This winter Bergen Kunsthall’s gallery V will transform into a space for a durational live project by the dancer and choreographer Nikima Jagudajev. The space will be open for audiences while Jagudajev develops, together with collaborators, a new work titled ‘Basically’. This open process invites visitors to experience the process of choreographing, rehearsing, discussing and staging the movement-based work as a way to share the moments of collective learning and making that lie at the heart of the work. The project responds to the changed conditions for live work during the restrictions for infection control and creates new modes of gathering and participation.

Jagudajev’s practice is concerned with the format of gatherings. Her works engage participants and audiences in open-ended situations which collectively make up space and deviate. Projects include formal dance sequences, but also food, divination, sorcery, music, clothing, and sound. These elements work as informal invitations to engage in different ways, shifting attention or offering agency. Similar to a music festival or a traveling fair, Jagudajev and her collaborators arrive, subtly infiltrate, contaminate, transform into something different, and depart. Her spaces propose strangeness and are interested in the voids of representation, in what is often left out from what is considered culturally valuable or desirable. Besides a seating area for visitors on bleachers, the space will contain a recording studio, a wall with specifically made clothing that will be used for the performances and daily actions such as the casting of a I Ching, an ancient method of foretelling.

As a starting point for the project, Jagudajev will hold auditions and rehearsals that are open to dancers and artists, musicians, activists as well as to non-professionals that are interested in working with choreography, open processes and sorcery. During the rehearsals, further collaborators will be involved through screens and online streaming. The soundscape for ‘Basically’ will be produced by composer Jordan Balaber, which will include recordings of sound within and around Bergen Kunsthall’s exhibition spaces, ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) recordings and a score for electric guitar, stand up bass and piano. The process will culminate in a series of live performances, leaving behind traces of the event and the soundscape, which will be also available as a vinyl record.

The exhibition is a core element and a framework for our live programme “Speculative Histories”. The performances are co-organised with Oktoberdans, BIT Teatergarasjen.

Curated by Scott Elliott.