Christina Kubisch
Electrical Walks Basel

Christina Kubisch’s Electrical Walks lead to a city’s electromagnetic hotspots and enable us to view our daily environment anew. Here, in order for us to rediscover Basel’s urban space acoustically, the German sound artist sends us on a walk through the downtown and Dreispitz areas. She equips us with specially developed earphones, which translate electromagnetic waves into acoustic signals, and a city map with particularly interesting listening points. Lighting, transformers, ATMs, security systems, mobile phones, antennas or computers provide the starting points of a specifically urban soundscape. The artistic intervention adds another level to Basel’s cartography by revealing a broad, hidden network in the city, through which we move daily without really noticing it. Today, it is actually the prerequisite for our mobility and communication. This walk was created in 2012 as the 41st of the Electrical walks that the artist has realized worldwide since 2004. It was relaunched in 2015 after HeK moved to its new location.
(Text: Bettina Back)