SERAFINE1369 (previously lastyearzinterestingnegroisdead) lives and works in London, UK. SERAFINE1369’s practice is always relational, moving across spaces, contexts, roles and collaborations.
2021 Biennial Year Find out more
SERAFINE1369 works with dramatic compositions of sculpture, electronic music, overwhelm, syncopation, internal narratives, texture, trance states, the public and dance, to build atmospheric landscapes through the live unfolding of the tensions between things that produce meaning. The resultant choreographies engage with questions of entanglement, alienation and sensation. SERAFINE1369 is the moniker of Jamila Johnson-Small, 2019/20 Torchlight Artist at Siobhan Davies Dance, UK. Recent presentations include CA2M, Spain (2020); My Wild Flag, MDT, Sweden (2020); Queer Performance Camp, La Chapelle, Canada (2020); Silencio, France (2019); Transmediale, Germany (2019); Palais de Tokyo, France (2018); and Institute of Contemporary Arts, UK (2018).
Liverpool Biennial 2021
'I I I (something flat, something cosmic, something endless)'
SERAFINE1369 presented durational performance ‘I I I (something flat, something cosmic, something endless)’ (2021) at Bluecoat Gardens on Sunday 20 March, from 2–8pm.
A work made in a moment when all that was there was this body, its dreams and nightmares and cycles and needs, sensations and wanting. I went mining. I haunt this work. I is a collection of already historical circumstances, remembered and un-remembered. I is a crowd. I is a trick of the light.
A durational performance inducing a state of expansiveness and detachment from the pressure to create – or be formed by – meaning through conventional narrative arcs. Its duration witnesses / tracks the rhythmic cycles, the peaks and troughs of an endocrine system beyond the arc
SERAFINE1369 presented durational performance ‘I I I (something flat, something cosmic, something endless)’ (2021) at Bluecoat Gardens on Sunday 20 March, from 2–8pm. A work made in a moment when all that was there was this body, its dreams and nightmares and cycles and needs, sensations and wanting. I went mining. I haunt this work. I is a collection of already historical circumstances, remembered and un-remembered. I is a crowd. I is a trick of the light. A durational performance inducing a state of expansiveness and detachment from the pressure to create – or be formed by – meaning through conventional narrative arcs. Its duration witnesses / tracks the rhythmic cycles, the peaks and troughs of an endocrine system beyond the arc of climax. The work situates a research and obsession with the unit of ‘one minute’ – asking whether we can transform the stuff of time or whether it transforms us. Considering the invention of colonial time and agency, the ways we inhabit its units of fixed endless measurement, even as this Time slips out of relation to the celestial bodies that have long been its anchor and justification. Working with live and recorded text written over the last year from dreams and heartache and reflection – a wasteland of feeling – ‘I I I (something flat, something cosmic, something endless)’ is a wide and flat landscape as score for performance. A reading, a listening, a movement. The performance took place as part of Liverpool Biennial’s Live Weekend (19–20 June). Commissioned by Liverpool Biennial. 
'I I I (something flat, something cosmic, something endless)'
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SERAFINE1369, I I I (something flat, something cosmic, something endless), 2021. Performance at Bluecoat Gardens, Liverpool Biennial 2021. Photography: Katarzyna Perlak
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SERAFINE1369, I I I (something flat, something cosmic, something endless), 2021. Performance at Bluecoat Gardens, Liverpool Biennial 2021. Photography: Katarzyna Perlak
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SERAFINE1369, I I I (something flat, something cosmic, something endless), 2021. Performance at Bluecoat Gardens, Liverpool Biennial 2021. Photography: Katarzyna Perlak
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SERAFINE1369, I I I (something flat, something cosmic, something endless), 2021. Performance at Bluecoat Gardens, Liverpool Biennial 2021. Photography: Katarzyna Perlak
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SERAFINE1369, I I I (something flat, something cosmic, something endless), 2021. Performance at Bluecoat Gardens, Liverpool Biennial 2021. Photography: Katarzyna Perlak
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SERAFINE1369, I I I (something flat, something cosmic, something endless), 2021. Performance at Bluecoat Gardens, Liverpool Biennial 2021. Photography: Katarzyna Perlak
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SERAFINE1369, I I I (something flat, something cosmic, something endless), 2021. Performance at Bluecoat Gardens, Liverpool Biennial 2021. Photography: Katarzyna Perlak
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SERAFINE1369, I I I (something flat, something cosmic, something endless), 2021. Performance at Bluecoat Gardens, Liverpool Biennial 2021. Photography: Katarzyna Perlak
Liquid Club #13: SERAFINE1369
For the third online Liquid Club SERAFINE1369 presented a unique audio performance: The Sound of An Uncertain “Yes” (something flat, something cosmic, something endless) with sound design from Josh Anio Grigg.
A somatic visioning of body as a portal, a medium, an interface, a doorway to another place, The Sound of An Uncertain “Yes”, starts from the functions of the body – specifically the senses – and unfolds as a study of the body’s cycles and systems, out of wonder and despair, as well as a way of tracking the collective unconscious, the wider cultural and societal structures and discourses, and the cosmos. A reading as an invitation to movement and listening, and listening as movement is something that needn’t necessarily go anywhere. Here, what is vague isn’t in opposition to clarity, the mundane is revelatory and sensory information and psychic potential are guides.
For the third online Liquid Club SERAFINE1369 presented a unique audio performance: The Sound of An Uncertain “Yes” (something flat, something cosmic, something endless) with sound design from Josh Anio Grigg.
A somatic visioning of body as a portal, a medium, an interface, a doorway to another place, The Sound of An Uncertain “Yes”, starts from the functions of the body – specifically the senses – and unfolds as a study of the body’s cycles and systems, out of wonder and despair, as well as a way of tracking the collective unconscious, the wider cultural and societal structures and discourses, and the cosmos. A reading as an invitation to movement and listening, and listening as movement is something that needn’t necessarily go anywhere. Here, what is vague isn’t in opposition to clarity, the mundane is revelatory and sensory information and psychic potential are guides.
About the artist
SERAFINE1369 lives and works in London, UK. Their practice is always relational, moving across spaces, contexts, roles and collaborations, building atmospheric landscapes through sculpture, electronic music, internal narratives, texture, trance states and dance. The resultant choreographies engage with questions of entanglement, alienation and sensation.
As Torchlight Artist at Siobhan Davies Dance, UK from 2019 / 2020, recent presentations by SERAFINE1369 also include CA2M, Spain (2020); My Wild Flag, MDT, Sweden (2020); Queer Performance Camp, La Chapelle, Canada (2020); Silencio, France (2019); Transmediale, Germany (2019); Palais de Tokyo, France (2018); and Institute of Contemporary Arts, UK (2018).