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After The Deluge
An exhibition by Michael Schindhelm
Kreislaufgebäude, Franck Areal, 📍 Entrance via Mauerstrasse (Höhe Eimeldingerweg)
Vernissage: Tuesday, October 14, 2025, 5:30 PM
Finissage: 04.11.25
Opening hours: daily 11am to 6.30pm
What if a great flood came—and a new world emerged?
This speculative question forms the core of After the Deluge, an exhibition that imagines a society preparing for radical climate change. Rather than focusing on current or short-term developments, the exhibition explores alternative futures and critically examines today’s approaches to urban ecology and our relationship with nature.
At the heart of the exhibition is the Vault—a participatory space where visitors are invited to contribute plants or symbolic objects they consider essential for a post-apocalyptic world. Which plants are worth saving? Which poems, songs, dreams, or scientific ideas? The Franck-Areal becomes a temporary Noah’s Ark, inviting us to imagine a new symbiosis between humanity and the planet.
Before entering the Vault, visitors pass through the Limbo, a space where a flooded vision of Basel offers a striking metaphor for environmental collapse.
Another highlight is the Dream Room, offering a hybrid (physical and digital) immersion into a post-apocalyptic future. It introduces the idea of the Symbiocene—a new era in which humans reintegrate into natural systems on a technological, social, and emotional level.
In the Statement Room, visitors can book timeslots to contribute intangible works—stories, poems, songs, or personal reflections. Contributions can be live performances or digital media projections; a Fasnacht march or a men’s choir performance is just as welcome as a video or audio submission. The exhibition is accompanied by expert talks and panel discussions from science and industry (see full program here). Sound installations, video works, and live performances round out an immersive, multi-sensory experience.
After the Deluge is developed in collaboration with GIGA Design Milan, Alessandra Chiarelli, and Barbara Maggio.
Become part of the exhibition:
bring your plants or symbolic objects.
Collection dates:
Daily from 3 to 30 October 2025
___________
In collaboration with Arts & Sciences Exhibitions.
talks
Expert presentations & talks
Kreislaufgebäude, Franck Areal, 📍 Entrance via Mauerstrasse (Höhe Eimeldingerweg)
30.10.25, 18:00
Short Stories from the End of the World – with Alain Claude Sulzer.
The renowned writer reads from a wild mix of myths and concise stories that tell of the end (and new beginning) with subtle humor and precise observation.
31.10.25, 16:30
Repair!_Fashion
Designer and lecturer Evelyne Roth, in dialogue with students of the BA Fashion Design program at the HGK Basel FHNW, presents the design process of the module "Wildcard 3: Repair!_Fashion" and the resulting discourse using concrete repaired garment designs. By repairing fashion artifacts, we repair the conventional fashion system itself. Designing with repair principles in mind, using circular criteria, challenges both fashion practice and its consumption.
It's about fashion, products, design and development processes, about the relevance of dealing with fashion differently: the (re)design of complex services as well as the underlying materials, manufacturing methods, supply chains and the corresponding social, ecological and economic contexts.
2.11.25, 18.00
Seeds in the hands of many.
Béla Bartha, Managing Director of ProSpecieRara
The diverse characteristics of heirloom varieties and breeds are synonymous with a broad gene pool that can be drawn upon when needed. This is all the more important because the majority of today's global food supply is based on a frighteningly small number of species, varieties, and breeds. Specific traits may be in demand again due to sudden diseases, climate change, or new consumer needs. Preserving the broadest possible diversity is therefore a safeguard for the future – and the core mission of ProSpecieRara.
3.11.25, 18:00
Philip Atkinson. Learning from the Bees – Life Lessons from Inside a Busy Beehive.
Join the author of Bee Wise to reflect on our role as individuals within today's complex ecosystem. And who knew – female worker bees starve the males to death once they are no longer useful!
Be curious – come and learn more...
4.11.25, 18:00
Dr. Olivier Pagan, director of Basel Zoo, talks about the incredible abundance of biodiversity in zoos and the role of Basel Zoo – and every zoo – as the green lung of a city and as an important research station. Watch our interview with him here.
More dates to follow soon
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