BADS_Lab 2024 brought together a diverse cohort of artists, researchers, and thinkers committed to exploring decolonial approaches to art and science. Rooted in a kinmaking ethos, world-building practices, and a wayfinding aesthetic, BADS_Lab operated as an experimental space for creative inquiry. The lab interrogated colonial practices of brutalization and specialization while fostering a collective reimagining of how beings and systems might be approached with care and plurality.
Key themes included coloniality and decoloniality, brutality and fugitivity, and futurity and ancestrality, examined through collaborative experiments, public discussions, and immersive art research.
Ladipo’s work centered on malleable “wire characters,” dynamic sculptures that resist rigid representation. His practice critiqued the power of systems—scientific, linguistic, or societal—to reduce life’s complexity into controllable models. By inviting participants into playful, improvisational engagements, Ladipo created a space for collective rethinking of constraints, highlighting the transformative potential of collaborative storytelling and physical interaction.
Nimrod reimagined computation as grounded in ecological and cultural rhythms, challenging the abstraction of modern techno-science. Drawing from the speculative lineage of the Khazar kingdom, they designed a fragile computational prototype that responded to energy limitations with deep yet playful cultural symbolism, such as an evil eye emoji. This work critiqued extractive systems and proposed a slow, intentional engagement with technology.
Through sound and rhythm, Jared explored the interplay of resistance and healing within Black American subcultures. Their work emphasized the transformative power of collective rhythm, creating sonic spaces that oscillate between calm and chaos. As their DJ persona, girly***, Jared’s performance during the Futurhythmachines event invoked the liberatory ethos of Chicago House Music, fostering connection and collective care.
Letaru’s practice used collage, sound, and texture to explore memory, postcolonial wounds, and speculative belonging. Inspired by African and Afrodiasporic ontologies, her gold-leafed, scar-like patterns transformed historical ruptures into sites of beauty and reflection. Letaru’s work proposed that belonging emerges not by erasing fractures but by navigating their complexities with openness and creativity.
This daylong event celebrated the cultural and sonic legacies of Chicago House Music.
Participants engaged in collaborative sketches and experiments during closed studio hours and opened their processes to the public in open studio hours, fostering dialogue and participation.
On May 18, fellow residents reflected on their work with the public, presenting their sketches and experiments. This closing event highlighted the provisional, process-oriented nature of BADS_Lab, emphasizing inquiry over resolution.
BADS_Lab 2024 emerged as a powerful platform for experimental, interdisciplinary engagement with decoloniality. Through playful improvisation, speculative computation, rhythmic resistance, and embodied archives, participants crafted new ways of knowing, being, and creating together. The lab challenged colonial paradigms, offering glimpses of alternative futures rooted in care, multiplicity, and transformation.
Decolonial Art Research: BADS_Lab demonstrated that art research need not strive for resolution but can thrive in the provisional and processual.
Play and Improvisation: Ladipo and Jared emphasized the liberatory potential of open-ended engagement, where constraints become opportunities for collective creativity.
Fragility as Resistance: Nimrod and Letaru revealed the power of fragility—whether of computation or scarred materials—as a counterpoint to colonial narratives of permanence and domination.
Sound and Rhythm: Jared’s work reaffirmed the ephemeral and relational as potent tools for resistance and care, challenging the dominance of materiality in contemporary practices.
BADS_Lab 2024 leaves behind a legacy of speculative inquiry and collaborative experimentation, reminding us that even within the fractures of history, spaces for connection, imagination, and transformation persist.
© Center for Concrete and Abstract Machines