by Markus Wüest, Head of the Culture Department
“Klaus Littmann is a great gift for our city”
Klaus Littmann’s “Arena for a Tree” was presented on Tuesday. Government President Beat Jans praised him beyond all measure. We talk to the artist and curator.
The interest was amazing. In addition to the 100 or so invited guests, for whom a chair was provided on Münsterplatz, around 300 other curious people gathered to hear what the tree, which stands in a kind of wooden sphere, is all about. Klaus Littmann has repeatedly used Basel as a backdrop for his cultural interventions, one thinks of the angel on the cathedral in 2002. “Other cities envy us for him,” says government president Beat Jans during his speech.
The conversation with Klaus Littmann revolves around the hurdles and obstacles he has to overcome in order to realise his ideas, the sometimes massive hostility during his large-scale project “For Forest” in Klagenfurt 2019, which has received worldwide attention, and the transience of art.
Listen to it on baz.ch
more about ARENA FOR A TREE, Basel 2021 / Zurich 2022 / Venice 2024
