Primary work: BASEL switzerland
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Transcript
- Artist
I'd like to add to and refine the cataloguing for this existing artwork. Please review what's already captured, summarise the gaps briefly, and ask about the most important missing conceptual field first.
- Art/Official
Good to have you back on **Basel Switzerland, 2007** — the founding work of the Digital City Series. Here's where things stand: **Well-covered:** title, year, series, city/country, dimensions (48 × 48), medium, process notes, art-historical context (Gursky), provenance, current location, descriptions (short and long), conceptual keywords, formal contribution assessment. **Main gaps — conceptual:** intent, seriesContext, makingNote, directInspiration, workContext, intentVsOutcome, consciousRejections, encounterNote, materialAndProcessMeaning **Main gaps — practical:** support, framing, condition, locationCreated detail (label, lat/lng), primaryImageAltText, tags (movement/style/subject/genre/period), DCS fields (capture journey, composition, city context, editions), media uploads (street photo, satellite, flag) --- Let me start where it matters most. The square format is one of the defining decisions of this work — and of the whole series. You noted in process that you resisted the fisheye distortion from the 18mm lens. What made you commit to the square in the first place — before Instagram made it the default?
- Artist
I looked at the work as both a portrait and a landscape, so I chose the square because that was the only size thats both or niether
- Art/Official
That's a clean piece of logic — the square as the format that refuses the choice rather than making it. Neither portrait nor landscape, so both.
- Art/Official
Staged. That framing — portrait vs landscape as a false binary — does it also connect to what the series is doing with cities? Basel as a subject that doesn't sit still in either category either?
- Artist
It is the view of a city through the ride of a skateboard. so how it is seen through the process of movement. so it is a portrait of a city using cityscape landscapes
- Art/Official
That deepens it significantly — the square isn't just format logic, it's a record of how a city is experienced in motion. The skateboard as the instrument of perception.
- Art/Official
Good. So the series title "Digital City Series" is almost underselling it — the skateboard ride is the method, not just the transportation. Was that connection explicit to you at the time, making Basel? Or did it become clearer as the series developed?
- Artist
became clearer as the series progressed and I thought about it. back in 2003 with the Art Collision series, was the first time I made work that was digital collages of new york city and then painted on them. it was 8 artworks all together, and then later did a new york and amsterdam digital collage artworks. those were a bit surreal, so when I got to the digital city series, I wanted it to be digital collage, but not in the fantastical way I would see people do it. also at the time, people hated the name digital City Series, like I said before, making digital art was not cool at the time
- Art/Official
That's a really useful lineage — Art Collision as the prototype, and the DCS as the deliberate refinement of it. Moving away from the surreal/fantastical mode that was everywhere, toward something that looked like a city actually could look.
- Art/Official
So the conscious move was away from the surreal collage aesthetic — toward something that could pass as a real city view on first encounter. What were you pushing against specifically — was it a visual style you'd seen too much of, or something about what digital collage was supposed to signal at the time?
- Artist
I think I did see some people that were getting in galleries and kind of doing this digital collage thing with cities, but definitly didn't like how they would take a fantasy approach, they looked cool, but something in me made me think that they were just a moment thing and not a document for a longer time
- Art/Official
That's a sharp instinct — the fantasy collage as spectacle versus something that could hold up as a document over time.
- Art/Official
"A document for a longer time" — that's interesting given Basel is now nearly 20 years old. Does it hold up the way you thought it would?
- Artist
hmm, Basel is still a bit not holding up as the other, as there was progress in the series. but I do think the simplicity of it makes it last over time, it is from that moment, but also timeless in a way
- Art/Official
That tension is worth capturing — the first work in a series always carries the methodology before it's fully resolved, but the simplicity that comes from that rawness is also what gives it a kind of staying power.
Expand full conversation
- Art/Official
You described it at the very start of the original session as a work you'd been sitting with for a while — the founding piece of the series. Now that we've talked through the Art Collision lineage, the square format logic, the anti-fantasy move — does that change how you'd describe what this work actually is?
- Artist
I think it took me awhile to figure out what it was, I used the skateboard because that how I would get around, but took time to realize that was what the work was about. I skateboard and like skatboard art, but also think that it can be too obvious and niche, so think I had to make in universal first to then realize what its base is
- Art/Official
That's a really honest account of how meaning catches up with making — the skateboard was just how you moved, and only later became the conceptual centre. And the instinct to make it universal first rather than leading with skate culture is actually what gives the series its broader reach.
- Art/Official
And the direct trigger for Basel specifically — you were on a Rietveld school trip. Was it the Gursky encounter that made you pick up the camera in that particular way, or were you already planning to shoot the city before you saw it?
- Artist
I was planning it for awhile. even though the art school didn't like the image at first, i think being in that enviorment helped me think about the series in a conceptual way
- Art/Official
So the school trip was the opportunity, but the thinking had been building — and even the resistance from the school ended up being generative, pushing you to articulate what the work was actually doing.
- Art/Official
What did they object to — was it the digital medium, the subject matter, or something about how it looked?