRS: Liste Expedition Online

Liste Expedition Online is a research forum with a continuously growing index of artists who represent new positions in contemporary art. The artists are selected by galleries and project spaces participating in Liste Art Fair Basel and Liste Showtime Online. Liste has been known for providing an international overview of the latest developments and trends in contemporary art to a global audience. This knowledge has been transformed from a temporary presentation into a permanent digital research forum.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Liste Archive

The new online format of Liste is geared towards all art enthusiasts who are curi-ous or wish to learn more about young artistic voices. From now on, information on the artists exhibited by Liste galleries can be accessed at any time. The index has now been launched with nearly 200 artists, all of whom have exhibited their works on Liste Showtime in 2020 and 2021. Approximately 80 new artists will be added annually. Plus, this permanent platform is not only for research. It is a dynamic tool also intended to entertain, offering a variety of ways to engage and gain a com-prehensive impression of the most important voices and developments in contemporary art. For 26 years, Liste has provided a selective overview of the latest developments and trends in contemporary international art once a year. The presented artworks and the surrounding discourse not only shape our present, but also help to create it. With Liste Expedition, these artists can now be given a permanent platform that goes beyond the temporary presence of the fair. Liste Expedition thus focuses on the discovery and exploration of emerging artists within the contemporary art world, with the aim of making this information publicly and readily available, regardless of time and place. In the long run, Liste Expedi-tion will offer not only dedicated information on artists, but also a historical over-view of artistic developments as they change over time. The “Artist Index” is an overview of all artists who have participated in Liste Art Fair Basel and/or Liste Showtime since 2020 and will continue to grow with all fu-ture editions of the fair. The principle is simple: On Liste Showtime – the digital edi-tion of Liste Art Fair Basel – the exhibitors present an artist’s work through images, interviews, texts, videos and other digital media formats. By being able to design their own page, the exhibitors decide how the selected artists’ practices and the latest works can best be best experienced in virtual space. The Liste Showtime contributions are then transferred to Liste Expedition and thus made permanently available to anyone interested in exploring them.  “Liste Years” provides access to the full artist index sorted by year. It also archives special projects, such as the poster project “Rewriting our Imaginations” (2020) or “Liste Discourse” (2021). “My Expedition” allows visitors to create a personal login. With this, they can then save images, texts, videos and audio recordings to create a personalised research archive that can be edited at any time. This personal archive is only visible to the registered person.  Liste Expedition’s social meeting point is the “Pool”. When browsing the “Artist In-dex”, visitors can choose to “share” an artwork anonymously and it will be sent to the Pool. When someone then visits the “Pool”, they will see a random selection of images shared anonymously by other visitors, giving a first impression of the di-verse artistic voices. Monthly Picks: For the next year, Spike Art Magazine is inviting writers from around the world to share a Monthly Pick from the pool of enthralling creative positions that Liste has showcased both online and off. As the collaboration unfolds, Spike is asking their favourite contributors to pen a freeform exploration on an artist of their choice from the Liste universe, sharing insight into the works that have appeared at Liste Art Fair Basel and Liste Showtime Online.   For the first instalment, Zurich-based Spike regular Leila Peacock writes about Anne Fellner’s paintings, which occupy an “uncertain place between the act and the actual”. Future writers on the lineup include Qu Chang (Hong Kong) and Guil-herme Teixeira (São Paulo), with more to be announced in early 2022.  With an exhibition page as carte blanche, Liste Expedition expands the spectrum of artists. “asweleavethewindowopen.live” was initiated and will be curated for one year by the artists Mohamed Almusibli, Jazmina Figueroa, Gerome Gadient, Tobias Koch and Hannah Weinberger. The focus is on sound as a medium for ex-perimentation and transmission. With an ongoing weekly programme of 52 contributions, the section devotes a year to the exploration and relationships between all sounds, whether natural or technological, intended or unintended, real, in memory or in fantasy.

More info: https://expedition.liste.ch/