Episode 4 - Roy Brown with Yasmin Benoit

Black and Gay, Back in the Day

Season 1 Episode 3 - “Ajamu X with Jacob V Joyce”

Date: 18.10.22

Season: 1

Episode: 3

Presenters: Marc Thompson

Contributors: Ajamu X, Jacob V Joyce

Producers: Shivani Dave, Tash Walker

Music: Kemi Oyolede

Artwork: Amaroun

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[Music]

MT: ‘Welcome to Black and Gay, Back in the Day’. We’re bringing to life the archive of images of Black, LGBTQ+ life in Britain from the 1970s to the early ‘00s. I’m Marc Thompson, I’m an activist and health promotion specialist, and I’ve built this archive with the journalist and writer Jason Okundaye.

[Music]

MT: In this episode, we are looking at a photograph that shines a light on creativity and art. 

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MT: A black and white photograph shows a man leaning on a piano with his left arm. He looks welcoming, in black leather shoes and white socks, tailored pin-stripe trousers, a thick studded belt, a black vest and a black leather fetish cap. He has leather studded straps around his neck, chest, right bicep and both wrists and is holding a crystal glass with a drink in it. There is another drink resting on the piano and he is looking directly into the camera, we know the man to be Ajamu X, and the photograph is taken in his hometown of Huddersfield in 1983. 

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MT: Our ways of expressing ourselves are so often linked to our identity as people and influenced by who we are and what is happening in the world around us. In this episode, multidisciplinary artist Jacob V Joyce is taking the reins as they take us through amplifying our histories whilst nourishing new queer and anti-colonial narratives today. 

[Music]

JVJ: Wow, this is a really beautiful picture, Ajamu looks incredibly cute. I love the African fans behind him, the little hanging plant, the fact that he’s not just wearing leather and spikes and a studded belt and studded hat, there’s also a really palpable softness in the image as well and in his eyes and his expression. And the fact that his index finger is pointed directly down, creating a line of power all the way down to his shoes and his feet. which are together, it makes me think of the magician’s tarot card; him channelling an energy up through the earth. And perhaps I’m getting the magician from it because I know Ajamu and I know his work and I know it is an alchemical process which plays with power and sensuality and the erotic and suspense and all these things and transforms it into something beautiful which is what a magician does. It’s just a really beautiful picture, the first thing I think is how stunning Ajamu is and what a beautiful person they are.

[Music]

JVJ: My name is Jacob VJoyce, I am an artist and researcher looking into the histories of Black art education, my work is very queer and very anti-colonial. I think I want to ask A about the importance of play and sensuality in his work, because Ajamu has been a mentor to me at different times in my creative practice and one of the questions he asked me about my work is where is the sensuality, because I'm an artist who makes anti-colonialist, queer, political work and sometimes you can forget the importance of playfulness and actually, when i think about my work over the last 8 years, it’s all very playful and I try to keep that sensuality at the forefront and I think that’s definitely been encouraged by Ajamau, so I kind of what to flip that back on its heads and ask him what the importance of play and sensibility is in his work and how that comes into his process as an archivist, because obviously he isn't just an artist, he’s one of the founders of the rukus! archive which is an archive of Black and brown and queer history in the UK. It’s probably not the exact, technical term for it but the rukus! archive is something like that; it’s an archive for Black, and brown lesbian and gay ephemera and documents and stuff, so I'd like to ask him how important play is in his process as an archivist and how important sensuality is to him when he’s moving through archives and working with archives.

[Music]

JVJ:  So we’re standing outside 188 Gallery on Railton Road, we're about to go in and speak to Ajamu, right by the mural which I painted with Rad Mural Collaborative in 2021, which features Olive Morris, and Pearl Alcott and Rotini Fanicodi and lots of other Black history, some of them queer, some of them radical. 

[Music]

JVJ: So this is a stunning picture of you, that we’re looking at and there’s so much in it that i think it's potent but where was this picture taken, can you tell me what’s going on.

AX: So the picture was taken around 1981, in Huddersfield and I was coming out around this period and in ‘83, the club I was going into was the Gemini Club. There were mainly white men, very few Black men and the dress code was like jeans, white t-shirts and the music around this time was groups like the Boystown Gang. My group that I was obsessed with was Soft Sell, punks and rockers whenever that's what I was just playing around with, in terms of my dress sense. I come from a very small town, they had very fixed ideas around masculinity and gender and race, so basically, I then wasn't one of those Black dads who looked at it in a certain way. I was working things through with my dress sense and the magazines I was then reading were alternative, fashion, lifestyle magazines that came out of London. I was just working things through my dress sense and my musical tastes then as now are still extremely diverse as was so I could be.

JVJ: I noticed as well that there's some African fans on the wall behind you.

AX: Yes, the image that was taken in the house of a photographer friend, Keith Hardy. Some of what we see is an interesting juxtaposition around what I'm wearing and then some of the objects on the wall. For me, I kind of wanted them to present almost a very soft image of Black masculinity, or of the Black body, because the things I’m wearing are culturally loaded, politically loaded. With S&M, and kinks, once again, I  just played around with all that stuff, I guess in a kind of a naive kind of way. I think decades later, obviously, resurfaced in terms of my work because then I didn't have a language to articulate some of the ideas or the things I was feeling at that point.

JVJ: That makes sense. I mean, you say it's, it's naive, but it does look very kind of intentional and I’m interested to know, do you, at this period of time, it was 1983 and you're quite young in the picture, but like would you at this time have called yourself an artist or was it more that your dress sense and your music and political leanings were the creativity was manifesting? 

AX: I kind of knew, knew from then on. I wanted to be creative and my idea of an artist was a painter, right? Yeah, actually photography was my route into being creative, right, and so that's how the art journey kind of started. I was one of these kids, whether it was post-punk or new wave or whatever, I was in it and I would walk around as if I was always in it and the first; that was the way I was in town. So my family never says ‘Don’t dress like that’ or ‘you can’t’ so that's why I have this attitude even now. It has always been in my corner when I was just working things through. I've always been there. Even though I wasn’t clear about certain things it was even there.  And more so than anything else, It's my family; I think it's grounded me to be who I think I could be.

JVJ: That makes sense. Yeah, I think that's not to be underestimated. Because I feel like when you are allowed to know yourself and allowed to make those experiments leaps into yourself, then what happens is that people can't question it because they can see that you know yourself, you know, when it's so palpable when somebody knows themselves. As a non-binary person that's like always been playing with gender since I was very young. I feel like people are less likely to say something if you are confident with who you are and how you look.

AX: Sometimes people then do question you if you're confident, especially if you are perceived to be a Black male, is that confidence is seen as arrogance. So once again, actually, I think people question you more because you are confident. 

JVJ: Yeah, definitely, definitely. But then I also feel that maybe I’m overconfident but I also feel like it's because you represent something to them, which they secretly want to know more about. And they're kind of like pushing you and pushing you and pushing you to be like, ‘How are you so free?’ Do you know what I mean? Maybe that's because I grew up in London and went to a predominantly Black primary school, predominately Black secondary school, and have always been aroundI've always been around, you know, in Black communities, and I feel like I don't know I feel like there's a flirtation in the abuse. Maybe I'm just romanticising it unnecessarily…

AX: I think across the board, what people have problems with is if you are an individual. I think that's what scares people. It’s easier to follow, because then there's also a price to pay if you don't follow.

JVJ: Definitely.

AX: Yes, you can be confident in who you are in a small town and at the same time, and you could then be isolated because of that confidence in the small town. And then you are then bringing sexuality into the conversation. So yes, you are confident but then the culture you're in then also isolates you.

JVJ: Definitely, you've got the being a being in a small town then you've got the double of, you're not just an anomaly because you are playing with fashion and gender and stuff but you're also anomaly because you're a Black person in a place where people aren't used to seeing Black people. And I think that's something that persists even today when people go out of the big cities in the UK.

AX: Yes, you are also an anomaly because of Black culture and white culture because they can’t process your kind of Blackness and your kind of queerness and then they can't process your kind of Britishness as well. I feel that it's those freaks, that they're trying to normalize. ‘Come back! Where are you going!’ And that's what happens even in large towns, because large towns are made up of these very small conclaves as well.

JVJ: Yeah. And you know, I feel like your work and also the work of Rotimi Fani-Kayode, and also the work of Ingrid Pollard and also the work of Maud Salter, you kind of all playing with the tension of that; ‘how are you this and this, you know, how are you soft but also like, sexual? How are you Black but also in the countryside? How are you  exuding this kind of confidence and opulence but I don't perceive you as someone who belongs it or should feel that way?’

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JVJ: Could you talk a bit about the journey from this person in this photo, who you wouldn't call an artist, to you becoming an artist and not just not as but also an archivist, and a really successful artist that means a lot to a lot of people.

AX: That’s a big question! There have been multiple journeys. I think for me, there’s certain key moments. A key moment was learning photography. In 1987, I went to Leeds College. In September there was an event that was run by Maud Salter and David Bailey was doing a talk around Black photography. That was September and Maud was just awesome. I have to admit that I was afraid of Maud. [laughs]

JVJ: Why were you afraid of her?

AX: Maud was just formidable, just this presence! That presence and that confidence. And Maud was stunning about there was a clarity that she had about who she was. I was not that confident then so when I was intimidated by Maud Salter.

JVJ: Were you also empowered to see a Black queer artist with that level of confidence?

AX: Oh yes! Definitely. And then in October; two things happened that were seminal. There was a small portfolio in Gay Times of Rotimi’s. So this was the first time I'm seeing a Black queer artist who's doing work around nudes. 

JVJ: Which publication was Rotimi’s work in?

AX: Gay Times. So that was October, and then also there was the first National Black women's conference that I came to. Some of these things were just like, happening. And this was the first time that I was able to put race and sexuality in the same space, until then they were just kind of separate. By January ‘88, I had dropped out of college, and during my time I was having tensions with my lecturer. And so his thing was around technique and I had this idea that photography had to do something; it should be political or cultural, but it can change lives. That's what I was thinking. 

JVJ: Oh thank God! So that came from one of your teachers?

AX: No, no, that was that tension I was having with one of my lecturers. And then the head says, ‘Okay, I think that you should leave Kingston college and follow this thing that you think photography is.’

JVJ: So you were the one who was pushing it to be political?

AX: I just had this idea that it had to do something.

JVJ: 100 percent!

AX:Yeah, so basically, we're talking, I'm just exploring photography. It's ‘87, it's still way ahead of what I did years later and the key was then Andy Winterburn, who was given me two books; Roland Barthes ‘Camera Lucida’ and Frantz Fanon, ‘Black Skin, White Masks’. And I was like ‘Thank you very much!’. This speaks nothing, basically, and then I'm in London. And then years later I’m like ‘Ah! Okay!’

JVJ: I still haven’t read those books. But I've dipped into them, ya know that they're important.

AX: Years later, I'm like, ‘Ah, that's what he was telling me that actually, you're onto something.’ And then, about 1992-93, I either went back up to Leeds to say ‘hi, how are you doing?’ or wherever and then he says, everybody who was in the course that I was on, completed the course but not one of them is doing photography. I'm like ‘This is interesting!’ So once again, that hunch that I had is what carried me through; to do something in the world. And then from there, the race and sexuality and gender and because then I could also then lived in Brixton, in a Brixton housing co-op, living with Sonia Boyce and then there's Timi, and these artist-activists coming through the house that we lived in; that’s how the ideas started to brew. And then just carving out my kind of space in the art world.

JVJ:That’s so interesting. I love that it was art cultivated or nourished this thing in you of ‘it needs to be political’. It needs to be against oppression. I feel like it's implied in what you’re saying, but your work is never just ‘against’.

AX: I don’t think I’m naturally just ‘against’, I think I’m more concerned about what I’m for. Because that’s far more empowering for me as an artist, I try not to get into this binary framework around these ideas and issues. And so photography, for me, is about presenting a particular kind of worldview. Right? And that worldview is at one point; my worldview. And at the same time, it still speaks to a lot of other people as well; actually photography as being the medium for me to work through a whole range of kinds of ideas.

JVJ: What I see in your work, it's not positioning itself as against this. It's not trying to defend itself. It's not weight exerting all that energy. There's a different kind of energy at play, which is, which is about intimacy and vulnerability and obviously sensuality.

[Music]

JVJ: So you founded the rukus! archive with Topher Campbell. Can you tell us what the rukus! Archive is?

AX: The rukus! archive, I co-founded in 2005 with my partner in crime Topher Campbell. rukus! is a derivative of the word raucous, which means to create a first to create a fuss and noise and a rukus! is also an African-American porn star. And the archive I started because I just wanted to have a different conversation that brought in cultural production and Black queer cultural production in the context of the UK. A lot of topics started from a victim based narrative, actually, so I'm saying while we are having these bad experiences, culturally, politically, whatever; we've also been creating work. So the archive covers 40+ years timeframe; it includes magazines and books and journals of flyers and posters, vinyl; anything around a Black British queer experience. And the archive is still predominantly a first-generation Black British born source, so what we’re talking about is those of us whose parents came in the late 50s, early 60s, and are roughly considered the first Black British born. And then those of us who are then LGBT, and then the first Black British born of our generation. So the archive covers roughly the late 70s, early 80s and then the 90s. Mainly, that's it so far. 

An archive, for me, is not just about collecting, preserving; I'm a Black, queer British, British experience. To me, the archive is a space where I work out my own ideas around this thing called the archive and that brings in things around touch and texture; materiality, and smells. What else can the archive do, how are we thinking and rethinking the archive?And then because the archive is based on the sole notion of truth or a fact so there’s the idea that we can think about the archive and pleasure and erotic fiction and myth-making, gossip, hearsay. And then also, how not everything about Black queer experiences can be archived. Let's say. We could talk about the nightclub. We could talk about the music and we could talk about how people dress. But then actually, we can always talk about desire, or the dance floor, the sweat and then all those kinds of rituals or whatever so the archive is to then ask these other kinds of questions around this thing called the archive. For me, the key is that the archive is not about the past. The archive is about the future. So when actually the archive is kind of like bread crumbs for those Black queers not yet born and yet to come, just so that they can get a sense of this particular moment that we exist in. So actually, I can move in between the physical archive and the conceptual theoretical archive and then either move in between both those kinds of spaces. The key is how to talk about the archive itself from within the archive, not always from outside the archive, because actually the archive has to be constantly  unfolding itself. It got to be alive! And then this comes out of Stuart Hall’s work and that’s a manifesto; that the archive is organic is living, breathing. And then basically, I just hope that in centuries down the line, there are other conversations around this thing called the archive. 

A lot of my thinking is around that our Black and brown of queer experiences are looked at through a social cultural lens, right? Yeah. A lot of our Black and brown and queer politics is around what is done to Black and brown bodies, and we should always have those politics, and also I'm saying what is it that we want to be done with our own Black bodies and that’s then a different move. Yeah, and for me if we keep talking about, let's say, the archive, and systems of dominance and so on and so forth, we actually don't talk about the archive. If we then talk about the photograph, and then get locked into content and representation we don't talk about the photograph. And for me, this is when ideas around pleasure and erotic and joy come in. The key to making something whether it's an archive from scratch, or photograph, the key process is if I then touch the flyer from the first National Black women's conference, then the flyer also touches me. That means that we are then going to have a different conversation about the archive. If the archives are then places to hold memories of some shape or some form, I would argue then that the Black queer body is the archive because actually our bodies also hold memories. And there's something for me that's frustrating, is when most of the conversations around social justice work excludes pleasure, excludes joy, excludes the erotic. And then why is that?  And why are people doing work around social justice work? Right? Who are they? Black and queer don’t talk about pleasure and erotic. Yeah, so then what kind of queer are we talking about? A desexual queer? And actually, a lot of queer politics don't talk about sex anyway. And I'm saying why is this happening? 

JVJ: Yeah. And it's not arbitrary. It's set up in it for a reason. You know, it's like Toni Morrison saying, the function of racism is to waste your time. It's like, the more that you position yourself against something, the more that thing then defines you and who you are and what you are, and it’s like, hang on; what about the person and the people that we could be if we were allowed to stop thinking about the archive, the institutions, the dominant power structure, and instead think about what it feels to be touched and to be seen as beautiful and to be seen as powerful and to be felt as someone who belongs and all of these things. And yeah, you're right, those are denied to us by those discourses.

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JVJ: I wanted to ask you a bit more about your relationship to and the impact of Rotimi Fani-Kayode and Maud Salters’ work on your work because seeing you, as a Black queer artist, seeing your work has been really empowering, speaking to you has been really empowering. And now you are an archive that holds the feeling that came from meeting those two artists who have now passed away. So it feels like a really good opportunity to talk about what the impact of being in a physical space with Rotimi and Maud was like.

AX: I have in my archive these out-of-focus portraits and topless shots I took of Rotimi. I used to shoot my work and then go over to his house and show him what I was doing. Yeah, and he was very supportive. And I was able to see the books that he had on Yoruba culture, Renaissance art, Surrealism, and then talk about what he was drawing from as well. Through him, I then joined the Brixton Artists Collective which I joined in 1989/1990. So he was just pivotal, I think to that scene a Black queer photographer doing work around the Black male body. And then also being aware of the challenges that he was going through; it was not having access to shows and blah blah blah. Once again, I was privy to his challenges around doing sexual work. And that was Timi, who was a fine-ass, tall brother walking in Brixton with his dreadlocks, round glasses, white shirt, leather trousers in Brixton, with this confidence, which is confidence!

JVJ: So he was hot! [laughs]

[Music]

JVJ:Final question. I feel like Essex Hemphill was also featured in your work and his poetry is like electricity. It's so empowering, beyond empowering; iit has a central energy which I feel like we've been talking about in this conversation. So you met him right?

AX: So Essex was one of my loves. So I was working at the Black Art Gallery, when he was doing his identities tour and his last gig in London 24th March 1992. And myself and Dirk went to pick up Essex from the airport, so his first gig in Brixton that night was in Benays Grove. So he's on stage talking, I'm in the back, he’s staring at me and I'm like why is Essex Hemphill staring at me! 

JVJ: Because you’re hot! Look at this picture!

AX: So basically, I then went round with him to various gigs. And then my first trip to the States was in July 1992 to see Essex. We were talking about doing a joint-project with his poetry and some of my work. Actually, the thing that I thank him for, it was I'm here and benign linked to some of the Black press in the States. So that's why some of my early work appears in the Black press Stateside. What I take away from Essex and lots of activists from that period is that they weren't not afraid of being sexual.

JVJ: I feel that it's been formalised and institutionalised and professionalised now, everyone wants to have a job in the institutions so they're afraid of being sexy and being sexual and being human because they want to be a professional. 

AX: Exactly. And of course, professionals still need dick and vagina too! 

JVJ: You don’t become a robot; like a de-sexualized robot because you've got a job in the institution. 

AX: You probably need it more, because you’re in the institution! That’s just my philosophy. 

JVJ: You need to be replenished!

AX: Audre Lorde was right, you need to be replenished!

JVJ: Exactly! It's really great to be in your studio, and also just to be in your presence. I feel like we've touched on this in conversations about you meeting Maud Salter, you meeting Rotimi Fani-Kayode, you and your relationship with Essex Hemphill, but I feel like being in the presence of artists whose work is powerful, especially Black queer artists, is replenishing. So it feels really; I forgot that you are an archive, and that actually, our interactions are an archive and that you recommending me that the text ‘constituting the archive’ by Stuart Hall became the foundational thing in not just my PhD, but also in in loads of the murals that I'm painting and the work that I'm making. So it's like, our interaction in itself is an archive, that comes to life, you know, when we're in each other's presence, so I'm really grateful for that. I'm really really grateful for this opportunity to access the archives that exist between us if that makes sense.

AX: It makes perfect sense! [Both laugh]

[Music]

MT: Hey Jacob! How are you doing? 

JVJ: I'm good, thanks.

MT: You just came from seeing Ajamu, right? Which is literally just down the road from my house where we are now on Railton Road which is like, filled with queer history this street is and this house alone. Do you know Brixton?

JVJ: Yeah and I painted the mural up the road that's about the history of this road. So I know a lot about Railton Road specifically.

MT: Oh, fantastic. Well, you know, where I'm living right now is a kind of queer housing Co Op. And the reason I'm really proud of living here, not just because of history books, Rotimi Fani-Kayode lived here, one of our elders and the great artist, John Shore, you know.

JVJ: Yeah!  Huge influence on my work.

MT: Oh fantastic! So, tell me, you've been to see Ajamu today. How was that?

JVJ: Yesh It was great. It was really great. Ajamu is a mentor to me, and he is an archive. Every time I meet with him, it's like all of these different things bubble up; these kinds of bodily, spiritual, erotic things, in terms of the knowledge that he holds and also the things that he teases out of people.

MT: I mean, Ajamu is great at doing it isn't he! Every time I bump into Ajamu on this road, which is usually two or three times a week, I can guarantee the word ‘archive’ will be in our conversation. And I guess it's the same with you. Right? 

JVJ: Yeah. From his work with the raucous archive to just the photography that he does, to the way he is and the questions that he asks, it is always about archiving and a sensitivity and a care about histories.

MT: So he’s a mentor to you currently, was anything new that you learnt today in your conversation?

JVJ: Yes, so much, so much. There was so much that I learned today from talking to Ajamu, but I think that a lot of it is more of a set of questions that he's planted in my head, again, around what happens when Black queer people meet and what kind of power we're able to cultivate between us. And what kind of dialogues have we been denied and how do we not end up speaking about the institution or the archive or oppression but instead, find out what makes the other person feel good; what, you know, what is the sensual relationship; what is the joyous, pleasurable relationship that exists between us as Black queer people? Because that obviously often gets left out of the conversation. We're often expected to exist as non-sexual beings, especially in the professional capacity of the institution and academia and the art world. So just a reminder to be comfortable in my body and a reminder to facilitate space for other people to exist as sexual beings, as people who are capable and deserving of touch and pleasure and joy and dick and and vagina as Ajamu said! We all need it!

MT: I’ve worked with Ajamu a lot over the years on lots of different projects and I work in sexual health and health promotion. And then Ajamu is always telling me, where is the pleasure in your work? Where is the joy in your work? How do you demonstrate the joy and pleasure in your work and how has Ajamu maybe influenced you to do that?

JVJ: It’s so funny that you said that because he said the same thing to me. And it's one of the things I spoke about; that question of where's the pleasure and where it's the joy? So for me, I think as an artist who makes work about Black history and queer history, specifically Black queer history and anti-colonial history in general, I always now try to make sure that there is an element of joy in the work because for me, the act of painting or doing illustration or writing poetry is joyful. But unfortunately, the way that people have been remembered specifically like a lot of Black women are remembered because they were martyrs because they died fighting the British Empire or the Spanish Empire or the French Empire. And I think that there is so much history which is so dark and so upsetting, and you want to remember those people but you also don't want the work to only be about that. So Afrofuturism is a big part of my work and has been over the last seven years and I feel like Ajamu has been part of the force which has pushed me in that direction, because fantasy and the imagination are ways that histories, which are very disturbing, can be imbued with joy and with pleasure. So the poetry that I've been writing over the last year in my new book, which is called ‘Bad Drawings of Paradise’, and the murals and comics and artworks I've been making, they always have an element of science fiction, of futurity. And if there's no joy to be had then we have to put some joy in there, because we've been denied joy so much. So I feel like that really comes from Ajamu and him asking me that same question. Where's the joy? Where's the sensuality? Okay, yes, we need to know about these histories, but also, where's the joy? So it makes me so happy to hear that he's asking you that and you're thinking about it in terms of sexual health as well. Because we've all been denied joy. We've been denied sensuality and nothing is sustainable without joy and nothing is sustainable without sensuality.

MT: I mean, I totally agree with you and I'm constantly striving to put more of that in my work and to be alert to it. So the picture that was taken, we're looking back on, is almost 40 years ago now. When I look around the world we occupy, I see so many more Ajamus, I see so many more people owning and being their authentic selves and stepping out into the world. Do you see that and what do you think has changed in those 30 odd years?

JVJ: I think that there's many things which have changed. I think that Black queer people are always at the forefront of culture, especially people in the diaspora. Because when you don't have access; when you've been displaced from a big, well-grounded, historical well of cultural identity; when you've been displaced from that by 500 years of slavery and imperialism or hetero-patriarchy that's telling you you're not allowed to be the person you are, then you have to reinvent yourself. You have to decide, okay, well, I can't be this and I can't be that. So what am I going to be? I have to figure it out. So I think people like Ajamu are always at the forefront and queer people of colour and queer Black diasporic people in general, because, yeah, we have to decide who we are for ourselves because often we don't have people showing us how to do it. Of course, we always have done and there always have been Black queer people.

They've just not been given the same kind of space or given the same kind of respect or are seen as being people that we should aspire to be like, I think that is 100% changing now, I think people like Lil Nas X did a residency at the Tate Modern a few years ago, which was the schools residency so so there's lots of schools coming in, and seeing like tonnes of kids dancing to Lil Nas X, an out Black gay man seeing a whole school class of predominantly Black children screaming the words of an out Black gay man, that feels radical to me, and like I definitely didn't have that when I was in school! Not even a teenager, let alone in primary school. So I'm hoping that things are actually changing and that we don't have to feel this responsibility, this burden of response of representation on our shoulders that we have to be examples because I feel like now there are so many examples of Black queerness in all of its different ways.

MT: Ajamu has always existed outside of the institution, outside of academia, to some extent, he's, he's marched his own path. And as he's got older, his work has allowed him to do that. Where do you think we sit now as Black queer folk within the institution within academia?

JVJ: I think that hopefully, people like Ajamu, who dropped out of university and now he's doing a PhD and now he's a lecturer and stuff but also he dropped out. Which was the same as Stuart Hall, Stuart Hall also didn’t finish his PhD, and I think that hopefully people like Ajamu will remind us that the institution is not the only way to become the people that we want to become. And I have a degree of hopefulness about the level of disillusionment that I see in young people today, because I don't think it's it's the institution is not going to save us basically. And I think that it's a lie, and it's a trick that we've been indoctrinated to think that everything will be fine if we can just get a comfortable job within the institution. And one of the things that Ajamu mentioned is the way that that professionalisation takes away our capacity to be sexual beings. It takes away our capacity to be problematic and experiment because you know, we all have to make mistakes. We all have to do something that we shouldn't do, to figure out who we are, but if we're too busy trying to assimilate into the institution, so we can get a seat at the table which was built from our exploitation and it's never been really about serving us or making us feel happy, then we lose a part of ourselves. So, I think two things can exist at the same time. Yes, we should be comfortable in an institution, we deserve a space and we deserve a claim to all of these institutions. You know, just because we are here to quote Rihanna Jade Parker, who once said that we deserve a space as institutions just because we're here. That's it. We don't have to defend that. But also, we deserve something better and we deserve space to imagine what else could exist, because we know that these institutions at the end of the day aren't going to save us. 

MT: I came across a quote last week. I think it can be attributed to Malcolm X, we should check. But it was: ‘be careful when you get a seat at the table, because you're gonna have to eat the same meal.’

JVJ:Exactly. And maybe we don't want to eat that food. You know, I did a workshop responding to Labaina Himid’s work with primary school kids in Peckham. And Lubaina Himid’s piece is a picture of a woman with her arms folded giving a side eye and her dress is covered in pictures of English food with the word ‘no, no, no, no, no’ crossed out and the kids were like, we think that this is her saying that she doesn't like bland food. Maybe she wants something else. And that piece also says on it, which the kids read out at the top of their voices, ‘We will be who we want, where we want and the time is now and the places here, here here, Now now now now’ which I think that's another example of Black queer, archival power going into the next generation of young people. And straightaway they saw that they were predominately Black children saw that piece and saw that this is about we don't eat this food. 

MT: Let’s bring that food to the table. And so, was there anything about your conversation you found challenging or just interesting?

JVJ: There was nothing challenging about it. I mean, I guess in a way it was it was more that the society we live that we live in continually indoctrinates us to forget the power of sensuality and all of these things but also I forgot that Ajamu was the person who recommended the text ‘Constituting the Archive’ by Stuart Hall, which is foundational to my PhD, and I don't know what that is. So you know, it wasn't challenging, but it challenged me to remember how important Ajamu is to me and how important he's been in creating a framework for me to think about the world. And I don't know why, I don't know why I’d forgotten; but it was him who told me about that text. And I'm definitely going to try to connect with him more to talk to him and utilise the wealth of information that he has. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's the pandemic over the last two years, but I think I've forgotten how much I get from speaking to elders, especially Black queer elders. So it challenged me to not waste the opportunity of actually speaking to people from this generation.

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MT: I've been your host, Marc Thompson. The reporter in this episode was Jacob V Joyce. You can find the picture we've discussed in today's episode and all the images talked about throughout this podcast on Instagram, @BlackAndGayBackInTheDay. And drop us a message if you have something you want to submit to the archive, a link will be available in the show notes. 

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