This manifesto by Roman D. Stehling establishes the conceptual foundation of The Un-Basel — an immersive conversational exhibition format originally conceived for Behind the Moment. It defines the curatorial, philosophical, and experiential architecture of the Basement Basel format and its future iterations.

BASEMENT BASEL — THE UN-BASEL

A Manifesto for the Immersive Conversational Exhibition Format
by Roman D. Stehling

I. Conceptual Origin

Basement Basel — The Un-Basel was conceived in response to the growing need for new forms of artistic experience that transcend the static exhibition and dissolve the distance between observer and artwork.

The concept merges film, painting, architecture, and digital communication into a unified curatorial and experiential structure — a space of perception, dialogue, and revelation.

Developed by Roman D. Stehling, the format proposes a shift from the exhibition as a display to the exhibition as a living, interactive system.
It is defined not by the physical works it contains but by the structural choreography that governs how they are perceived, navigated, and contextualized.

II. The Format as Artwork

At its core, The Un-Basel introduces a new artistic medium:
the format itself becomes the artwork.

The exhibition unfolds in darkness — a basement — where paintings and film loops emerge only through the movement of light, the visitor’s exploration, and directed acts of discovery.
Visitors navigate with flashlights, revealing layers of visual and emotional texture.

Parallel to the physical encounter, digital interactions — such as live WhatsApp conversations with protagonists — extend the experience into an interactive narrative field.
Passive spectatorship is replaced by mission-based participation:
visitors become co-narrators in a world oscillating between cinema, performance, and installation.

III. Conceptual Framework

The format follows a triadic logic:

Immersion – The sensory reduction of light and the architectural confinement of the basement evoke both intimacy and tension.
Dialogue – Digital communication integrates real human presence beyond the exhibition walls, merging physical and virtual encounters.
Revelation – Each visitor’s journey becomes a cinematic act in which perception itself is the artwork.

Thus, the format operates simultaneously as a curatorial instrument and a philosophical statement:
art is not what is shown, but what is experienced through the act of seeking.

IV. Conceptual Genesis: “Behind the Moment”

The earliest context in which elements of The UN-BASEL format were conceptually developed and explored was Behind the Moment — a collaborative project uniting film and painting.

While the film and paintings were created by their respective authors, the experiential and curatorial architecture — the structural framework connecting media, space, and audience — was conceived and developed entirely by Roman D. Stehling.

This initial formulation demonstrated how the format can host diverse artistic content while preserving its conceptual and formal integrity.
Future iterations (Basement Kyiv, Basement Lagos, etc.) may further investigate its potential as a flexible yet philosophically coherent exhibition system.

V. Philosophical and Aesthetic Position

The Un-Basel stands at the intersection of expanded cinema, conceptual art, and relational aesthetics.
It draws from Bauhaus functionalism, the phenomenological inquiry of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and the dialogical models of Nicolas Bourriaud.

From the Bauhaus tradition it inherits the idea that structure must arise from use: spatial choreography, darkness, and the visitor’s movement are not decorative gestures but functional instruments shaping perception.

From Merleau-Ponty it derives the notion that the body is the locus of seeing: the visitor’s embodied search through obscurity turns perception itself into the artwork.

From Bourriaud it extends the field of relational aesthetics into ethically charged, technologically mediated encounters, where communication and participation become both medium and message.

Expanded cinema contributes the environmental, frame-breaking logic of projection, while conceptual art provides the score-based authorship through which the format itself—rather than the individual object—constitutes the work.

Yet it resists institutional formalism: it is conceived as a counter-space — a subversion of the white cube, a return to the hidden, the raw, and the uncurated.
It is both an exhibition and an anti-exhibition:
a conscious dismantling of art’s presentation rituals, inviting the audience to rediscover wonder through obscurity and participation.

VI. Theoretical Context

The conceptual foundation of The Un-Basel rests on the belief that contemporary art must reclaim the conditions of experience from institutional spectacle.
In an era where art is consumed through images, algorithms, and mediated visibility, the act of seeing itself demands reconstruction.

By removing light, predictability, and comfort, The Un-Basel restores the primal tension between viewer and work.
The basement functions both literally and metaphorically: it is the subconscious of the institution — the unseen layer where authenticity survives.

It becomes a site of initiation: a place where the visitor must orient themselves anew, guided only by curiosity, intuition, and the faint glow of a moving light beam.
This descent into darkness becomes a philosophical metaphor:
to see again, one must first unlearn how to look.

VII. Toward Future Iterations

The Immersive Conversational Exhibition Format is conceived as an open architecture — adaptable to different cities, media, and cultural contexts while preserving its essential structure: the interplay between hiddenness and revelation, participation and solitude, silence and communication.

Future explorations may include:
• AI-mediated audience dialogue and real-time data feedback,
• cross-disciplinary environments where sound, text, and gesture act as narrative agents,
• transformation of disused or forgotten spaces — basements, tunnels, bunkers — into laboratories of perception.

Each realization reaffirms the same premise:
the artwork is not what is presented, but what unfolds between the work and the witness.

VIII. Closing Reflection

In an age obsessed with visibility, The Un-Basel celebrates the unseen.
It seeks to liberate art from spectacle and return it to mystery, silence, and the human sensorium.

It transforms the visitor into an active participant — an explorer whose flashlight replaces the museum spotlight, whose perception becomes the medium itself.
Where traditional exhibitions offer clarity, The Un-Basel invites uncertainty.
Where institutions seek control, it cultivates vulnerability.
Where curators impose order, it opens dialogue.

This is not an exhibition.
It is an experiment in consciousness.

IX. Author’s Statement

“The real exhibition does not happen on the walls — it happens in the visitor’s perception.
The Un-Basel is not about showing artworks, but about constructing the conditions under which seeing becomes an act of creation itself.”
— Roman D. Stehling

X. Rights and Authorship

The conceptual and structural design of the Immersive Conversational Exhibition Format — including its curatorial architecture, interactive mechanisms, and spatial dramaturgy — constitutes the original intellectual and artistic work of Roman D. Stehling.

Any realization or adaptation of exhibitions employing this structure or its essential principles requires the author’s explicit written consent.

Basement Basel