Rebecca Allen, Artist, Los Angeles
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Tech artist, Berlin and London
Carlo Ratti, Director, MIT Senseable City Lab. Co - Founder Carlo Ratti Associati, Boston
Moderator: Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, Serpentine

More than 20 years after the first iteration of Hans Ulrich Obrist’s ‘Utopia Station’ curatorial project at the 2003 Venice Biennale, and to celebrate 20 years of Art Basel’s Conversations sector in its current form, we look at the long-considered notion of utopia with fresh eyes and minds. What could ‘utopia’ mean to us now? To mark this milestone edition of Conversations, Obrist and guests consider the various futures that could emerge from our fast-changing present. This interdisciplinary panel speculates on innovative worldbuilding – through art, technology, in the built environment, in our lives, and in our minds.

Rebecca Allen is an internationally recognized artist inspired by the aesthetics of motion, the study of perception, and behavior and the potential of advanced technology. Allen began her practice in the 1970s as a rare female artist working in early stages of digital art. Her pioneering artwork, which spans five decades, considers our future world, and what it means to be human as technology redefines our sense of reality. Her work has been included in exhibitions at Tate Modern; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and Centre Pompidou-Metz.

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley is an artist based in Berlin and London. They received an BA from the Slade School of Fine Art, London in 2019. Brathwaite-Shirley works predominantly in animation, sound, performance, and video game development. Their practice focuses on intertwining lived experience with fiction to imaginatively retell the stories of Black Trans people.

An architect and engineer by training, Carlo Ratti works on the future of cities and the built environment. He is Professor of Practice of Urban Technologies and Planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, where he directs the Senseable City Lab, and is a professor in the Department of Architecture, Built Environment, and Construction Engineering at the Politecnico di Milano. He is a founding partner of the international architecture and innovation office CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati and has established several tech start-ups in the United States and Europe. In December 2023, he was named as Curator of the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale. One of the top ten most-cited scholars in urban planning, Ratti has co-authored over 750 academic publications. He has written op-eds for publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Scientific American, Financial Times, Le Monde, and Süddeutsche Zeitung. Ratti has been a presenter at TED (in 2011 and 2015) and was program director at the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design in Moscow. He is currently serving as co-chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Cities and Urbanization. Ratti’s work has been exhibited worldwide at venues including the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Venice Biennale, the Science Museum in London, Expo 2015 in Milan, and Expo 2020 in Dubai.

Hans Ulrich Obrist is Artistic Director of Serpentine, London and Senior Advisor at LUMA Arles. Prior to this, he was the curator of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Since his first show ‘World Soup: The Kitchen Show’ in 1991, he has curated more than 350 exhibitions.

The Art Basel 2024 Conversations program is curated by Kimberly Bradley.