BASEL SOCIAL CLUB 2026

Madé van Krimpen is participating in the fifth edition of Basel Social Club from June 14–20.

This year the focus of Social Club is on the space of the office, understood not as a site of production, but of critical reflection of its role in society. Once a symbol of efficiency and growth, the office today reflects shifting realities shaped by digitalization, remote work, and artificial intelligence. Basel Social Club engages in this condition through exhibitions, performances, music, gastronomy, and informal encounters that explore questions of labor, time, productivity, and rest. 

Madé van Krimpen will show works by Düssedorf-based artist Moreno Schweikle. His series of Spring Coolers (2021–ongoing) reflects on the object of the water cooler, which became popular simultaneously to the advent of desktop computers, and therefore the rise of office jobs. Accordingly, the water cooler has become a symbol of changing workplace culture. Schweikle’s works therefore, integrates well in the Social Club’s project as they embody how objects can incite “informal gatherings.” They do so on two levels: for one, fountains are inherently objects that invite for contemplation and reflection, also creating physical reaction through the effect of running water on the body. Secondly the artist employs modification on the water cooler that free’s the object from its redundancy, searching for alternative ways of existing.

O-400, 2023 (Spring Cooler), 132x50x50 cm, PU, PVC, PLA, acrylic, stainless steel, water pump, hardware

These works are ongoing studies of the different layers of meaning. This semiotic approach connects back to historic city squares, presents the social status of water, designs ideology and the commercialization of natural goods, and reflects on water as commodity. In two of the new works Schweikle focusses on the inner mechanisms of the water coolers. Their design being symptomatic for bureaucracy and the growing alienation many people experience in the workplace. Within this context, the tension between idiosyncratic connections and mechanisms that are not logic but necessary for a larger system to function is stressed. Moreover, the artist also reflects on how the tools we employ everyday to take care of work, influence, by amplifying or diminishing, our sense of achievement or fulfilment.

The Spring Coolers were realized through a dialogue between physical and digital means of creation. Combining 3D modeling and 3D printing with more traditional sculpture production, such as molding, casting.

Moreno Schweikle is a Düsseldorf-based artist. In 2018, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Design Academy Eindhoven. Since 2024, he has been a guest auditor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the class of Rita McBride. He is currently a guest tutor at the Department for Immediate Spaces at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam. Recent presentations include Gripper 1/Gripper 2 at BPA, Cologne; Five Minutes (Late), artistic interventions in public space in Frankfurt am Main; and Our World at Lucas Hirsch, Düsseldorf. His work is currently on view at 50Litre in Amsterdam and Fondazione Dries Van Noten in Venice, Italy.