Base Level Creating Spaces

base-level – Creating Space was a gallery project conceived to inspire visitors to explore art in new and different ways by leveraging the involvement of young, upcoming artists with corporate marketing and PR. Creating a unique amalgam of media base-level together with BNS developed a crisp set of strategies to bring these entities closer together. Located in the bustling center of Vienna, Austria base-level opened it’s doors mid 2009 marking the foundation of one of the biggest art locations in town. From day one BNS used it’s vast international network to make it not only one of the biggest art-spaces but also one of the best attended ones in its category.

One of the main concerns in developing a strategy for base-level was to create a distinguishable brand within a crowded and short-lived local market. It was important to carefully consider market entry steps, positioning and setting achievable goals to survive the highly critical first year. These areas became our main internal focus for evolving programme and curation guidelines. The design of the physical space and development of a both functional and lean infrastructure was a prime issue as well. Starting from square one BNS took on a proactive role in setting up a state of the art lighting and sound system to sustain a flexible and vivid multimedia art space. Another main concern was to engage with the designated target audience – both in terms of content creators, visitors and active users of the platform, base-level set out to be. Virtually all elements of the space and it’s management had to be constantly iterated upon to maintain constant visitor engagement and to balance the necessities of being a platform where art and business meet in a result-oriented atmosphere.

BNS developed a concept consisting of 5 core elements:

  1. Exhibitions & Curated Projects
  2. Fashion Design
  3. Corporate Events
  4. Music
  5. Publications
Researching business models of existing art locations and institutions both in and outside of Austria and assessing related publications we concluded that the most efficient course of actions would be to offer a broad scope of different media and events. Considering the possibilities of the space and the installed infrastructure we realised that ‘just’ presenting one of those 5 core elements may not be enough to reach base-levels prime goals. Branching out was a natural choice to meet our obligations and to accommodate the demand for a space that wasn’t restricted to a single medium such as fine art.
Within 4 years base-level hosted more than 46 cultural events, featured single exhibitions of 23 namable artists from 3 different continents. All in all more than 120 artists presented their works that have been seen by a yearly gross of 1400 visitors.