Cloth Sewers Wanted
Heinrich Landschaftsarchitektur GmbH
Basel
Key information
- Publication date:10 September 2025
- Workload:100%
- Contract type:Unlimited employment
- Place of work:Basel
Job summary
BIGNIK, a growing annual art project in Basel, invites creativity! Join a vibrant community, enjoy hands-on art, and make a difference.
Tasks
- Participate in sewing large picnic cloth modules together.
- Engage with the public to promote shared spaces and creativity.
- Celebrate completed cloth modules with fun performances.
Skills
- No prior sewing experience needed; all skill levels welcome!
- Basic sewing skills and creativity encouraged.
- Ability to collaborate in a community art project.
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Basel. September 10, 2025
BIGNIK - the annually growing picnic cloth
Sewing large checks!
On Sunday, September 28, the installation of the artwork BIGNIK by conceptual artists Frank and Patrik Riklin will take place on the Münsterhügel in Basel. As preparation for the participatory-transformative art action, the cloths hunted down in recent weeks from Basel cupboards, cellars, and attics are sewn together into cloth modules.
Therefore, on Friday, September 12, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., a public sewing workshop will be set up in front of Bank Cler at Aeschenplatz 3. The public is invited to sew along on the ever-growing cloth - large checks in favor of free spaces in the mind and in the urban landscape. There are a total of seven places with sewing machines, publicly ready to hum.
Launched twelve years ago by conceptual artists Frank and Patrik Riklin, the artistic long-term intervention BIGNIK has continuously evolved - and has grown with each installation. Currently, around 3,200 cloth modules form the giant picnic cloth. With the cloth hunt in Basel in recent weeks, more cloth material is added. The art event takes place in complicity with the Northwest Switzerland regional group of the Association of Swiss Landscape Architects (BSLA) - which aims to stimulate a discourse on the use of common land and future free spaces with the growing artwork.
Cloth sewers wanted
To turn the collected cloths into modules measuring 1.4 x 1.4 meters, scissors as well as needle and thread or a sewing machine are needed. To produce the cloths according to BIGNIK standards, a mobile public sewing workshop will be set up at Aeschenplatz next Friday. Sewers are sought to give the cloths the specified shape. "Everyone is welcome. No prior knowledge is necessary: experienced BIGNIK sewers will instruct novices in the art of machine sewing. So nothing can go wrong," says Norman Kiefer, chairman of the BSLA regional group.
Hands will be on the cloths from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Those interested can reserve a sewing machine spot.
Each cloth is celebrated
As soon as a cloth module is sewn together, it is celebrated to enhance BIGNIK identity by having its sewers throw the sewing work into the air. These performances take place on the so-called celebration table next to the sewing tables.
Sewing together on the supposed utopia: The long-term project BIGNIK deliberately exaggerates; it positively challenges society's imagination. It attempts to dissolve boundaries both in everyday life and in the mind.
Thousands of cloth modules arise from private cloth resources: The artwork BIGNIK is made by people, consistently sustainable, emotionally charged. Each sewn cloth module is celebrated before it becomes part of the overall community work.
Installation in the old town center of Greater Basel
In Basel, the cloth installation of the artwork BIGNIK will take place on Sunday, September 28, 2025. If the weather does not cooperate, the event will be postponed by one week (October 5). The organizer is the Northwest Switzerland regional group of the Association of Swiss Landscape Architects (BSLA), behind this eleventh edition of the artistic intervention, which aims to transform the Münsterhügel into a red-and-white picnic spot. The BSLA expects the "cloth maneuver" to create a different, new perception of the urban landscape.
Transformation of perception
The old patrician houses with their diverse architecture are almost predestined as a backdrop for the participatory intervention BIGNIK, emphasized board member Nicolas Baudet last week in an interview with Schweizer Illustrierte. "BIGNIK questions the status quo and invites rethinking public space: playfully, together, and on a large scale." This discussion is exactly what is needed to shape urban landscape and society sustainably and for the future. The Riklin brothers confirm: "More and more people want to be part of this story and make the seemingly impossible possible. The longing for large checks is great. That can inspire people."
BIGNIK transforms public space: The collective installation maneuver of the individual cloth modules shifts perception within the strict corset of everyday life. People meet at eye level; complete strangers are "woven" together.
For inquiries, please contact:
Nicolas Baudet, Media Officer, Board BSLA Regional Group Northwest Switzerland
079 719 11 42, nicolas@saum.ch
Norman Kiefer, Chairman BSLA Regional Group Northwest Switzerland
079 753 43 20, nordwestschweiz@bsla.ch
Frank and Patrik Riklin, Conceptual Artists, Atelier for Special Tasks
078 732 63 14, info@sonderaufgaben.ch
Streets and squares are cloaked with cloths: The artwork BIGNIK functions like a fluid.
Nothing stands in the way, everything is integrated. The more people participate in the installation maneuver, the more cloths will cloak Basel. BIGNIK is not a public service but a public service. "BIGNIK pursues the subversive goal of bringing large-check thinking and acting into society and breaking seemingly insurmountable boundaries in people's minds," say the Riklin brothers.
(Photo: Beat Schiltknecht, BIGNIK installation in Degersheim, 2021)
What is BIGNIK?
The REGIO Appenzell AR-St.Gallen-Bodensee launched the art project "BIGNIK" by conceptual artists Frank and Patrik Riklin in 2012 as part of "Region as Stage" and deliberately took a different path with the growing artwork to shape the identity and perception of the region between Säntis and Lake Constance. BIGNIK aims to outsmart petty behavior and bring large-check thinking and acting into society.
One cloth per capita: "Together creating a huge picnic cloth for the entire population, consisting of 284,478 cloths, exactly as many as the region's inhabitants": This is BIGNIK's vision. The picnic cloth today - after nine installations - has a total of 3,200 cloth modules covering an area of about 24,000 square meters, which corresponds to about 7 percent of the targeted BIGNIK vision.
BIGNIK is not an event in the conventional sense. It is an artistic intervention that draws on locally available resources and involves the population in the production of the giant cloth. BIGNIK is an attempt to create a unique communal tradition for the region.
A platform for unusual encounters, situations, and stories.
So far, well over a thousand people have been involved in the creation process. They collect, support, sew - and thus carry the project vision forward. The goal is for BIGNIK to grow annually and to be publicly invited to a picnic each time. The completion and fulfillment of the BIGNIK vision is expected in 2053.
In 2022, REGIO Appenzell AR-St.Gallen-Bodensee withdrew as the initial accomplice from the project. Since then, each cloth installation has depended on a "complice" or sponsorship willing to take responsibility and enable the installation on site. Since 2024, BIGNIK has also been active outside Eastern Switzerland, with organizations supporting and carrying forward the Eastern Swiss BIGNIK vision as vision partners - for example in Valais (see video).
More on the topic at: www.bignik.ch
