Basel
May 18 to July 1, 2001

The Happy Hour Moveable Mixer (HHMM) is a construction site wagon remodeled into a performative multi/culti/cocktail bar installation. The aim is "mixing" to combine existing ingredients and practices extracted from the rich diversity of the St.Johann Quartier in a new way. Every week the HHMM visits a different location at various "border" crossing zones of the Quartier. On Saturday it returns to the Voltahalle to create the center piece of the "Nachtmarkt". The HHMM is part of the art-in-context project LOCAL TIME which will take place in the St. Johann Quartier.

LOCAL TIME (www.lokalzeit.ch) aims to encourage artists to translate their own experiences of the specific social network of space and time in St. Johann into an artwork integrated into everyday life of the place.

St. Johann Quartier, which lies at the periphery of Basel and bordering on France, is demarcated by under-constructions major thoroughfare running down its middle. Here thousands of daily commuters and an average of 4,300 transport trucks cross back-and-forth across the Quartier everyday. The Quartier is not a unified whole, but conglomerate of microcosms which through language, habits and ways of thinking constitute different life styles or "time-spaces". Whoever moves within the limits of the St. Johann Quartier has to get adjusted and oriented as they travel across and between contingent, yet contrasting worlds. Within this multifaceted area of Basel, LOCAL TIME raises questions about people's relation to a particular place: how do individuals living in a common area establish their own personal rhythms, yet stay in sync with one another?