Basically

Basically is an ongoing live project by Nikima Jagudajev. It is a process based body of work that transforms with each iteration. It has taken the form of a two day durational performance, a recording studio, a residency, a schoolyard, a picnic on the beach and a six month exhibition. With each invitation, not only does the context change but so does the content as new collaborators with new input are invited into the process. Jagudajev is interested in social forms; social relations as spatial relations and how we assemble in fulfilling and considerate ways. They call their process based collaborative practice re-schooling, coming together and sharing devotions. A reconstruction of what so many of us—some more than others—were deprived of as children: the laughter that fills the halls between classes, locker decorations and secrets underneath the bleachers. Re-schooling requires the input of many artistic practitioners, sharing with one another their most impassioned selves, sewing relational threads, building strong bonds with themselves and others.

Harnessing the choreography of play as a framework, performers (Conduit) and visitors (Arrivor) are incorporated into an open-ended game. World building is aided by a group of artists who shape the playground with elements such as live music and ableton soundscapes, food, a deck of collectable cards called POWDER, Arcane Clothing, “crits” – art class critique turned oracle – nonlinear dance choreographies that fold in on themselves and unscheduled time that leaves room for contingency. These elements work as informal invitations to engage in different ways, shifting attention and offering agency and ontological transformation. This mythopoeic world is both serious and playful, enchanted with meaning and full of mods. One’s experience is determined by the games’ formal properties as well as the interaction of various interpreting subjectivities. Performers and visitors share this slippery universe, making and remaking the environment; a sociality of difference.

Listen to the Basically album on Spotify. Released in 2022, it was featured on Salt Peanuts and Christina Vantzou’s Boomkat 2021, with Basically as her #7 pick of the year.

Watch a video of Basically in Shedhalle Zürich here.

Collaborators: The Class of the 21st Century (see credits below)

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  Basically at Shedhalle as part of Protozone6: Are you coming?, © Laila Kaletta

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  Basically at WIELS, © Salomon Leonard Poutsma

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  Basically at Bergen Kunsthall, © Video by Saye Oyama, image edits by Salomon Leonard Poutsma

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  Basically on the Beach at Dansand! 2023, © Tine Declerck

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  Basically at Enter Art Fair, © Julie Nymann