We make lists of promises, goals for the year, films and books. We add items, shift our priorities and feel a physical satisfaction when we can tick something off. Life seems more convincing when we can break it down into tasks.

Daniil Dage’s A List of Very Important Things to Do documents time spent without a purpose and invites us to reconsider our priorities. His subjects are pets. We might envy the way they live, or imagine it as a better version of our “next life.” Dage neither sets rest against work nor romanticises idleness. He draws our attention back to activities we cannot optimise, whose value lies in the doing.

Sleep until your body decides to wake up. Take a slow walk with no destination. Sit in the sun. Look out of the window. Take no photographs. Be in no hurry. These activities are hard to rate for efficiency. They yield no measurable result and rarely give us cause for pride.

A list tries to put reality in order. It separates, classifies, records and arranges things in sequence, making the world easier to survey, manage and count. Life tends to resist that logic. It unfolds unevenly, with contradictions, coincidences and gaps. Events overlap, meanings shift with context, and connections form where no one could have predicted them. What eludes a list is often what matters most — memory, intuition, loss, anticipation.

At AIKI Terrasa, Dage asks us to imagine the list as an open structure that meets the shifting experience of being alive. The encounter makes room for a different way of seeing.

Perhaps the most important things to do are the ones our culture has grown accustomed to treating as optional.

Exhibition dates: 28 August – 11 November 2026

Address: 18 Aptekarskaya Embankment, St Petersburg (Avenue PAGE coworking space, 8th floor)

Visiting hours: Free admission during AIKI Terrasa opening hours.