Samuel Baidoo - plum road tea dream

In the recent semi-lockdown Samuel Baidoo started to build his own personal world inside the online video game Minecraft. In plum road tea dream he questions whether this can become a way to archive on the one hand his work and on the other hand his personal experiences, thoughts, memories and traumas. Thus making the online-game-space a place for archiving, introspection, healing, and mental health.

Building inside Minecraft became ‘working on’ or ‘the processing of’ certain wordly events, personal memories, experiences or traumas related to my personal view on the world around me as a black, gay artist. Baidoo wants to explore the potential of this online-game-space as a performative and therapeutic space. Inside the game the archive will mostly manifest itself as architectural interventions in the scenery - temples, altars, totems and monuments.

Part of the research will be to find a way to share this project with an audience: a one-on-one performance with his laptop as medium, a streaming of the game being played live by an invited gamer or a version of the game you could download and play at home?

Samuel Baidoo (Belgium, 1992) earned a Master's degree in illustration and graphic design at Sint-Lucas Antwerpen before starting with the dance training at the Royal Conservatory Antwerp. After gradutating there, Samuel realised a number of small-scale projects. At this moment he's working as a freelance dancer for a.o. Michiel Vandevelde, Nat Gras, Agostina D'Alessandro and Tuur Marinus.

Under the wings of Nat Gras he has created the duet for young audience wijtwee // nosotrosdos with Hernan Mancebo. He also works as a teacher and choreographer for several dance schools.

In 2011 Baidoo set up Hanafubuki, a young project-based company with a changing roster of artists from different disciplines. The collaborations dictate the form and shape of the works Hanafubuki makes. Their oeuvre therefore has a large diversity, always focusing on the visual character.