Infrastructures of Care at Basel's Mesh Festival 2026

The Architecture of Collective Wellbeing

Basel's Mesh festival returns this autumn with a schedule that interrogates the relationship between technological development and communal wellbeing. Running from 14 to 18 October 2026 at the Dreispitz complex, the latest iteration adopts Infrastructures of Care as its guiding framework. Rather than treating innovation as an isolated industrial pursuit, the curators position digital tools as potential catalysts for equitable social organisation. The central inquiry remains deliberately open-ended: what forms of coexistence might emerge when engineering priorities align with mutual support?

Mapping Seven Thematic Pathways

This year's schedule unfolds across seven distinct conceptual zones, each designed to examine different facets of shared responsibility. Commons of Connection explores how intimacy persists within increasingly virtual environments. Memory Machines turns its attention to archival politics, questioning whose histories receive preservation and how forgotten narratives might be recovered. Future Playgrounds establishes intergenerational laboratories where participants prototype alternative societal models. Wild Cities reframes metropolitan areas as multispecies ecosystems rather than purely human domains. Circular Systems shifts focus away from linear production towards regenerative ecological and technical loops.

Non-Public Publics operates alongside partners Make/Sense and the Institute Experimental Design and Media Cultures (IXDM), developing methodologies that resist algorithmic division. Completing the lineup, Urban Actions | Spatial Utopias is guided by iart, translating theoretical frameworks into immersive architectural interventions throughout the festival grounds. Together, these categories construct a multidisciplinary dialogue that bridges critical theory, practice-based research, and public engagement.

Programme Highlights and Collaborative Frameworks

The visual arts component features works by Martin Messier, Gabriel Abrantes, and Sophia Bulgakova, whose practices often investigate data flows and bodily experience. Live presentations span a diverse roster including Aïsha Devi, Noémi Büchi collaborating with Brigitte Fässler, Buena Tarde & ztaa, Myriam Bleau und Nien Tzu Weng, and Slikback. These performances operate outside conventional stage formats, favouring durational experiments and site-responsive scoring.

Academic discourse runs parallel through a conference featuring Anna Puigjaner alongside Ethel Baraona Pohl, as well as Wendy Chun, whose writings frequently address computational culture and affect. Evening programming extends into dance spaces, with Demdike Stare headlining a dedicated nocturnal session. Such scheduling ensures that scholarly investigation, artistic experimentation, and recreational gathering occupy the same temporal and physical continuum.

Institutional Foundations and Public Access

The event functions as a collaborative venture between three established Swiss institutions: HEK (House of Electronic Arts), the Basel Academy of Art and Design (HGK Basel FHNW), and iart. By distributing organisational responsibilities across gallery, academic, and studio contexts, the festival maintains structural flexibility while preserving rigorous curatorial standards. Admission remains unrestricted, welcoming visitors regardless of prior exposure to media art or technical disciplines. Families, students, and seasoned practitioners share the same corridors, reinforcing the conviction that technological literacy should never function as an exclusionary gatekeeper.

As urban environments grow denser and digital mediation becomes unavoidable, festivals like Mesh provide vital forums for negotiating ethical boundaries. The forthcoming edition does not promise utopian resolutions; instead, it offers experimental conditions where care can be practised, tested, and reimagined collectively.