The ACT Performance Festival of Swiss Art Academies offers students a platform to realize performances and performative projects. Conceived as an open laboratory for testing performative artistic strategies, the dynamic between performances, performers and the audience that accompanies the live situation is of central importance to ACT. The focus is on the process and the exchange between the students and the audience. Initiated in 2003, the festival has been held annually for over two decades in various cities across Switzerland, and it celebrated its 20th anniversary with a special edition in Biel/Bienne in 2022.

This year, ACT Basel will take place at the Museum der Kulturen Basel, one of Europe’s most important ethnological museums, located on Münsterplatz in the heart of Basel. The two-day festival will open on Friday 27 March 2026, with the talk We Rise by Lifting Others by Marinella Senatore, who is a central figure in contemporary Italian art. Trained inart, film, and music, she specialized in a collaborative artistic practice. In her talk, she will explore the concept of participatory practice as a critical framework that fosters collective engagement and co-creation, positioning artistic experience as a dialogical and socially embedded process with tangible impact within community and cultural contexts.

ACT 2026 
Dates and programs of all participating art academies: 
act-perform.net

ACT is a joint project of Swiss Art Academies: 
EDHEA Valais – F+F Zurich – HEAD Geneva – HGK Basel FHNW – HKB Bern – HSLU D&K Lucerne – ZHdK Zurich