A social practice vehicle guided by a kinmaking ethos, a world-building practice, and a wayfinding aesthetic, BADS_lab is an experimental space where artists and researchers committed to radical Blackness and decoloniality can commune with one another — without a predetermined telos or fixed end goal, apart from the act of communing itself.

BADS_lab gathers together artists, philosophers, scientists, technologists, and organic intellectuals who are committed to and intent upon (i) deconstructing the colonial practices of brutalization and specialization that have entrenched themselves in the modern techno-scientific imagination, and (ii) (re-)constructing “other-whys” that enable artists, philosophers, scientists, and technologists to approach beings otherwise than brutalizing and specializing them.

The “brute matter” and “brute facts” of Colonial Science are not givens: they are made by Colonial Science via processes of “brutalization.”

Colonizers submit beings to scientific study because they intend to brutalize them — that is, to make efficient use of force as they endeavor to disintegrate us, to break us down into bits, to transform us into perversely pleasurable and profitable datum for collection and consumption.

It is only when beings resist brutalization in remarkable ways that Colonial Science calls in the specialists in complexity, chaos, and indeterminacy as reinforcements, for the purposes of risk management and damage control. Colonial Science then endeavors to marginalize those beings that are remarkable for resisting brutalization, writing them off as special cases, as cases for specialized know-how, and rendering them inaccessible to the multitudes.

BADS_lab invites fugitive planners and fugitive publics to prototype social forms that resist colonial practices of brutalization and specialization. Visitors to the lab encounter artists, works-in-progress, research symposia, and unstructured gathering spaces for conversation and networking.

Open studio hours invite the public to witness and participate in the ongoing work of the fellows, fostering dialogue and connection. Structured and unstructured conversations create opportunities for cross-pollination among fellows, audiences, and broader communities, breaking down the boundaries between creators and participants. The aim is to transform how audiences encounter the arts and sciences, shifting from passive observation to active involvement — where art-making and scientific research become urgent, participatory practices.

Written by Muindi Fanuel Muindi, Founder & Director, BADS_lab