In the organizer's words:

He was a star of his time: Matthäus Merian the Elder (1593-1650), born in Basel, settled in Frankfurt am Main and known throughout Europe. His city maps, historical views and biblical illustrations in copper have shaped the collective memory to this day.

After an entertaining, richly illustrated introduction to Merian's work and his Frankfurt years as a publisher, etcher and copperplate engraver, the main part is Merian's Dream: an immersive audio and visual experience that throws us right into the middle of the wild, cruel and at the same time incredibly creative 17th century. Into a world marked by the Thirty Years' War, plagues and famine - and in which it was no contradiction for people to believe in God, but also in hell, witchcraft, unicorns and apocalyptic creatures.

Lukas Kubik guides us through this epochal panorama as the narrator. We hear the voices of Merian's contemporaries: the midwife, the poet, the astronomer, a woman accused of witchcraft, the mercenary. In the end, the boundary between reality and imagination shifts: we find ourselves back in Merian's Frankfurt workshop at midnight in 1625, the book fair is approaching and the exhausted artist is still sitting over his copper plates. The first installment of the "Icones Biblicae" must be finished! But then his pictures begin to develop an uncanny life of their own ...

A production by Barbara Piatti, Basil Huwyler and Cedric Kegreiss, Verein "Setzkasten. Design and play from Basel".

In collaboration with the Swiss Consulate General.

Price information:

Solidary price system