I was curious about people’s thoughts on Kanye’s Brit Awards performance last week and took to Twitter to hear about people’s reactions, which resulted in some great responses. I also had a chance to check in with the lovely Selina Thompson and Rianna Jade Parker and get their thoughts on the performance, Black British identity, diaspora, and the importance of disrupting white spaces. - Fatima

FATIMA: What was your first reaction when you saw the performance? Were any of you onTwitter at the time? If so, what did your TL look like in terms of reactions?

SELINA THOMPSON: So, I didn’t watch the Brits – a) because the Brits is trash b) because I was at work at the time and c) because the only person of note, as far as I was aware that was performing was Kanye, who is also trash, and really pissed me off last week, so we’re not talking (you know what I mean). And I was only aware of the fact that he was performing at the Brits, because of a tweet from id magazine – there was no buzz about it, online or anything.

So, for me, my primary experience of it was via my Twitter and my Facebook feed, ages before I saw the performance. Because I work in theatre, my timeline has a fairly obvious split – white, middle class theatre makers (often shouty men) and the girls I went to school with/ other black creatives and writers – key responses were:

·         Why is it muted/that is annoying, censorship

·         YEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSS YESSSSSSSSSS YESSSSSSSSSSSSS

·         The tune is fiyah

·         I don’t care about Kanye is that _____? I think I see _______ ! Look it’s _______

·         Is it blazing squad?

·         Flamethrowers are good

Then, from the alternative, whiter half of my timeline

·         Kanye West is an idiot/preposterous/pretentious/a pompous ass

·         You can’t just put a gang on stage and call it art

·         We shouldn’t glamourize riots

·         We shouldn’t try to conflate American rioting with gang culture in the UK

·         Who is this gang?

·         Who are these people?

·         Why can’t we show our young men as more than this? (EUUURRRGHGHGHGHGHGHHH)

I was pissed off and intrigued.

I enjoyed the performance, in spite of myself. Kanye is terrible, but I think he has an eye for spectacle, and that he is able to create potently political images in spite of himself, and I think that that’s what he did in this case. I loved the energy of it, I loved the fire, and it made me angry. I was angry he was there, angry he had to be there for those individuals to be there – and was angry about the snobbery on my theatre timeline, and angry about the fact that no one in the Brit audience could deal with what they were seeing. They didn’t know how to respond. Energetic, unapologetic Black men? The British Establishment cannot deal with that.

RIANNA JADE PARKER: I was travelling back home from the airport and with limited battery, so I could only give my timeline a quick scan: Kanye, Skepta + #AllDay was all I could pick up before my phone switched off. And honestly those buzz words were not enough to pique a substantial interest in me let alone excitement. But once I was plugged back in I watched the performance and smiled. Not because I love the song or Kanye at this point in time but I’m always tickled by blackness - in whatever form - infiltrating spaces where irrational white fear and grandeur usually dominates.

F: I saw so many conflicting tweets from people in the US vs people in the UK on the performance; with US people focused on how great this was for Kanye/hip hop and mostly not even knowing who the guys up there with him were and UK folks talking about what it meant for the grime scene/Black British visibility and identity specifically; I want to know what the performance as a whole meant to you as Black British folks.

ST: So – I don’t really listen to Grime – I like sad girls playing guitars, Kate Bush, and the stuff that everybody likes. And I often tailor what I’m listening to to what I’m working on. So I feel like I cheated a bit, because I only recognized those artists because at the moment I’m making a conscious effort to seek out Black British Artistry – cus I’m making a piece of work about black British visibility! So I don’t know if it meant something to me emotionally cus my attachment to that music isn’t so deep.

That being said, it meant so much to me politically, because rarely, if ever, do we see in this country, big, highly visible displays of what I would call unapologetic blackness. So often young black men, dressed a certain way, behaving in a certain way are told that they must be ‘more’ they must prove to the society around them that they are worthy of basic respect, basic courtesy, basic care – so much political rhetoric here is about proving your ‘worth’ by behaving respectably. So it was nice to see that imagery uplifted.

And watching that performance I had a real sense that it was for me – that the majority of the (white) people watching it would be affronted, and dismiss it, but that it was there for me, performed for the ‘Black Gaze’ – and a reminder that we are here, we are politicised too, we are artists too, we are present too, and we have a culture that is all ours.

I really zoned Kanye out. Hah!

RJP: The performance was bittersweet. It happened at a whiter than mayonnaise award ceremony where only two Black British artists were nominated but neither one rewarded. The only Black ‘winner’ was American (Pharrell ‘New Black’ Williams). So essentially the only representation we had was via a Black American, that’s crazy! As if Black British is not at its peak right now. It’s of my personal understanding the Kanye + Skepta link-up was organic and genuine on both parts so whilst I don’t feel the need to thank Kanye, I can acknowledge this act of good (unfortunately overshadowed by his many more acts of fuckery especially in the past few months).

F: Did this speak to you at all in terms of solidarity in a larger diaspora sense?

ST: Hmm. Kind of, but not really. My boyfriend thought it did – and Wiley clearly thought it did, he wrote some beautiful tweets the next day about it being the only way to get the foot in the door. But… it doesn’t feel right to me, because solidarity, to me speaks about standing shoulder to shoulder, on an even footing, as equals. If there’s one of you, and there’s 100 of me, and it is billed as your performance, is that solidarity? If the presence of the 100 of us is what defines your performance, but you get paid significantly more than me, is that solidarity? If we perform your sort of version of our music, is that solidarity? But if, when the spotlight is on me, I diffuse the light, so it’s on more of us, surely that’s solidarity? I’m not sure. I’m not definitely no, but nor am I definitely yes.

But also, I have to be fair. Kanye has 4 minutes up there or whatever. What else can he do? Maybe, in that allotted time, in that allotted space that was the closest to solidarity he could come? Hmm.

RJP: Grime is a Black British musical subculture, it was founded here and derived from our very particular communities it is not a further extension of hip hop or America. (To claim otherwise is a disservice to the fluidity and limitless functionality that is the African diaspora.) Yes, Kanye is a far more established artist but I don’t believe he or anyone else is going to be Grime’s saviour. I don’t think they need one. But I wonder how much of a bigger impact and relevance the performance could have had if Kanye passed the microphone to Skepta so he could have got a few bars in.

To try and figure out what Kanye’s intentions were/are would bring about an unnecessary headache, so I’ll just leave this one alone. If this performance speaks to anything it’s that there are many sides to the Atlantic and they’re all black and legitimate. For one night a few of them were brought together, it was fun to watch and JME is still bae.

F: I was tweeting back and forth with some people about this and several people said that they weren’t upset at Kanye for any reasons of appropriation, but were sad that it took an American artist leading the way for grime artists to get any recognition on that Brit stage - why do you think that kind of visibility had to come from outside the UK?

ST: Because racism here is really polite. They tell you over and over and over again that it (racism and erasure) doesn’t exist – ‘if you can’t see black artists, there aren’t any, that’s why!’ – BOLLOCKS. Lies. There’s this thing in this country where discussions about diversity often centre on America – as though racism is only a problem in the states, or only a problem to do with immigration. When there is any kind of Black British issue, the idea that there might legitimately be a problem is not even considered. 

So if they’re looking to ‘add some colour’ to their programme – they’ll look to America, before they look here – FKA twigs has toured internationally in the past year, she has an A-list boyfriend, her shows sold out in seconds – but she can only perform the Brits warm up party, not the main stage. The establishment in this country ignores its Black British Talent, never retains it – only notices it when it gains recognition in America. It makes you feel crazy. There were arts collectives in the UK in the 80s and 90s that completely revolutionized the global understanding of art about blackness. Ask a British curator for recommendations for Black British mentors, they have nothing. Ask an American? 6, 7, 8 come to mind instantly. You will get that recognition abroad, but not here. So you’re erased. And the artists that come after you can’t find you.

People become so used to seeing blackness through an African American lens that they start to doubt they even exist here. And this problem is exemplified even further if you don’t live in London (don’t get me started).

There’s this myth that I really used to buy into, that nothing was happening for the black art community here – BOLLOCKS BOLLOCKS BOLLOCKS I want to grab past me by both shoulders and shake her until she wakes up – there’s loads. But the mainstream will not support it, will not fund it, will not increase its visibility. They reiterate again and again that there is no audience for it until it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

 RJP: These facts are just a further illustration that my Black British existence is still largely marginalised and ignored in favour of something else, a Blackness more accepted because it comes within the imperialist hegemony that is America. This obviously is not the fault of Black Americans but comments from @stopbeingfamous during the ceremony serves as a sharp reminder that not many are doing much to help fill these gaps. I don’t really care about the Brit Awards but I care that some of my skinfolk don’t recognise me. Something as simple as having other voices on your timeline/dashboard is a start and this is worthy work, work that I’ve been doing for a long time because I’m aware of my own privilege where within a European context my narrative in favoured in contrast to other Afropeans. We should be more conscious and connected with each other, deeply rooted in but not restricted by our geographical/cultural black borders.

F: What are your thoughts on the performance from the perspective of it physically and visually disrupting a traditionally white space?

ST: From that point of view, I think it was great, really strong. And I have to give Kanye credit – he is still, really good at doing that. Prick.

F: How do you think this figures into a larger discussion around US-centric understandings of blackness?

ST: Kanye’s performance, IMO doesn’t figure into that larger conversation – well it does, but even with its good intentions (arguably) it exacerbates the problem - because it’s impossible to communicate the complexity of those differences whilst centering an African American man – which it necessarily did, because it was his performance. So if you want to dismiss the men behind him as a faceless mob, you can. And that’s a problem.

One of the reasons why Cecile Emeke’s work, for example, is so strong, and creates such an instinctive, gut response (even though in many ways what she’s doing is mind bendingly simple, which is how you know it’s genius) – is because she creates a space occupied only by a specific voice of the diaspora, talking on its own terms, with nuance and with complexity – and I feel like that’s the only way you can combat the focus on the African American experience. It’s a long slow process of accumulating new knowledge, and at times unlearning, which is always painful. And needs to be done by all three of the groups I outlined – and that’s a tiny corner of the world, and of the diaspora!

There’s also something else in there for me about… about not comparing what it is to be Black and British to what it is to be African American and finding yourself lacking all the time. Got enough to deal with with white supremacy, without placing that extra head fuck upon myself. There’s a little of that in the VV Brown article – ‘it’s like this in America, we should try and replicate that’ – I think that’s really unhelpful, feeds the problem, rather than solving it – because it still means you are looking far into the distance, and not noticing what is in front of you, and not tailoring specific problems to specific solutions.

 Rianna Jade Parker (xaymacans) is a reader before anything else and a writer who writes for other readers. Her curatorial, artistic and social practices are as informed by Stuart Hall, bell hooks, James Baldwin as they are by Biggie and Lil Kim.

Selina Thompson is a performance artist (read: professional show off) who lives and works in Leeds, making shows about fat, hair, unemployment and whatever else she’s pissed off about that day.  She lives on the internet at www.selinathompson.co.uk and @selinanthompson

In 2009, a documentary called Good Hair directed by stand-up comedian Chris Rock was released to critical acclaim and became a systematic reference when it came to understanding what’s up with black women’s hair. The documentary is never mentioned in the following interview with New York-based photographer Nakeya Brown, whose first installment is entitled “The Refutation of Good Hair,” but one can't help but think of the documentary when encountering the work of Brown. Like Chris Rock, Nakeya Brown was inspired by her daughter, but her work is more sensible, more empathetic, because it is more curious. Her new work, characterized by a softness and sensitivity – two qualities not largely associated with black girls and women – paints a portrait of black girlhood through hair rituals, objects and cultural icons in hues of mustard, pink and blue. Nakeya Brown’s work is a refreshing, atypical and quietly radical exploration of black girlhood through hair. - interviewed by Fanta, edited by Fatima

Black Girls Talking: What’s striking about your earlier work, “The Refutation of Good Hair,” is how confrontational it is. There are black women eating kanekalon hair, looking right through the camera. It shows how complex, sometimes tortuous, the relationship black women have with their hair can be.  But it’s not just about this relationship, it’s also about the gaze of others.

NAKEYA BROWN: Absolutely. This particular series really has so many entry points for discussion with the gaze being one of them. The gaze of others upon us, but also the black female’s gaze upon herself—situated at the intersection of both race and gender— is a long-standing point of friction.

BGT: Compared to "The Refutation of Good Hair," your newest untitled work is characterized by quietness or stillness. "The Refutation of Good Hair" is almost at the level of body horror. Your new work seems to be “post good hair,” as if you wanted this question of “good hair” to be over. Hair will never be good because it’s not something to be consumed. It just is. Did you envision it like that too?

BROWN: The politics of black hair has endless possibilities. TROGH represented two varying viewpoints- rejection & acceptance. You’ll notice that each of the models donned various hairstyle. Whether weaved, locked, cut low, or worn in an Afro, there in each of them I found beauty. I discovered after I completed the project that to a certain degree, I needed to accept all of these as “black”. What I really wanted to reject, was the commonplace ranking of these styles amongst society. Following TROGH, I felt that it was time to begin exploring black female identity in an unconventional way. This spawned the string of still-life images shortly after that removed the physical presence of the body.


BGT: What emotions do you feel are never invoked to describe black women’s art? What emotion would you invoke to describe your own work and your state of mind while creating?

BROWN: It’s not often that I hear a black woman’s art described as “curious.” While creating all of my work, I am overwhelmed with curiosity. I do not think my body of work would exist without it. I remember feeling genuine curiosity as I watched my natural growing in just after chopping it off. At the same time, I also felt angst about what signals it emanated. While creating, I tend to capitalize on the curiosity or the angst to create an image that translates our experiences into something that is visually engaging.

In an interview for Film Comment, French director Axelle Ropert said that as a director she made films that she felt were missing as a spectator- that she was filling gaps. Though Ropert wasn't talking about racial representation (or the lack thereof), it is the same impulse that prompted UK-based visual artist Cecile Emeke to create Strolling, a series of short documentaries in which the director herself goes on a walk with beautiful black Londoners to talk about various issues ranging from free tampons to European colonization. She took some of her time to answer our questions about this brilliant series and her upcoming short "Ackee & Saltfish." — interviewed by Fanta

BLACK GIRLS TALKING: Most black Europeans would identify with the frustrating experience of having to cling to a representation that always comes from an elsewhere (America, Africa, The Caribbean,) and never from the place they were born into. Their experience is never reflected completely. Strolling was a response and is also a consequence of that erasure of black British experience(s) at a cultural level. Can you trace back that moment when you first felt that erasure and the way it affected you?

I think I've always known I was erased and didn't exist by the way people looked at me. It's a look I still get all the time and I still find hard to articulate because it really is an odd thing to experience. It's a mixture of shock, fascination, fear and disgust. It's subtle but very obvious; it's enough to make me know that in their immediate world, I don't exist in the way they exist in mine. I remember being young, me and my sister would ask my mum why people were staring at all of us and of course she would just try to protect us by saying "oh don't worry, they're just jealous".

 "The look" was usually followed by questions in more intimate settings, but sometimes strangers would actually stop me on the street to ask "Where are you from?", "Why is your hair like that?" and other invasive questions. I don't have to stop white people on the street to ask questions because I already know everything about them; what they look like, where they are from, how their hair works, what language they speak and so forth. White is default and they exist in books, in TV/film, on the radio, in plays, on the news, in history and every other sphere. But I didn't exist in any of the aforementioned and thus I was an alien to be stared at and my presence was to be questioned.

It makes me sad in hindsight because I was too young to realise that the way other people treated me reflected who they were and had absolutely nothing to do with me, but at the time I thought something was wrong with me and that it was my job to fix it and make everyone else feel comfortable. It made me become really self-conscious. It also irritates me now looking back because black people have been in Britain for hundreds of years, but I grew up feeling like we must be the first generation to have put foot here by the way people looked at me.

BGT: There seem to be some changes with emerging artists like you or the Lonely Londoners…

Yes, I think a lot of us are realising that despite Britain liking to think of itself as a "liberal" place, we seem to not be allowed into certain artistic spaces unless we conform to a certain ideal, and normally that ideal is one that will allow us to be brown as long as we never talk about it, or unless we fit into some sort of caricature or stereotype. To put it simply, we can't be us authentically; we have to be the idea or fantasy that british society has of us. So I think artists like myself and the Lonely Londoners are just not willing to do that and therefore we are creating our own spaces. And I think it's the same reason why actors and musicians like Idris Elba, Thandi Newton, Sampha and Marsha Ambrosisus went to the US and found huge success, because their talent simply wasn't being recognized in it's fullness here, and so they had to go elsewhere and create their own space. Only after international success does support from the UK that should have been nurturing homegrown talent from the beginning, seem to appear. It's a shame that people abroad recgonise us more and allow us space than the people in our own country, but I think people are fed up of having to water down their art in order to get a seat at the table. I am, at least.

BGT: I read that most of the people in your shorts are people you know personally. Can you talk about the whole process of shooting and editing? Do you know what you’re going to talk about before shooting?

EMEKE: I normally have a list of things I want to touch on in the interview, but often the conversation might go off on a tangent that I hadn't thought of previously which I really encourage - it's more organic.

BGT: Has black feminist thought influenced your work?

EMEKE: 100%. As a black woman that is my default framework I understand everything through.

[After asking her to expand on how black feminist thought influenced her work from a political and aesthetic point of view.]

It's hard to explain. I think I have always thought through a framework of black feminist thought but I haven't always navigated with it. Let me try to explain. Since I was a child, I always new that I was black and that I was a woman, and I knew that meant things were different for me. Things would happen in my little world and I had an innate sense of what was right and what was wrong but I had been conditioned to think I was imagining it and to repress those feelings. I felt a twitch when white people would give me "that" look. I would feel a twitch when people would worship my hair because it was "good" hair, but not my sisters hair. I felt a twitch when people would say that girls were supposed to stop playing sports after a certain age. I felt a twitch when people said "black girls don't listen to this"or "real black girls don't do that". I always felt the "twitches" but I had learnt to ignore them.

Now the older and more informed I became, the more I started to listen to myself and what these "twitches" were telling me. The more I read bell hooks, Audre Lorde and Angela Davis, for example, the more they encouraged me to listen to myself, as I read about how they listened to themselves. They articulated some of those twitches that I had but that I didn't understand. Eventually I understood that the voice, twitches or whatever you want to call them, that thing inside me that made me feel certain things, it was the most important voice and I should always listen to it. So for me personally black feminist thought influenced me as a person, in the sense that it taught me that my voice was the most important and it encouraged me to trust myself the most. In my experience, society had conditioned me to do the exact opposite; to always think of other peoples positions first and mine second. I think in that sense it's influenced my art both from an aesthetic and a political place, simply because I stopped thinking about what you are "supposed" to do and what "people" do, and I just started to do what I wanted to do. Now I listen to my voice. So for example, you're "supposed" to have objective documentaries, with really static, sharp shots, you're not meant to do it freehand, you can't just interview mostly black women, you can't ask the type of questions I'm asking and all the rest - but black feminist thought has taught me as a person to ignore all the tradition and dogma projected on to me and listen to myself and do whatever the hell I want, and that definitely translated into how I've decided to make strolling and all the rest of my work.

For me "black feminist" thought isn't abstract. It's me. I am black. I am a woman. I am the movement. I am the thought. Books, music and art helped me to realise that. Now I can't experience things through anything other than a black feminist framework, that is through me and my framework. I unlearnt all that self doubt & repression that most little black girls are taught. Now this is my default. I think we all experience it differently, but that has been my experience.

BGT: What draws you to the documentary form?

The genre of documentary was appealing to me because it allows full expression of that side of me with no restrictions; the more honest, the better. I like the fact that you share a piece of yourself and get vulnerable. In that vulnerability there is a sort of freedom, and your own freedom consequently free others, and alleviates the alienation that was silencing them. I think that's a powerful thing.

BGT: You’ve directed a few shorts now. Are you ready to transition from short to longer features?

EMEKE: Yes, though I love the format of shorts, I'd love to transition into full features. I'm excited to one day create a feature classic for London like "Do the right thing" & "Crooklyn" are classics for New Yorkers from Brooklyn.

BGT: There is a sense of place in this series, the people you follow are rooted in their environnement yet they sometimes talk of feeling out-of-place in the UK. Do you believe that, through arts, we can reclaim a space that has been denied to us?

EMEKE: I definitely think that art is one of the ways to create your own space, and in that sense reclaim the space that has been taken away from you. If arts were not important elements of cultural space, existence & identity, then there wouldn't be so many people and forces purposely trying to stop certain forms of artistic expression and deliberately only allowing stereotypical one story narratives to exist. We can see how devastating it is when you take away a people's artistic and cultural space by looking at how it has affected those descended from African slaves. To continue to deny people that space is another way of trying to continue the cultural genocide that began in the 1500's. Before we dismiss forms of art & culture as "just" art, it's important to remember that part of history. I'm a testament to how devastating it was, 500 years later. Creating artistic space is incredibly important and it is incredibly political. Like I said, if it wasn't it wouldn't be the first target when trying to destroy a community of people.

BGT: Strolling means having a leisurely or relaxed walk but the young men and women you film are sometimes burdened with existential issues. Is it important for you to film a youth that is conscious and in-touch with world issues?

EMEKE: I wouldn't say any of the people were "conscious" and I think it's important to note that. They are just ordinary people. And one of the biggest motivations for strolling was to show that ordinary Shane down the road and Becky around the corner is you're average Joe, but unlike what the TV or news might tell you, you're average Joe is not stupid; Average Joe understands and is interested in politics, social issues and the bigger picture.

I think when you label them as "conscious" or "in-touch" it can be dangerous because you inevitably feed in to the vicious, never ending circle of self-fulfilling prophecy and myth, which deems young black people as "disinterested" and "uninformed". This is clearly the complete opposite of the truth. For example, lets take a look at just one of the many expressions created by young black people for young black people: hip hop. Hip hop is probably the single most political and social informed genres of music to exist, ever. And then if we take a look at the parallel of expression of young white people: pop music. I mean there really is no comparison. That is not me inferring that all young white people are uninformed and disinterested, I don't believe that to be true at all. However what I am saying is that if we are going to stereotype one group of young people as political inept and "out of touch" with would issues, it could never be young black people. So for me I don't intentionally set out to find "informed" people, but rather young black people are simply collectively more intellectually and politically engaged on the whole and these people represent the "rule" not the exception like the media would have us believe.

BGT: This series creates a craving for this type of exploration of black britishness. For instance we'd love to see a film about that young black girl who experienced depression and struggled with competition during her time in college. There is fictional material right there. That’s one of the great things your work illuminates there are stories to be told, to be explored.

EMEKE: I definitely agree and think the best stories come from real life experience, and I'd love to see some of these stories being told. I plan to be a part of that.

BGT: Music has an important place in every short. How do you choose it according to each short?

EMEKE: I think each strolling episode evokes a set of emotions and I try to reflect that in the music I choose, depending on if the feel of the film is more playful, somber, contemplative and so forth.

BGT: Can you talk more about your next short “Ackee & Saltfish”? There is a mix of documentary and fiction with this one, it seems.

EMEKE: Ackee & Saltfish is purely fiction and scripted. It's not at all documentary. I think a lot of people think that Olivia and Rachel are people who exist in real life, but they are characters with great acting by the extremely talented actresses Vanessa Babirye and Michelle Tiwo who did an amazing job!

Basically Ackee & Saltfish is a short film about Olivia and Rachel who are best friends. They were both craving Ackee & Saltfish but Rachel forgot to soak the saltfish. They both have their heart set on it so they set out to get some takeaway instead. I don't want to give too much away but I can say that gentrification, race, religion and class all seem to come into play somehow on there seemingly mundane journey to their local Caribbean takeaway. The film is having several screenings, but it is still being decided whether the film will go online at all but I can confirm there will definitely be an Ackee & Saltfish web series which you can definitely look forward to very, very soon.

BLACK GIRLS TALKING: Remote Control is the fifth instalment of THE FUTURE WEIRD after Non-Resident Aliens, Supra-Planetary Sovereigns and Visions of Excess. Can you talk about this project and what the inspiration was behind it?

DERICA SHIELDS: The Future Weird was born in July 2013 and there have been five programs: Visions of Excess; In Search of a Black Atlantis; Supra-planetary Sovereigns collaboration with Spectacle Theater); Remote Control; and Non-Resident Aliens.

The Future Weird emerged from a number of desires. I’d been wanting to do a screening series for a really long time. There were so many films by black and brown directors which I’d heard about but couldn’t find anywhere, or which I had seen and thought were interesting but they had not secured distribution. So one aim was just to screen these films because they weren’t readily available online or in theatres.

When I thinking about the screenings, I was keen to get away from a tendency I’d noticed to treat African film as though it’s a genre. I’m increasingly compelled by the move to theorise from the global south, rather than the north/West and wanted to have a space where we could privilege the conversations among black and brown people, without the constant reference to whiteness that emerges as a norm in white dominated spaces. So the screenings are organised thematically, and in that way, they tend to follow certain trains of thought or circle around ideas. “In Search of a Black Atlantis” came out of thinking I’d been doing while at grad school and before, since I’ve long been obsessed with water as a site of black cultural memory, loss, forgetting and rebirth. The films look at water as a cleansing force, what returns to us in the water as detritus, and as a site of myth too - black mermaids, mami water, drexciya/atlantis.

Another reason was that I’d moved to New York and it was lonely. I wanted to find people I could talk with about the things I was thinking about. In some part I also wanted to watch these films with other people rather than have this atomized YouTube viewing experience.

BGT: How do you select your films?

SHIELDS: I usually have one or two films that are in my head at any given time, and then I’ll tease out threads from it and try and find points of connection with other films that I’ve seen or read about. Sometimes it involves lots of casting about - writing to people asking them to send you screeners of their films.  I also keep a notebook with a list of films I want to screen and I’ll look over that looking for the nexus of interrelations.

BGT: What is your definition of weird?

SHIELDS: Weird means unruly, uncontained, and situated outside of the mainstream, or at an awkward angle to it. Weird is the creative invention of the marginalised majority. It’s like, people from populations who are exposed to destitution and premature death and organised abandonment are making things. I’m not trying to say that every black, brown, woman or queer filmmaker is from an abject social position, but currently our systems of recognition still fail to register black, brown, queer, trans work as work, or art as art, or thinking as thinking.  With The Future Weird I want people to get in a room and talk about the work itself, not just to “celebrate” it in this liberal way which is like a pat on the head, but to say “hey we recognise your art/work/thinking and we are here to talk and think about it.”

The word weird also invites invention and reimagination rather than acceptance of the terms already on offer. Weird means an end to bargaining for inclusion on other people’s terms, and in turn, struggling towards your own terms for art, thought, politics, prosperity…. As a younger person I was definitely weird, but I as I got older I increasingly caved to the discipline of fancy universities, I stopped being weird, which meant that I stopped demanding what seemed impossible. But imagining and then demanding what seems impossible is so powerful, especially when our world is so inadequate and deadly.

BGT: This title is open to interpretation. The future is weird or the future of weird?

SHIELDS: Both/And. The name is compelling because its meaning isn’t totally settled. I hope it’s evocative in a way that invites people to slow down and ponder.

BGT: Why do you focus more on sci-fi than any other genre? What’s so particularly radical about it?

SHIELDS: I’m interested in the ways that black/brown/trans/queer people imagine the future. We’re interested in sci-fi, but not only sci-fi or any genre. Experiments and films that break with genres or straddle them are what I’m interested in. Any film in which filmmakers are trying to be uninhibited, to exercise unbridled imagination is exciting to me.

BGT: In one of your statements you quoted Samuel R. Delaney. For him sci-fi is about “what the world might be.” From the films you screen, the future seems doomed, which goes against most mainstream sci-fi narratives, especially in movies, where someone has to save the future/world. Are you pessimistic about the future?

SHIELDS:  Yes, that quote comes from this brilliant interview by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah for the Paris Review. We got into this discussion at the March screening of “Remote Control” held at Spectacle Theater in Brooklyn with the likes of Lara Weibgen, Frances Bodomo, Ja’Tovia Gary, Maryam Kazeem, Wendy James Palacios, Shola Amoo and more amazing people.  As part of the screening, we show a set of curated clips, and one of the clips was from a fantasy scene in “I’m a Cyborg but That’s Okay” by Park Chan Wook. We talked about why in mainstream sci-fi there was always a white guy trying to save the world, whereas in “I’m a Cyborg” the main character fantasises about shooting up the entire place, just destroying the whole structure.

Through discussion, we came towards this idea that white men in mainstream films save the world as it is because this world actually serves them quite well: they have power, or the means of accessing power, so the end of the world registers as catastrophic for them. Who knows who might replace them in the ruling class? But for those of us who have nothing to lose by abandoning the structures that exist now which actually legislate against our existence, the impulse is not to save this world but to destroy it: radical change is not just desired but vital.

BGT: What is/are your favorite short (s) from all of the films you’ve shown thus far and why?

SHIELDS: That’s impossible to say - I really feel strongly about all the films we screen and we’ve been so fortunate and grateful to screen work by artists including Akosua Adoma Owusu, Elaine Castillo, Wangechi Mutu, Kibwe Tavares, Zina Saro Wiwa, Shola Amoo, John Akomfrah. Some of these people I’ve been following their work from afar for years and years and so it’s really amazing to be able to present their work and I take the programming and presentation of their work really seriously.

I can say that I was really pleased to screen Les Saignantes by Jean Pierre Bekolo which is not a short but a feature film. We screened Saignantes or Bloodettes at the very first “The Future Weird”, in a program called “Visions of Excess”. It really is a bold, daring film, and I feel really excited about life when I watch it. But until The Future Weird, I’d only watched it in 12 parts on YouTube so I was really thrilled to be able to screen it and watch it in a cinema with others.

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The next Future Weird screenings are:

The Future Weird x The New Inquiry — 8PM, Saturday 30th August at Museum of Morbid Anatomy

To know more about upcoming events: @thefutureweird / facebook.com/thefutureweird.

 

Bio: Derica Shields was born & raised in South London. She moved to the US in 2009, and has been living in New York since August 2012. She has a degree in English literature, studied black studies, specifically african and caribbean literature. She’s a writer, editor, film curator, and the co-founder of The Future Weird, a film screening series that started in New York. 


  You can find her on Tumblr @ derica.tumblr.com / Twitter @dericashields