THE
UNOFFICIAL HIKING SOCIETY AG
WELCOMES YOU
Discover our unofficial hiking tours
About
The Unofficial Hiking Society
Aktionsgesellschaft (AG)
Unofficial Hiking Society is an organic art collective based in Basel, Switzerland. The AG relies on physical and digital hikes as a means of environmental exploration and knowledge building. Unofficial walks offer critical information on topics such as capitalism and neoliberalism and create feminist and critical counter-narratives to what big corporations and institutions tell about themselves. The "unofficial" stands for resistance to economic norms, conformity and bureaucracy and counters these with the direct appropriation of the spaces around us, as the walks take place without advance notice and outside of institutions' radar. With changing members and themes, the collective aims to make visible and reflect on public space and its inherent exclusionary structures towards certain groups and communities. The focus is on semi-public spaces, such as company buildings, closed areas of public museums or internal company information. We are not only thinking of physical spaces, but also concepts such as the military, lobbying and access to information on the internet that are accessible but remain closed due to the sheer volume, time and energy it would take to engage with them. As a platform for research and reflection on the public sphere, the project creates opportunities to critically engage with such semi-hidden, semi-public worlds and creates new public(s) by constantly reconfiguring groups of visitors to participate in the walks and exchanges.
APPEARANCES
Upcoming 2024
"Unofficial Kunstmuseum Basel"
CH-Basel
funded by Kanton Basel-Stadt Research Grant
Unterstützt durch die Abteilung Kultur Basel-Stadt
23.11.2023
Intersectionality in Arts, Activism and Academia: Dialogue, Approaches, and Future(s)/Visions
DE-University Bayreuth
We are a Basel collective, consisting of different and changing members from the fields of visual arts, film, public health and science, who come together in various hiking clubs. In the first edition, the focus is on an anticapitalist critique and queer feminist perspective on the pharmaceutical industry. The second edition is currently in development and deals with counter spatial practice as well as the (lack of) accessibility of big art institutions on the example of the Kunstmuseum Basel (Artmuseum).
Want to join us and offer an unofficial anticapitalist, counter-neoliberal or ecological hiking tour? Contact us!