 Hello everyone and good evening wherever you are also whatever time of day it is I know we're in different time zones so wishing you a good day wherever. Welcome to today's session with the Brunei gallery and we're revisiting suspect objects exhibition with Bessel Hussein and with a couple of new guests slow key and to hey moments. My name is Abena Yakin. I'm a reader and we're doing post colonial studies at so as and it's my pleasure to welcome you on behalf of the Brunei gallery, the center Pakistan and the South Asia Institute. And we're going to have very, I hope very exciting intensive and passionate debate on from creative so it's I'm really looking forward to it. But to kick us off, I'm going to start with introducing the three speakers and I'll then give a little bit of detail about my research and how it connects with why we're here today to discuss the work that they do. And I will begin by introducing the speakers in the order that they will be speaking in and the format will be that it'll be a Q&A conversation I'll put out some questions to them. They'll respond will do a sort of round robin of maybe three sets of questions will open it up to Q&A. Please put your questions in the Q&A box, I think Lucy's already put that in the chat function. And we will the speakers will take the questions at the end. We're booked for an hour and we will the kind of formal format of the session will run for around 45 minutes before we go into the Q&A. Okay, so to begin with. It's my great pleasure to welcome Suhaima Mansoor Khan she's an educator writer and poet from Leeds West Yorkshire. She graduated from SOAS with an MA in postcolonial studies. She is the author of the poetry collection postcolonial banter co-author of the anthology A Fly Girl's Guide to University, being a woman of color at Cambridge and other institutions of power and elitism. And, and cut from the same cloth as well as host of the Breaking Binary's podcast. Her work is disrupting understandings of history, race, knowledge and power, interrogating the political purpose of narratives about Muslims, migrants, gender and violence. She says that she is less interested in disproving the truth of such narratives and more interested in asking what systemic violence they exist to justify. And she's, she's also written widely for the guardian independent Al Jazeera Galdem and her poetry performances if we haven't seen them are phenomenal I'm hoping that by the end of the session we might be able to persuade her to to kind of give us something as well. And she is currently a visiting research fellow at Queen Mary and her poetry articles can be found on the university and school syllabi. So the, I mean, I feel as none of the people that I have here with me today need an introduction but I am doing these formal introductions. The other speaker for this evening is Loki I'm delighted to welcome another so as a graduate back locally is a British Iraqi rapper and activist. He graduated from so as with an MA in near and middle eastern studies. He entered the political scene in 2009 during the stop the war protests against operation cast lead in Gaza, quickly establishing himself as a unique and uncompromising voice within UK hip hop. In 2004 he had recorded a fire in the booth for BBC one extra that would go on to strike more than 5 million hits on YouTube. In the same year he participated at a US speaking tour with the American academic Norman Finkelstein, his lyrics at the cutting edge of political debate, and we look forward to hearing more from him in the session. Last but not least the person who has curated and organized and led us to this session today is vessel Hussein who who creates work that questions perceptions undermines lazy stereotypes and highlights missing histories and overlooked facts, whether in a gallery or a sign outside a kebab shop his cross disciplinary practice is often presented in varied environments to engage with diverse audiences. Using archive and personal memory as starting points his work explores the representation and understanding of South Asian culture and identity through the media, government communities and individuals. This is a current exhibition which you can see online and is it is it sort of also possible to visit now in person vessel. So suspect objects suspect subjects is on display at the Brunei gallery and a number of other works are currently part of other exhibitions at Eastside projects and the icon gallery in Birmingham. In London, please do come along and visit and take a look. His art has allowed him to work with a variety of different universities and to speak internationally on questions of security criminology immigration, anti racism and cultural studies. He's also the director of true form projects, which provides a variety of benefits to communities by collecting oral histories artifacts and personal stories. Welcome to you all, and now you're going to have to listen to a little bit of what I do as well, just to so I can provide a preempt to this conversation and I'm doing this because it came up in a conversation with vessel as we were thinking about different ways of talking and setting up conversations around the exhibition and one of the things he said was, oh, I really connected with some of the work that you did on Muslim comedy. And I thought I'll just give you a little bit of detail on my research related to the genre of comedy and Muslim representation and the ways in which it can confront stereotyping. I'm bringing this up especially because this is a session with Muslim artists and we're discussing a diversity of practices and also because the artists present I believe have an element of irony in their work. So this is my contribution to the conversation, I don't study them, but I have studied others and I'll be interested to hear what they think about it as well. So there's really a shift of emphasis in what you might call the first generation of Muslim comics post 911 who very much carried the burden of representing their community in particular ways. The recent generation was comedy has become broader and arguably more individualistic. So what you see in the generation of explicitly Muslim comedians that started to emerge after 2001 is what Peter Mori and I call in framing Muslims, a kind of hyper formativity, a self conscious way of performing Muslim nurse that plays back and among the Muslim comedians that rose to prominence at the time Shazia Mirza was probably the best known. And her, and in those early days of her career her stage costume was topped by an austere black hijab and her willingness to kind of squeeze humor out of uncomfortable topics confronted audience expectations head on and, you know her opening line which used to be very stark. So I'm Shazia Mirza at least that's what it says on my pilot's license was kind of delivered very deadpan. And there've been a lot of sort of things since and then but what was being challenged was the idea that Muslim women are weak and voiceless and there's potentially a double target to both the racist naturalization of the host culture and the domestic naturalization of some conservative Islamic gender codes. And there's also, you know, later on, many of this obviously been a lot of work since then, and I just wanted to in Britain, a man like Mobine has come up before that Nadia Mansoor Burkhoff and others. I just want to shift my focus to North America and to think about Muslim comedy there because, and one of the comic comic troops I just want to draw, take us back to is the Allah made me funny group made up of three comedians from different backgrounds because I think this feeds into the kind of a confronting racism conversation as a response is Indian American Mohammed Amir is Palestinian American and preacher Moss is African American. So they they for represented kind of a variety of backgrounds that made up the Muslim diaspora in the United States and bought a different perspective to bear in their stand up routine. So preacher Mosque Mosque was quick to draw analogies between being black and the United States and being Muslim. And they really them. There's much more I can say about them but I want to just want to sort of put that in the mix and then there was the Canadian TV sitcom little mosque on the prairie that also brought up shops satire and how people recognize each other. And the kind of middle class aspirational values but since then, since that work you know the advent of streaming services allowing for more global exchange of media content has resulted in Muslim comedy with a different focus and a broader set of interests that capture the complexity of Muslim experience what is referred to by Nabila Chaby and it's accomplishments and failures above all it's human frailty so we see the kind of master of none by Aziz Ansari Netflix show Hasan Minhaj's King King and Rami Yusuf's Rami and feelings. So, I just want to kind of say that the subject matter chosen by these comedians and the way they address it takes us away from that indirect intention, among some of the first comedians to normalize Islam and to emphasize that good Muslims could be good Americans to. Instead, these comedians tend to interrogate both those terms and the focus of their narratives as individual experience rather than dispelling Islamophobic misconceptions. And both minhaj and Yusuf described moving from position of shame minhaj recalls that when his parents asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up he answered white to positions of pride in their identity. So in that respect we might argue for these comedians as examples of what Shalina John Mohammed calls generation M young Muslims who approach their decisions through the lens of faith but who are also comfortable with modern western life. So, finally, each comedian is very knowing with regard to his audience and incorporates this awareness into his act with different modes of address what we might call inside and outside modes of address. Sometimes they seem to be addressing fellow Muslim or Asian Americans and their experiences. Sometimes they poke fun at the assumed wokeness of the white liberal members of their audience and the North's knots they can tie themselves in trying to decide what the politically correct response to the humor is. So, there's really, you know, a lot more that can be said but I'm not going to go into more than that I just wanted to put that out there in the mix to say that this is the kind of creative art that I've been in conversation in my work and in confronting stereotypes and thinking about how stereotypes work within the kind of context of Islamophobia. So, from there, I'll jump into my conversation with the three artists that we have here, and Faisal, Suhaima, Loki, it's fantastic to have you here, thank you. I'm going to kick off with just a question, a very simple question to ask you about your artistic practice, you know, what inspires you, the art form you engage with, why, you know, is it individual, is it participatory, is it community led? Just if you can give us a sense of what your art is about and what makes you take that would be something to kind of kick us off. So starting with Suhaima, please. Sure, thank you. Thanks Amina, thanks Faisal for inviting me to be part of this conversation. Yeah, so I think the question of what am I doing, what's my art? I started writing poetry when I was studying at university and I think that is important in the way that I came to understand its power, so when at the same time when I was writing my masters actually at Suhaima, when I was writing my dissertation, I was writing about, you know, the way the Muslims are constructed and the way that our humanity is always conditional. And at the same time I was applying for this national poetry slam, I wrote a poem for that, that was basically on the same themes. And I remember the day that the poem basically went viral, it got like two million views. So what I realized on that day was that, yeah, that, you know, maybe one or two people will read my dissertation, and maybe like too many people have engaged with the same themes the same questions in this form of like spoken or cultural culture and poetry. So for me that was like the beginning of realizing that the way I see my poetry is that it's many things but I see it as like a process of translation oftentimes and I think for me that was also like, I was just like I'm leaving academia because it was just like the power that art has to actually translate those ideas I think often are just confined to the ivory tower and like very few people get to engage with them. But actually, all of us deserve to understand them and all of us deserve to understand how they impact our lives and what I saw in that process of that poem going viral was that I had a time to engage with, and then through the poem I was able to kind of enter this I guess like a different process of knowledge production where it was like this is the knowledge I have about my life being a Muslim in this country, merged with these kind of whatever discourses that kind of allow me to analyze in a different way, and obviously resonate with people so in that sense, like, I definitely see part of my art as as translation right as like, maybe in the translation of like the, you know, our experiences as everyday people translating that into kind of a knowable form like a poem as something that can be shared something that people can, you know, distribute and say that we see ourselves in this or like this speaks to us. And at the same time, taking those kind of those ideas often like packaged in very formal and unhelpful ways I feel in academic spaces and actually just like showing the relevance that they do have to our lives and actually what how how actually these things can be useful ways for us to, you know, see, see our experiences in different ways so I think there's that and I think also poetry, at least I don't know spoken, I feel like I definitely see like a distinction between written and spoken forms of poetry and obviously like what is poetry is another question but I think there's something also about I feel is inherently disruptive and or at least inherently has the potential to be disruptive. And I think that's also coming from the fact of, you know, you know, my, my family's background is in South Asia Pakistan and I think, as along with many, many other countries and places around the world, there's rich oral histories right rich oral traditions of the ways that you speak is really also carrying with a history of genealogy, you know, it's carrying with the stories that, you know, through colonial forms of control and coercion have been disappeared and so I think there's also something about poetry that it, it can't be captured in the same way as necessarily other forms of sharing knowledge or other forms of like sharing our experiences and maybe I'm over amping it but I do think there's like something inherently quite radical about how you can use the spoken word. I guess the other thing I wanted to add was that, because I think first of all, we were chatting the other day about as well you like what your inspirations and stuff like what makes you want to, what makes you want to produce art and I think I was just thinking about and I think, you know, to be honest I don't really I don't really see a distinction or a choice in it like not in a weird way but in the sense that because what I do when I'm performing in front of an audience I, I was, you know, I was aware from day one that I'm being seen in the context in which I live and I think, you know, sometimes I imagine it as like these comic bubbles that pop up around me right and I know what all those comic bubbles contain I know all of the stuff that is attached to this body that I am housed in. I think I do not. I'm not interested in talking to I'm not interested in disproving those things from the get go I was like I'm not here to just sort of prove my humanity and disprove these things. So what I do think I'm very interested in them was like, how did I, in a very selfish way I suppose I can very like self, you know, it came very much from like, how do I author my own story how do I have the autonomy to say what I'm seeing in a world where there are so many narratives in which I am, you know, used and mobilized my body my persona my identity. I used to justify all sorts of, you know, bizarre and structural violences. So that would I think honestly on a very personal level like that that was always an impetus that was that was just like, Okay, under the gazes of white supremacy colonialism Islamophobia patriarchy how do I write for myself on my own terms. Yeah, so I guess I see poetry as like, yeah, you know, in a context that we live in where there are these many ideological narratives obviously we're seeing lots of them at the moment. And a narrative as simple as Muslims are violent right like that narrative has very material consequences right it's a narrative used to uphold the global security, military industrial complex it's narrative used to sell all sorts of policing and surveillance technologies. So the power that we have, I believe as artists and as a poet, in particular with language is that you actually have power to produce, not just counter narratives, you would use counter narratives but also to really divest from and reveal that what those narratives are doing and those material connections that they have. And essentially yeah produce counterculture right that's that's what I think many of us are doing that we're producing counterculture. And that isn't just an artist that's an ideological to me that's an ideological act is very deliberate act, and it has very material consequences when we're producing counterculture we're doing it to also say, there is a different way that the world can be. And, and then we refuse the material conditions actually that we're seeing so it's not purely this like abstract theoretical poetic thing it's also very much grounded in, we believe a different reality is possible. And so, and I think, yeah, and that's the final thing I think is that this is about imagining other worlds and I really feel that art is like, you know, under capitalist conditions. How often we are not allowed to think of anything outside of the realms of does this produce profit. And I think, well, not all, but sometimes we're producing, especially if it's countercultural is specifically about allowing people to engage in another kind of imagining of the world and I just yeah I think that that is what keeps me coming back right so keeps us making more writing more responding more whatever is because that's just I don't think the value of that is fully. Yeah, recognized and I think we we all know when we engage with one another's are we consume art in the world. I think sometimes that's that's not understood to be as powerful as it can be and just reframing one thing, providing one new way of seeing or looking at something can be incredibly disturbing and destabilizing to the systems that we live in and I believe that that is the, that's, yeah, that's what I find so exciting about it. Unmute myself. Thanks. Thanks to him and that's a brilliant start and there's so much there that I want to come back on. You mentioned counter narratives and translations and it's a really nice leading to asking Loki, the same question to speak about your artistic practice, what inspires you, what's the art form you engage with and why and if you know, like you just like to open up on that if there's anything you want to pick up from so hey ma, you know, feel free to do that as well. So firstly, I would like to say that throughout human history, when they have been the growth pushed from below the direction of growth is always bottom up, there has been art created to work in tandem with that process. I mean, have you two main functions of what I do in this specific context. It's to galvanize people and it's to historicize the events within which we live. Art has always destabilized the assumptions of the society, it has always problematized what are seen as common sensical notions at the time, exposed pious hypocrisies of that society and acted to not only interpret but also translate yearnings for justice. When we think about the way that James Baldwin, for example, described art, he viewed it in this way, the artist's role is to make the world more human. This is the demand that the artist makes of his or her society, the society inevitably and unfailingly always resists. The role of the artist is to make you respect the moment the baby is born, above all other moments. And when we think about whether the work that we aim to produce is merely individual or about community. We can also look at one of the other great quotes from Baldwin, when he said your pain is trivial except in so far as you can use it to connect with other people's pain. And as long as you can do that with your pain, you can be released from it. So there's several different functions for me. On the one side, there is the final push, which I hope leads to galvanizing numbers of people around specific political causes. There's the other side which is historicizing the events, but at its seed, when I'm in the process of creating something. In many ways, I think it's about dealing with trauma. I know that when people experience trauma as children, it affects the brain's ability to produce serotonin and serotonin is vital to regulate anxiety and panic. And at several points in my life, when I have felt unable to cope with what is happening around me. One thing that has been able to calm me has been producing music out of it. And it's in that way that I have hoped to convert what is personal pain into collective power and push it forward into existing political moments. One of my favorite artists, who's a political artist, Peter Kennard, he said, art can't change things on its own, but it can when it's allied with the political movement. And that's something that I've always been keenly aware of, that when we are making this art which aims to sort of bring and juxtapose the criminal with the crime or the perpetrator and the victim. What comes out the other side of it in terms of mobilizing people is always the most important thing for me. Thank you. Thank you, Loki. That's wonderful to have such a intense interrogation of the role of the artist and to hear about your connection with how you create your art and what inspires you. And that takes me to vessel and we've spoken previously about the exhibition but I think it would be, you know, really useful for us to hear about your artistic practice and what inspires you the art form you engage with and why so a kind of broader introduction than last time. Thank you. Um, yes, thank you for this time and like you for coming. So currently, really I suppose I'm really inspired by the potential for intervention. To do with a long standing kind of presumptions about who I am and where I'm from by using really anything that I can find visually. So really, the majority of the work is to do with reveling in the subversion and questioning and undermining the laziness in which I am described and people like me are described, which I feel has gone on for far too long, basically. So in a way, I, you know, my creative process is to do with trying to look at things or trying to look at racism or the construct of racism as a material for the work in the exhibition and to be able to really deconstruct it and then reconstruct it again to show its fallacies and its well essentially to undermine it. And yeah, I think there's a for me this that's a lot to do with, like many of us upbringing and wrestling with the idea of trying to belong trying to be trying to be here trying to understand really why you know why people are telling me that I don't belong. Hopefully, what it means to be able to respond to it and just to stake a claim by making marks any marks whatever those marks are, whether they are audible whether they are visual and and in whatever form they may they may take essentially. So it's peculiar because the work can be anything at the moment for me. I've kind of re entered my practice after 10 years with this exhibition. And therefore, it's about deciding what the best material is to tackle the particular question or the premise or the accusation that is being asserted within culture within within popular culture. Obviously, most of that work is individual it's based around my personal response to that, maybe a bit of weight, maybe a bit of, you know, maybe that you know kind of adopting potentially a the ability to laugh rather than cry. Because there's so much often to cry about. And therefore, but also in the past, a lot of the work has actually come from speaking to people. It's come from collecting oral histories or it's collected from collected from the Uber driver, the taxi driver, who for five minutes I'll have that very intimate conversation with to do with actually what matters to be able to kind of check myself in a way. My long suffering family probably is part of that as well but but the work is now beginning, I'm beginning to get a lot more critical I'm not I'm not a postgraduate but I'm beginning to engage with academia in new ways because I'm beginning to the questions are beginning to lead in that obviously that kind of direction to do with legislation to do with why laws are being changed why things like Trojan horse and project champion occur within places like Birmingham so I'm beginning to consult with academics who are working in a variety of different areas now to try and be a lot more critical about the humorous or visual work that I'm making and that's now taking me into the realm of counter terrorism legislation and like reading really things that can be part of a comedy within legislation, but they're but they're real they're very they're very real being, you know, kind of being used against, you know, people every day sociology or criminology and obviously arts and artists so my my creativity is based now really around quite a few multiple things, everything is kind of bubbling in a way around those things because unfortunately I'm being people are coming at me and you know people are coming at us in different directions. So there's a certain amount of understanding I think that is important or maybe ways of exploring. Those kinds of subjects. But I have to say, I've been quite lucky that in Birmingham. People allies have come from different places at which I'm really grateful for so. There is support from a variety of different people who are going through similar things and also those that aren't and I think for me that that leads to a certain kind of hopefulness also in trying to explore and dig deeper and hold my breath and go under a bit, a bit further if that makes sense. Yeah, that's yeah. Thanks. Thanks vessel. So I just want to. There's a lot in what you've said that I would like to return to and perhaps I'll one of the things that I'll pick up is about that specificity of location of where you come from and you know it's also a race. So one of those things that we say is a micro aggression right. If we talk about it in the sense of, if you're a person of color and you keep repeatedly being asked where you come from I'm not asking it in that context. Obviously, I'm asking you in the context of where you're located where your artist and also how does that work. Really. I mean so hey ma you are somebody who's traveled between London and leads, and you must have and Cambridge so you must have experienced a variety of different spaces and of an education environment as well, which you said that you were going to do your practice, rather than be in the ivory tower of education. So I'm really keen to find out more about that location, you know how much does that like what kind of access is there in the location that you're in. What's possible is it for you to do the art that you want to do. You know, are we like we're looking at a, at an ideology within the government with regards to arts and humanity subjects anyway, kind of really a preservation of those for those who can afford it for those who don't have access to it. So how do you feel as an artist I mean because one of the other things I remember so hey ma you said was that if I'd asked you about seeing vessels work or going to a gallery. Sort of some time ago you wouldn't have felt that that was something you could participate in. Could you tell us why. Yeah, sure yeah. Yeah, it's a good range of interesting questions that you asked there I think that yeah I mean so I grew up in like leads between Bradford and needs and yeah I think to be honest like this on this question of art and like creativity and confronting racism. I don't think it was something that ever seemed intuitive to me like I didn't. I would if you had come to me as a kid as a teenager and been like oh why do you write a poem to deal with racism I just be like that's obviously completely irrelevant. And that maybe that's just me being like a belligerent child but I think that what I think the real reason for that is that you know those connections are not were not really present in the places that I was in and I think that's a lot to do with. The socioeconomics of diaspora communities in this country and, but also more than that the ways in which we are creative and work creative we're not seen as art and what we're not taken seriously as forms of art. And I think, you know just thinking back to even school days and like the things that are really dismissed as like kids just like messing about. I think that is actually like that that's the height of like imaginative creativity that is really just put like, you know, productive, it's like, you know, naughty, whatever else so I think it's interesting actually being back in needs now because what I am really noticing is that it's not just public services that obviously kind of rampantly filled with the prevent agenda but if you I mean, since I've been back like the youth club that has wanted to work with me the local football club the, you know, coffee morning that your mom might get invited to like all these different library gallery whatever they're all in different ways, connected to counter extremism funding that can be through like integration schemes to community cohesion schemes, and through these very like, inoffensive sounding like building stronger Britain together type of funds and the reason I think this is really fascinating and linked to this question of art is that what does it mean for if you're a youth, you're young, you know, if I was growing up now in Leeds, this is what I keep thinking, and I went to my local, you know, youth club, and I am expressing, you know, in this moment my grievances about you know what's going on in Palestine and I'm talking about this, I very, very likely and as we've seen in the last week will be just be reported to prevent and I think the question of like art and creativity is directly connected to this because if children, and if anybody but if children cannot express political opinions and cannot ask political questions and cannot, yeah, cannot ask questions about the conditions in which they live, then how what kind of art I mean is that there's not what's the purpose of art in a future like that was the purpose of art in a world like that and I think is I feel very frustrated by how serious this question is and I feel that it's not really seen as very serious and I think it actually goes in hand in hand with austerity right so what you have is the government has removed all the funding for public services for the kind of you know maybe that you know to be fair in what I'm saying I think when I was growing up there were a lot more things you could do as a young person there was a lot more clubs you could go to and stuff like that. But now all that's gone and in its place, everything that comes in its place is counter extremism. And so you're just being your, your, your able to engage only in so far as you are seen as a suspect. In so far as you are seen as a problem to be solved and managed. And, you know, in this in this area and where I grew up obviously this is like largely a problem that affects Muslim kids, but kids kids of color and just kids in general like you can't have a political opinion anymore and you can't even ask questions and I think this is also linked to the question of like how do we, if art is about imagining alternative futures what we're being told, or what we're telling young children now is that you can, you must not imagine outside of the realms of like a very punitive world. Everything must be seen through the lens of risk management, basically. And the irony is that obviously through gutting public services, you create the vulnerabilities that you then police, you create the poverty that you then say is actually a risk for radicalization. And so I think that's something that is really central because when we're thinking about like what I'm thinking about art and making out here you know I want to work with young kids I want to work with like local asylum seeking network, but it turns out that all these things are actually linked in somewhere and being forced to essentially report back to the state. So, I think that I'm just very troubled at the moment by the levels of surveillance that kind of are being normalized and I think, what does that mean about the ways that we can produce art. And I think to be honest, like as much as there are these regional differences and local differences, there also seems to be like an overwhelming push towards like this normative standardization of just ideological docility, like that's all being pushed to right like you just have to have absolute ideological docility and and depoliticization and so I think. Yeah, the, but yeah I say that but then there is also like there is hope and there is like exciting things as well but I think that that's my overwhelming just thought at the moment. Yeah, sorry that was a bit off track to the initial question but when you when you think about leads right now that's just honestly that's what I feel. Okay. No no thank you that's a really rich answer and I think you've touched on a lot of things there about the austerity agenda the surveillance culture, the funding question that came up before as well and when you're, you know, to what extent do you feel that you can practice the art in the environment that you want. So you're saying the environments are quite strictly managed or sort of intervened in so they doesn't make you feel democracy is is kind of in place as it were, and I suppose that that's a kind of nice point for me to jump into Loki and ask this question because it's connected to what I'm saying as well which is about about sort of using your art to make to take make a stand from about positions that you believe in I mean I think. I've been living in the UK now for over 20 years and I think one of the kind of moments I will always remember is going on the anti war march against Iraq and and what it meant you know as individuals how it felt to not be listened to. And I wonder, you know, to where you see that sort of politics now in the work that you do and you work in, you work with rap and hip hop and there is. It's a particular genre, there's, there is a dialogue in this genre, but at the same time it's a dialogue in which do you feel that this is a dialogue that can reach out to to people who are part of this austerity agenda or is it really, you know, to do you feel this is something that you do to connect with the young people or people in general on the terms that you want to connect with. Well, well when I debated David Goodheart, the well known figure policy exchange he remarked to me about how big fans his children were of my music and I later saw an article where he said even his own children call him racist. It's quite interesting that you can actually speak to, you know, the children of people in certain positions within society but what Sir Hamer's talking about is a hierarchy of political subjectivity. Now, we can't forget that our society within the House of the Parliament it has far more Lords by a long way than elected members of Parliament, you've got representatives of the Church of England. You've got 1000 laws that the monarchy was seen through the privy council to have vetted before being passed and obviously it was 300 years that people in this country who are not landed gentry had to mobilize be killed be exiled be sent to penal colonies around the world in order to vote for some form of parliamentary representation. So we're talking about the limitations of our political system. And like I say a hierarchy of political subjectivity in a context where you know the war on terror which you spoke about just now you know we're looking at a war that has lasted longer than World War one and what you put together. There's no conscription but we've all taken part in what is essentially financial conscription you've seen an average of 46 bombs dropped per day, and it's to put this place 37 million people that decision which was taken against the will for a large proportion of the society necessitated to some extent a death of civil liberties, we see habeas corpus suspended in specific cases. We also see the Magna Carta, you know this great icon or Britishness supposedly according to David Cameron and others like him, as he wrote a few years back, rendered meaningless you could have a child sitting in British school learning about the importance of the Magna Carta to them, but simultaneously it's not inconceivable that they could have a relative who is detained indefinitely without access to the evidence held against them, and without being judged by a jury of their peers and that child themselves could be questioned by police without the knowledge of their parents, simply for wearing a Palestine badge maybe, or for even using the word eco terrorist in class these are all real examples. On top of it you've seen obviously the Guantanamo situation where WikiLeaks revealed that the youngest child detained there initially was 13 years old at the beginning of the time in which he was detained at Guantanamo Bay. So it's a loss of rights, it's a transfer of funds, it's an allocation of public funds towards the security sector, but as Sahayma made clear it's buttress upon a racism, but this racism is not familiar to our age, you know, biological determinism is not what we're talking about, perhaps we're talking about scriptural or cultural determinism, but it's not wrapped up in aesthetics in the same way. But the mechanisms which surveil and police these people who are racialized in specific ways is invisible through the extent to which it's ubiquitous in the society. And all of that is based on threat inflation, you know, according to Major Chris Hunter, specialist in terrorism for the British government, your chances of being anywhere near an act of political violence in this country is one in 16 million. You know, according to Baron S O R C of the Conservative Party one tenth of 1% of Muslims in this country have had anything to do with political violence, Dr Frank Harvey puts it this way your four times more likely to be struck by lightning. So society overall is being had for this suspension of civil liberties, and on top of it this, as I said transfer of funds towards the security sector, which is largely run by private companies outsourced to private companies. So, all in all, quite an unhappy situation. Thanks, Loki, I think you've really touched on on the matter that is something we need to talk about is the freedom of speech agenda that is kind of going live as we speak and what it means for us with the work for all of you for the work that you do. And student lives and politics, you know, how do you, like, is it possible to mix art and politics and without being sort of put under the cosh as it were from a certain age. And, and is it just to further a particular agenda that we've seen being repeated over and over again and it's interesting you mentioned David Goodheart, you know, people like that are quite chilling in terms of that they become the authorities on ideas of multiculturalism in this country. And what multiculturalism means to David Goodheart is not, you know, what I would think should be the thinking about on policy, but that is unfortunately where we are and how do we change that those kinds of policies and those kinds of structures and things that create, recreate those structural inequalities. So I'm really glad his his children are listening to you. And, and the other thing I suppose I was thinking about in this kind of ideological construction of particular sort of. Those pasts and histories and and the way one is asked to be British, which is also what what you said which is becomes a kind of exclusivist narrative and I'm thinking of the latest which is that Boris Johnson who's closing down all the arts is is writing a book on Shakespeare right so that's fascinating and I know that Loki you work with Akala and I know that he does a lot of work on Shakespeare as well and I'd be really in, you know, excited to know how much funding he's getting from from the government for the work that he does that really is, you know, about art that is connected to transformative change amongst young communities and the way that racism has affected black communities and people of color and how to kind of bring about chain. And in a sense that kind of takes me to vessel as well with regards to to your work vessel and how much kind of. Do you feel this art when you make it where can it go where can you go with it do you feel that there is a, you know, how British do you feel when you do this art is the question. I don't well Birmingham is really all that I've known, pretty much all my life, so that's my reference point to how British I am and how British, maybe other people think that I'm not. So the responses of the work is always to that environment in different ways it's one of the largest cities. It has great amount of Pakistani diaspora Muslim diaspora probably one of the largest in Europe. So therefore, it's inspired me but then also conspired against me, just like the state does in a way, sometimes. But just picking up on what kind of both, both people have said by time and like you have said, is that this kind of preemptive environment, this kind of preemption of crime very much, you know very science fiction or very minority reports, kind of kind of environment where crimes are kind of now being sought out, means that there is obviously going to have to be some form of resilience when it comes to trying to describe without seeming paranoid about the way these, you know, these futures are being colonized. And that for me is underpinned by things like project champion that happened here in Birmingham when 200 spy cameras were set up in a largely Muslim area of Birmingham, and then dismantled in 2008 in Washwood Heath in Smart Brook which were hidden 3 million pounds worth of government funds earmarked for tackling terrorism based around that. That's 2008. And then they were taken back off for another cost of I think 600,000 pounds so the kind of current climate I suppose is a revisiting of those kinds of things. This is partly why the piece of work project champion in the exhibition is there. You know, the biggest kind of Trojan horse the Trojan horse affair that I think has been the mother of a lot of what has gone on where how many children lost their education how many people I think it was 400. Yeah, 400, 400 chill children lost their education over a rumor these rumors that are kind of started by letters, these weird and wonderful letters that appear from nowhere that then decimate kind of communities. It's farcical really, and this is why it becomes the material obviously for the work. But then there are, I think, and still only last year the Trojan horse play that was toured by lung theater which involved Dr john homeward Dr john homeward went through almost three or 400 hours sorry 200 hours of interviews to do with the school to do with parents to do with children about the trauma that they had gone through 90 witnesses he stood against the, the, I think it was the National College of Teaching. So, these kinds of, I suppose cases need to be obviously challenged, but as the narrative changes to, for instance accusing lawyers and those that are defending civil rights as activist lawyers. The shifts in the discourse are where potentially art is a third way in the same way that we can describe you we are the interventional power of our just as like you and so I have said, I think we'll have a much more resonance, and I think people know about that moment also understands that, and therefore I see, I think there is this kind of systematic almost you know kind of attack on on on those areas where we can potentially at least you know speak freely. So, yeah, that's. Yeah, I mean I'm on, as I've said before I'm pretty, pretty much still confident that by hopefully collective knowledge or collecting more knowledge. I'm working together interventions can still be made but I think this is why I think things like this forum are really important which is why I asked to do it. So, I think a question I'd sort of like to pick up from what you've said there about the importance also of dialogue and connections and that's something I've had to spend a lot of time thinking about in this project that we that I did with Peter Muslims and trust and cultural dialogue and and really, you know, trust is an endpoint that one gets to after you've got the dialogue in place but when you have so many obstacles to the way dialogue can be held you know in say where people do feel safe or in the way that so hey man's described, and you're describing and Bradford so I suppose my my question to you is, I know so hey man, you've boycotted certain events and so is low key I don't know if well in terms of funding and where associations you have become known to you that this is this is connected to a sort of surveillance led project of, let's say prevent would that always remain your stance or would you just to play devil's advocate and to ask you would you consider going to that kind of forum and saying okay I'll sit down and I'll have a dialogue and I'll give you my perspective knowing what I do, or do you feel it's more powerful to to sort of do the boycott and why. Yeah, so I mean so this is a question that obviously came up at the time so in 2019 for people who don't know there's a there was a festival occurs every year in Bradford Bradford Literature Festival. And I was supposed to be performing and taking part in a few events and I found out that they had taken some counter extremism funding. I've heard my families from Bradford I'm very aware of the over policing that Bradford has faced since the 2001 riots arguably since 1980s, 1960s. And so I was just concerned why why that would be the case. And so I spoke, as you mentioned I spoke to the organizers I had a really lovely conversation and the conversation I was disappointed to find out that you know they didn't see it to be an issue in the way that I saw it. So, the reason, so it's an interesting question because the reason for the me withdrawing from that was that I was unwilling to say that I concede to situation in which the state believes that it can fund arts and literature and that we have to be complicit in that we have to attend. And so I think this notion that like would you go and would you have the dialogue is so to me counterproductive because I'm not worried about the I'm not worried about the festival I'm not worried about dialogue. I'm worried about the state and why it is funding arts and literature. And so going to the event and having that conversation. I mean, it doesn't, it doesn't undo the fundamental kind of issue at the heart of this which is why is counter extremism got anything to do with arts and literature and, you know, it's also part of the fact that the more we normalize this the more we take this kind of funding. We actually play into this idea that you know there is demand for it right so demand and supply you know say, I think somebody told me a story at the time about say there was like a bouncy ball that's being sold and it has like something on it that you really disagree with the writing on it right and you're like whatever the thing says on it. So, as a result you buy all of the balls to stop anybody else getting them. And what the supply all the supplies is is that all the balls have been sold right so they're just going to keep making more producing more and there's there is demand for this. And so that analogy I find useful because I think this argument that let's just take the funding and let's just do you know let's just do our own things with it let's like create our own spaces is not is it's actually creating it's actually playing normalization and so I was interesting is when I boycott when I withdrew when other people began to withdraw including Loki, it really was fascinating to me the way that the speed with which the boycott itself became so that was actually the more problematic thing than the counter extremism funding from the state and actually civitas one of these like neoconservative think tanks has written a report in which the boycott is mentioned as proof of the intimidation that Muslims face in taking counter extremism and so it's fascinating that I you know on the one hand it's like yo you know you're this kind of you know some of the I'm just talking about some of the narrative time it was like this egotistical boycott this kind of self absorbed self indulgent boycott and on the other hand you're intimidating you know Muslim women who just are trying to to aid their community with literature and with arts and the fact of the matter is my concern is the state and what disappeared in the conversation the state what disappeared in the conversation the policing of Muslims a surveillance racialized militarized you know global industry that gets to be a beneficiary of it so it's yeah another thing that's fascinating as well as I think there were people multiple people you know one of these journalists who wrote an article in the Guardian about how you know she was somebody who formerly had been like oh I love your poetry so I'm a and as soon as I actually acted on the principles of that poetry. It's like no we don't want we don't actually do it and that's an interesting point because I think it's also about the things that we're saying if we truly believe them. You know that this I don't know I think sometimes we talk about art it can sound like abstraction can talk about as it can sound as if we're talking about something separate to ourselves. And for me that that withdrawal is something I would do it every time I would do you know and I have a policy that I would never work with any organization that takes home office funding in general you know I don't want to be complicit in a hostile environment I want to be complicit in any form of policing and maybe perhaps as a stance that I can take and I think that you know the more I kind of feel like I have more responsibility that the bigger platform I get and the more kind of social capital I have because these are decisions that other people can't take right like a school child or a teacher can opt out of prevent somebody who is you know working in a hospital well I mean they technically I mean we should urge them to and they should but like legislatively there's a much different kind of pressure on them someone like me. All I can do is either make art or withdraw it all I can do is that and I think in that situation the most powerful thing I could do and as I say I would do again is withdrawing the only thing that I was being invited on the basis of and so yeah in a nutshell I think you know these are serious questions and they demand serious answers and the point also of that withdrawal was that it created space for the communities to then have a conversation about what security look like on our terms what does safety look like for us so we had the alternative about Village Festival you know there's trade unions, student unions, youth clubs like a ton of people and they got to have that conversation so yeah I think you know it's you've got to put your money where your mouth is right you can't just write poems about how bad the state is and then kind of be complicit in its violence when the opportunity arises. Thanks, thanks for having me for being so open and I think really getting to the heart of how one can get represented as woke and what it meant to you in terms of your practice and your art. I know that low key has to go and I'm also conscious that I've gone a bit more over time than I promised I would at the start, there are some questions in the Q&A box so I'll just read them out and while before I do that low key was there anything you wanted to add to what's been said so that you can have your last word before you slip off while we're sort of taking the questions. Well for the last word I would say that it seems to me that in the name of freedom of speech, we are seeing several mechanisms entrenched within the society to squash that freedom of speech, we are seeing a deflection onto a kind of kind of manifestation of no platforming that has been a known antifascist practice across the last several decades now is being depicted as something new and representative of this thing, this big scary thing that's coming to get you called council culture. We know that nobody who supposedly who is called woke refers to themselves as woke and nobody who supposedly partakes in council culture actively says I partake in council culture. So what it's what it's a way of doing is depicting the real censorship which has always come from the state as completely invisible and non existent and rendering people power largely centered around students and maybe people saying things to you which you don't have on Twitter and sort of interrupting a general quiet ambience and tranquility of life in the commentary at that that is somehow the real censorship that we face today in society and as so often as these things go they might tap right but they always smash left. So that means that if you are a person who cares about social justice who believes in a distribution a greater distribution of power and and political subjectivity in this society that you will be likely to suffer from this stuff and when we live in a time where algorithmically we have a huge imbalance of information and data so we are all of us plugged into companies who do experiments on us every day algorithmically but also are absorbing loads of different aspects of data about us in order to then sell that information to companies to more efficiently advertise to us, but then also work out ways to make us feel things. So, in that period in that kind of time that we are in, we have to really increase our criticality when dealing with these kinds of platforms we can't still cling to this thing that was very widespread around the Arab Spring that the that political activity and mobilization combined with big tech companies would lead us to the utopia of greater equality and understanding quite the opposite is true. So those companies are increasingly entrenched with the existing dictatorship or prevailing orthodoxies of our time and will sometimes use free speech as a subterfuge to push forward these kind of these kind of things, especially within the academy, as you all will know better than me for I'm so sorry to leave so early, I would love to stay and enjoy what everyone else is saying, saying I hope everyone else will stay and enjoy what everyone has to say. Thank you thank you for being with us and stay safe and stay well and we hope to reconnect with you. Okay, so I will now read out the questions in the Q&A and Sohaima and Basil if you are happy to listen to them, and then take them in whichever order you would like to. So the first question is from Fatima Alaraka who says I'm a third year fine art student at uni about to graduate in a week and good luck Fatima, and I'm really questioning my intentions for being in the art world outside of education. I would like to ask how as Muslims, how do we best keep our intentions sincere whilst using our image voice art to interact with a wider audience, because like in the book I refuse to condemn both Sohaima and Loki talk about the politics of art and how they are often expected to perform in a certain way would being anonymous creative work. So that's the first question and there's a question from Zameena Ahmadullah and apologies for if I mispronounce your name, I'm just kind of going with the what I see. How does one find their most impactful form of art. Is this about exploration of all forms. The next person asks, well says Alhamdulillah always grateful for spaces that speak to anti oppressive practice creativity in Islam and that's a comment the question is, have you come across any Muslim run creative cultural spaces in the UK that are well resourced. from within the community that do not have to rely on state resources, perhaps more pertinent in visual arts but do you feel art spaces are tied to a confidence in a particular meaning of secular liberalism that excludes. Thank you so much for having me on Zohaib Ali could any of the panelists, perhaps speak on the notion of art produced in syncretic and co harmonious settings is such artistic and cultural production not paramount in the face of contemporary domestic and social and is the artist artistic sphere doing enough to foster these kinds of spaces. So I think Zohaib is asking about coexistence. If I've kind of understood that rightly. I don't read now agree so I can't say the name but do you pay attention to the narrative form narrative from from organizations that claim to represent Muslims to Britain. How does their comms make you feel how when do you choose to respond and how does this dynamic inform your expression artistry. Karen Birch says an hour is never enough can you all do a part to sign up in a heartbeat from Los Angeles California thank you Karen Birch for that vote of confidence. Hannah G case so here's the question for so Hema as a young Muslim girl growing up in Leeds. How would you go about breaking out of this political facility and the stigma around engaging in political conversations without being confined to a narrative. So, shall I special shall we start with you and then go to say Hema for the responses. Yes, I'll try. So I think the first one really the first question really around advice intention and anonymity. From my perspective my advice, and this kind of covers the, the second question as well is that you have to keep creating. You have to keep making keep making keep making keep making that's the most important thing and if you have, or it will come naturally is something that you, you should feel that you have to do. So that is the first thing and that's something that is really hard after I think doing a degree you're talking to someone who finished their degree though in 99. So it's been a while, and it took me a long time to get to to grab the rope again I had to kind of lose it a few times, you lose your mojo but then you get back on it, and, and you just come back stronger. Each knockdown means that you come back stronger you you know you let go of the skin and you, you, you know you reanimate the other question to do in terms of what you do. You know, there's a long list of different things and ways that you can keep yourself, I suppose still within the arts so it's about looking at people that you really admire. You're reaching out to organizations that are doing the kinds of things that you like and really researching them so that you, you know kind of feel comfortable within those organizations. But then that comes to really the third question which is to do with, are there any hundred percent, you know, kind of cultural spaces that are bereft of funding. You know, I, I don't know if there are I don't think there are I what I have done is that I developed work that didn't require those spaces. That's why I do a lot of shop signs. That's why I normally do. So I like a month go up guessing and I'd normally do that kind of. This is what I'm talking about what you reckon, I'll pay your electricity bill for a month. And I'll be able to advertise and do the work that I need or shop for. So there are, there are ways and means of being able to engage with people to kind of show your work. And I'm saying that you know that work for me but then there are other there are other ways of doing or especially online now in terms of doing stuff yourself and sharing work online. So I've forgotten the fourth question. The narrative of organizations. It was that. Yeah, it was it was in terms of dealing with the narrative of what certain arts organizations or organizations do that is subjective. It's very much to do with, you know, I have been eaten up and spat out by a number of organizations in the past. Before this exhibition was initially created in 2017, five years later it's arrived at the Brunei gallery so that should give you an indication of some of the processes and some of the hurdles that potentially can come about through trying to get this work out there. But like I've said, initially there are, there are colleagues and there is solidarity with the with with people and especially if you are courageous about reaching out then I think from my experience, because I am, I'm awful at this as well. For my experience for 100 that you put out there people, you'll find some diamonds and those diamonds who will agree with you on a spiritual level on a artistic level and and they will they will catalyze you know they will catalyze your, your abilities in a way. Thanks, thanks vessel. So, hey man, there's one more comment that's coming for you that I'm just going to read and you don't have to answer it just now but just so that it's in your bank. Are you interested or have the time to organize a monthly workshop that invites poets to create and share as a poet it's been hard to find a Muslim anti racist creative space. Okay. Okay, love this. I love this way of doing Q&A actually it's quite funny. So, I just want to address. Yeah, the question about intentions. I think, I think that this is something that I think about all the time so I mean feel free to email me. But I think really that your, your concerns about intentions and our intentions of the world is like going to be a lifelong struggle. As in, I, I think like without making this into like, I think we have to remember is that, you know, anything that you do with an audience or with people surrounding you like right now, or in your home or wherever there are people. I think you always going to have to question whether you're doing it because you want praise because you want to be seen to be good to be funny to be interesting to be clever. Or because you know you actually believe that this is worthwhile and has a, and fulfills a purpose that you believe that you're here for and I don't think that anonymity might work that might be the way but I think that you're still going to face the same issues right because you you're out to be responsive to certain things you still want people to speak to and etc. So I think in the time that we're living in and in terms of like the ways that we're forced to perform anyway like perform our identities perform our goodness or whatever it is the different gays that are upon us. I would just say maybe embrace embrace this as a lifelong struggle and all you can do is your best that is what I would say is all you can do is your best and kind of embrace the mistakes that you make and be willing to try to have the humility to kind of own up to them and I think also you know, being open to the fact that we're growing and we're all growing and hopefully we'll do better as we go along. But yeah I don't know that the public space is not sort of forgiving enough for that but that'd be my personal advice. In terms of form of art. I don't know. I think, I think definitely just try to try stuff if you have an interest in something if you think oh wow calligraphy looks awesome just give it a try if you have, if you think oh you know I'd love to do spoken word poetry I mean, I had, I honestly six seven years ago if you said to me oh you know you'll be speaking on this panel about the fact that you're, you're a poet I just be like that's completely ridiculous I have no interest in poetry. The truth is I used to watch loads of slam poetry on YouTube and I thought it was awesome I thought it was so cool. And I didn't ever at any point think oh that's something I would like to do it was just something that I thought was really cool. And it was only when somebody sort of said to me or what's something that you would really love to try but you just don't think that you could do that I said, allowed for the first time love to try, you know his spoken word poetry. And then here here here I am and people think that that's a real thing that I do so I think you try things out and and yeah see see where you end up. I think that awesome Muslim run creative spaces that are not well resourced but are like community funded and I think they tend to be they've always tend to be like very small and very local and it's only kind of when I've been invited to them that I know that they exist. But yeah, I, you know, I think what would be exciting is if you know mosques become those spaces right if we can like, make the mosque a space again where it's like actually a cultural hub of production and think about the fact that you know, many of the millions of the profits were poets and this was like very much part and parcel of their lifestyle but yeah I think in the conditions of counter extremism that we live in I don't know how could you say the best but the most fun I've had doing poetry workshops was when it was just like in a local mosque, the complete mishmash of kids and adults and just like going for it and I think it was because of the freedom of knowing that there's no strings attached to this number one and there's no. There's like no funding outputs right it's not like an art council thing it's just it's just like people want to write. Which actually I'll just jump to the last question. Yeah I would definitely love to do something like that about workshops and creative spaces I think I'm just really like my brain dead by zoom so I think I've been kind of hoping this zoom lifestyle will end but a lot of people will see that. But yeah feel free to drop me an email if that's something you feel I could help with. And so I'm just looking at the same thing else that I feel I can answer. In terms of yet are produced in syncretic and co harmonious settings. I think that is how I do I think that does happen quite often and I have to be honest I think usually is not very radical like this is very this is very subject to what I have seen. And I think those opportunities have emerged sometimes feels that. Yeah I think I think the question I would have to ask is like what okay what we trying to produce and why like what what's the goal of this. And that actually goes to the final answer I wanted to give which is to Hannah about growing up in Leeds, not about group and needs but about how to engage with these questions and things and my, the only answer I could give because I don't know if I'm in this to I'm also trying to grow and learn I think the number one thing is just ask questions don't accept anything to be you know inherently true or un questionable and I think that's that is exciting because it can be exciting work that you produce you know work, whether it's writing whether it's a visual whatever it is can be full of those questions and they will always speak to people because we all have questions we don't necessarily ask them. But also, I think that political political just docility is really just a result of being told that there are no questions that need to be asked because everything is as it should be and we don't need to have any questions about it and I think the more we begin to kind of, you know, liberate ourselves from certain narratives and to ask really why we even invested in some of those narratives ourselves because you'll find that we are we're very invested in some narratives that don't don't serve us. So yeah, I would just say ask questions and, you know, read books and don't believe all the books that you read as well. I think a healthy healthy mix of questioning and cynicism. But yeah, that's, that's all for me. Thank you. Thank you both you've been amazing and taking all those questions and going through them. Sorry to bunch them up or all up in the end like this but we're just sort of the time factor is upon us. There's been this has been such a rich session, it feels like it's the beginning of a conversation rather than the ending. Thank you, vessel for sort of creating it and getting us all together. Thank you to him for giving up your time to be here. Thank you to Lucy closer in the runae gallery for all the logistical and admin support that she's kindly given us to john Hollingworth and to all you know people institution who've been supporting this vessel I hope the exhibition is something that will really open up community spaces for if I mean beyond the pandemic and post if we can get to the non zoom lifestyle as said that that will be something to look forward to. People thinking integrity, those are the things that really speak to me from the work that you do and doing that in spite of challenges and lots of kinds of things that you've talked about and explained and confronted so you are. Activism is very much there in what you've said and it's been wonderful to hear about it and to learn about it. So wishing you both a lot of success going forward with the things that you do and looking forward to many more conversations. Thank you. Thank you to you. Thank you to you as well. I'm from me as well. Thank you to Lucy but thank you very much so I'm and to like you for for agreeing to attend it's been a real pleasure. Thank you. Thank you everyone. It's goodbye from us and we hope to see you at our next event.