Basel Social Club 2026: The Office

“body of knowledge” (2025) takes a critical look at the question of how we will deal with knowledge in the future and what impact this will have on us as humans. Due to the internet and the expansion of AI, retrieving data is becoming faster, easier and more ‘fluid’. However, false information, manipulated or designed truths are increasingly ‘naturally’ mixed into the stream and the sources are sometimes not transparent. The algorithms extract set pieces from the facts, reassemble them, errors manifest themselves, are  generated again and mixed up. The AIs learn from generated texts and increasingly fragment what they are based on. In addition, we are constantly outsourcing knowledge. As a result, knowledge of the interrelationships will lie less in humans themselves.

The physically networked knowledge and human thinking in hyperlink structures is also outsourced and the internalised knowledge of action in personal, social and also political terms becomes unstable. Clement is convinced that knowledge and the body are closely connected. To understand them as two separable entities and to implement the division technically and socially in everyday life is tantamount to a creeping nuclear fission.

This new series is based on photographs of Clement’s skin, as the skin is the connection between inside and outside, between self, body and world. These photos are framed and the glass of the frames bears a text written by the artist dealing with this verydivision and casts a shadow on the skin.