Sonic Performance: Julianknxx, Whose Dream is This?
‣ Julianknxx, artist, London
‣ anaiis, musician, London
‣ Your Gospel Team, choir, Lausanne
‣ Sound: Paul Cousins, London
A local choir and the French-Senegalese singer anaiis accompany multidisciplinary artist Julianknxx as he presents his short film In A Dream We Are At Once Beautiful (2022). The work centers on African diasporic communities in Switzerland through a series of lush vignettes shot in natural and urban settings in Basel, Zurich, Geneva, and Lausanne. Through sound, poetry, and song, the performance examines the lines between imagined realities and lived experiences, and our ability to dream on our own terms, asking, ‘whose dreams are we attempting to live?’
Commissioned by Switzerland Tourism.
“In A Dream We Are At Once Beautiful”(2022) is screened from 8pm to 10pm.
The Art Basel 2023 Conversations program is curated by Emily Butler. Coordination and support: Arianna Guidi.
‣ Julianknxx’s work merges his poetic practice with films and performance; he engages in a form of existential inquiry that at once seeks to find ways of expressing the ineffable realities of human experiences while examining the structures through which we live.
In casting his own practice as a ‘living archive’ or an ‘history from below’, Julianknxx draws on West African traditions of oral history to reframe how we construct both local and global perspectives. He does this through a body of work that challenges fixed ideas of identity and unravels linear Western historical and socio-political narratives, attempting to reconcile how it feels to exist primarily in liminal spaces.
‣ Growing up between continents, French-Senegalese artist anaiis, moved from Toulouse to Dublin and Dakar before settling in Oakland, California. She studied at Tisch School of Arts in New York before relocating to London to pursue her music career.
anaiis’s storytelling showcases a complex and personal journey, her work is self-reflective and created in pursuit of a collective healing. She’s collaborated with artists such as JulianKnxx, Chronixx, Julien Creuzet, and commissioned work for renowned institutions such as White Cube Gallery, V&A museum and more.
Her debut album, this is no longer a dream (2021) explores themes of isolation and disillusionment and forms an inner conversation that flourishes from angst and neurosis to self-affirmation and hope.
‣ Founded in 2011 in Moudon, Switzerland, Your Gospel Team is a group of professional artists specializing in authentic, Afro-American-style gospel. Of African and Caribbean origins, the singers of Your Gospel Team are all high-level soloists. Your Gospel Team has been chosen to accompany several high-profile international musicians including Ledisi, Jeremy Jordan and Tayla Parx amongst others.
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