Art Basel in Miami Beach may be known as much for its party culture as for art and ideas, but this year’s “Conversations” series is beefed up with some boldface names including artists Nicole Eisenman, Jenny Holzer, Trevor Paglen, and Hank Willis Thomas, as well as curators Jens Hoffmann, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Beatrix Ruf.

The series kicks off Thursday, December 3, with a conversation between Holzer, a conceptual artist known for her large-scale public text artworks, and Paglen, who often riffs on themes of surveillance and government security. Paglen will host a private scuba-diving exhibition during the fair to see where NSA-tapped internet cables come ashore. The pair will discuss questions of perception, language, and control in the modern era.

That afternoon, Ruf will participate in a discussion with artist Tony Oursler and Bard Center for Curatorial Studies executive director Tom Eccles on “life in the archive.”

Jenny Holzer. Photo courtesy of David Levene for the Guardian.

On Friday, December 4, Obrist will moderate a dialogue between artists Shilpa Gupta, Belo Horizonte, Paulo Nazareth, Stephen Shore, Shahzia Sikander, and Samson Young on diversity in artistic practice. The theme will be “The Artist as Slow Traveler,” and will consider how art relates to travel and geographic mobility.

Hank Willis Thomas, along with fellow artists Xavier Cha and Ishmael Randall-Weeks, will engage in a discussion of “metaforms” moderated by Art Basel and Public Art Fund curator Nicholas Baume.

On December 6, 2015 MacArthur Genius Grant winner Nicole Eisenman and her gallerist Susanne Vielmetter will lead a conversation about the unique relationship between artists and their dealers.

See the full Conversations and Salons program here.