 Good afternoon everyone and welcome to this conversation with an exceptionally talented group of artists writers and cultural workers on the topic of this there is no time or there is brackets no time. Today, we have with us, Annika Bello, Jade Foster, Seda Urgul and Tuna Urdem from the Istanbul Queer Art Collective, Jade Montserrat, Gabrielle Della Puenta and Zarina Mohamed from the White Pub and myself, June Lingo. I believe you've already heard from performing borders and live art development agency so thank you everyone for making time on a Sunday in a particularly difficult transition point between lockdowns and a transition in seasons. Today, what we're going to do is we're going to ask each of our contributors to introduce themselves and their residencies so they'll each have about five minutes to speak. And then we'll go into questions around related to time. And then we also have time to go into Q&As from the audience or also other contributors. So if you do want to ask a question, if on your screen you can make it a full screen in the right hand corner, there should be what I'm told is a bubble icon, and that is the chat function. And in the chat function, maybe write question in capital letters and then what your question is for ease. So that's that's all the admin. And let's start off hearing about the performing borders residencies. So if I could ask Annika to begin. Hi everyone. So my name is Annika Bello, and I'm a writer and founder of Oranica.com, which is a space I created online to talk about pre-colonial African history. And that was very much the theme for my residency with performing borders. I, before everything went down in March, I was really lucky enough to travel to Benin and Nigeria at the start of the year. And that that trip really offered me an opportunity to reflect on ancestry and I felt inspired to create a piece on the topic of fluid borders. And I think it's really interesting because when you think, when I sort of think about a border, I think about its rigidness and the fact that like, you know, it's these kind of lines that sort of dotted across countries or maps telling you where you shouldn't go. And the essay I used as an opportunity to sort of show how culture reveals just how fluid borders can be. And it was from the experience of me going to Benin, a country that I've never visited before. It was a country that I have like no sort of family, direct family ties to. I was able to sort of find or sort of see aspects of home in the places that I went to and the people that I met and the culture that I engaged with. And Benin is right next to Nigeria and it has a really interesting history in terms of pre-colonial times, showing how sort of fluid borders were because of the sort of Benin empire and Oya empire of the Europe of people. So that was what my essay was exploring. And I speak about my personal experiences as well in the piece because I was undocumented for the first 10, 11 years of my life in the UK. And yeah, it offered me a chance to sort of talk unpick the concept of borders of what it means to be a migrant, but also what it means to be fluid and to be able to sort of embrace different identities. So I really enjoyed writing that piece and it was nice to sort of check out the other contributions from previous residencies that performing borders have created. And I'm going to, I'll stop there. And yeah, I'm looking forward to the conversation. Thank you, Annika. Jade Foster. Hi, everyone. I'm Jade Foster. I'm an artist, curator, creative producer based in Nottingham. I am also, I work independently, but I also work at New Art Exchange based in Nottingham and primary as an assistant curator. And so I did a, I did a curator in residence with performing borders. And I was looking at live art practice, particularly working with kind of black and brown artists curators working in kind of performance live art sound. And I was thinking from a borders as a, as not only something physical but thinking about language borders, like how we communicate with each other. And through this residency, I've been having conversations with artists curators about their practice but also about how we are generous with each other, how we share, how we, how we create spaces of rest. And, and yeah, just kind of how we kind of navigate space within our kind of institutions within kind of our cities. I was kind of thinking about borders in a very broad way and had a really pleasure to kind of speak with a range of people and also be mentored by Adelaide Bannerman. And resituating my practice in London as well, which gave me a really good opportunity to connect with people and artists that I would never probably be able to, because resources or because of time, etc. But yeah, that's me. Thank you, Seda and Tuna. Hi, my name is Seda and this is Tuna. We are the founders of Istanbul Queer Art Collective and we founded the collective in 2012 in Istanbul, Turkey. It's only eight years ago but I mean it feels like a lifetime ago. I mean it was, I mean quite different times. So three and a half years ago we moved to London from Istanbul. And we become migrants, migrant artists, and I mean, at the beginning it was just a word, but in time it kind of sings and I mean changes, changes you in many ways. It becomes an identity, it becomes a part of yourself. So what we did with performing borders this year was a digital residency at the beginning of May. And it has two parts. I mean, we just delved into their extensive archive and we made an Instagram post about their past collaborations. And other than that, Tuna, every day, just read a poem in our garden because it was the lockdown time. It was just very mobile at the time. She just read a poem each day and I mean maybe not at something. Yes, I chose the poems from poets who lived in countries that they were not born in or wrote in languages that were not their mother tongue. Because that kind of sort of resonated with our situation. And we're called the Istanbul Courage Collective. We started out our performance work in Istanbul with a lot of people. That's why we're called the Collective. Now we've sort of become a duo because we are migrants. We had to leave everyone behind. Actually everyone went all over the world basically. So the lockdown itself felt like even the same process getting more heightened, basically. We were already like 10 people, 15 people when we started out. We moved here. We become a duo. And then with the lockdown, the reading of the poems, for instance, I was doing the reading. She was doing the reading. She was doing the shooting. So it felt it was even more smaller because of that. But poetry was the only thing that was helping in connecting with all this experience. So we wanted to share that and also to share other people's work that dwelled around the same subject. So I guess this is about it. Super. Thank you, Jade Montserrat. Thank you. Thank you all. I'm, yeah, Jade Montserrat, an artist based in North Yorkshire. And the residency for me again, I suppose, became a matter of connecting to the community that was available to work with me, essentially. MAF were theater group based in Leeds, Bermont Office, Lincoln Green and Mab Gates. I know Leeds sort of really casually, I suppose. It was the only place that I could go to get my hair done when I was younger. So it was really good to be able to connect knowing that we weren't going to be able to meet. The residency itself was allowed me to think about how to make even an initial connection to make contact. So I wanted to sort of discuss with others what essential needs are or what brings us comforts. And that culminated in buying materials for packs that could go out with the MAF were sending to the community, including digital access as well as food. I just sent seeds and growing materials and sketchbook and charcoal, which is something that I use a lot. Like everything during this time, it's felt like there aren't enough resources or there's not enough to give. And so it's been a really rich time for me in that everyone was so responsive to the idea of making simple connection with which to then allow me to work again with Web Alice, my friends and colleagues, filmmakers, and develop the ideas that we've been working on for a number of years in terms of our relationship and our collaboration. And yeah, it allows me then to use the residency as a springboard, which I suppose is how I do a lot of my work with which to then reflect and then specify or pin down what it is that's the core of it or the essentials that I can then speak about or disseminate further. Thank you. Thank you, Gabrielle and Zarina. Yeah, we did a, I feel like in comparison it was a little bit more of a selfish residency. So whereby we took over the performing borders Twitter account. And I should probably give an introduction first, shouldn't I? Sorry, I'll go backwards. Me and Zarina are critics slash game critics slash sometimes Zarina writes about food now as well. We are pretty prolific on the internet. So the invitation to do a Twitter residency made sense. We did a Twitter takeover of the performing borders account. And yeah, it was kind of like a fast seven days in the beginning of July where we took turns and we went through the archive and all the different articles and interviews on the website and made Twitter threads of our thoughts. Every day. To be honest, it was quite interesting to like write in that way. I think often we write quite finished whole complete thoughts. I think those threads were they were like quite sporadic quite like scraggly like they kind of that you could kind of see thought process through and it kind of meandered in a sense and just writing up against another person's words or work was like an interesting way for us to write because it's not always like that. Yeah, and I think we like for me I think it was probably the most reading I did in lockdown, which because I didn't need to and no one was there to make me until this residency which I felt really like grateful for. I felt like we were students again, which was nice. It's like a nice moment. It was like a writing exercise actually wasn't it yeah. Yeah, and there's still a lot of like artworks that we read about those I think there's one by Lynn low where she like floats did like a traditional performance in a New Zealand dock where she would like float face down in the water with you know it was all kind of like made so that she she didn't drown she had like a secret breath and apparatus. But like it's the performances like that in the images and the way she wrote she she wrote about it like that stuff that I'm thinking about now so I'm glad I'm glad that we did it. Thank you everyone for introducing your practices and what you've been up to with the performing borders residences. Let's, let's, let's discuss. comes to mind when I think about this provocation that's holding us together there is in brackets, no bracket time is about the choice. There are practices that we're making about what to spend time on, and what we choose not to spend time on. And it reminds me of a, a, I guess, a quote, or a guidance from the writer Adrian Marie Brown, and they say what we pay attention to grows. I'm really curious about how we've been dealing with time in in such a precarious moment. And also how looking back at time gives us something different. And I wondered if we could start off this conversation. Maybe with Anika and Jade, asking both of you. What does exploring history, a lineage or ancestry equip us with today. Anika, do you want to, do you want to kick us off. Yeah, sure. So, yeah, it's interesting because it's felt as if there has been so much time and then there is like, yeah, no time. And so, like, in terms of how connect engaging with ancestry. So engaging with culture. So cultural practices, whether it's the food I'm eating music I'm listening to. There's that's that thread that's connecting me to ancestry so that link between past and present and definitely in, in, in this, like this year I've really leaned on sort of what I think Jade Montserrat mentioned of going back to basics. So really focusing on what, what grounds me what enables me to be present and whether it's food I'm eating or whether it's yeah films that I'm watching or just really just being with my family those, those intimate moments of my life are sort of helping me to connect with the past was being in the present and being able to sort of see, see this year and see everything that it's, it's, it's brought up. Yeah, that's, that's definitely what comes to mind. And with Annika you talk a lot about exploring yourself through a practice of discovering ancestry and lineage. Can you speak a bit more about that. Yeah, so, so growing up in the UK I wasn't particularly interested in in ancestry or heritage or anything like that. It was a lot of time, thinking that it was almost like this, this barrier between me embracing my, my Britishness. And so, yeah, it felt like an annoyance, but it was only obviously like within, you know, entering my 20s, wanting to sort of just know about, about where I'm from and things like that and then that curiosity just leading me to different spaces to questions with my family and then that sense of almost like a coming, coming home in a way and that's a full circle moment of, of wanting to, yeah, explore what you know the different elements of my ancestry, whether it's through culture. I find that to be a easy gateway for me because culture is informs everything that I do in my life so that was really helpful for me. Thank you. And Jade Montserrat, do you feel like you want to answer to speak to this as well. Could you repeat what you asked. Thank you. Sure, I was asking, how does exploring history, a lineage or ancestry, equip us for today. So what lessons, knowledge, learnings, do we take from the past. Yeah, I think it's truly vital. I'm a big advocate of sort of disciplinary approaches to educating myself for certainly. And I think, yeah, just in relation maybe to divert, to digress a bit, but when we were talking earlier when we were meeting half an hour before this and we were talking about television and reality shows, I get a, yeah, a sort of a very, sort of the pang of despair, I suppose it could be around then looking back at how those sort of form and it leads back to my research on Josephine Baker and then her, her, I can't remember, I think it was with Langston Hughes that she was speaking with about having her own sort of reality show with her children on display, Chateau de Milan. And then, you know, you think about how someone like the president of the United States gets to power and how that kind of, so I suppose what I'm saying is, is answering to the question of now in relation to recent histories and lineages from a personal point of view. I, I find it kind of, there's a blockage for me because my mother, for instance, still gets very upset and I rate when anyone talks about, you know, at school, I was, they did a, they asked children to draw out their family trees, things like that which would scare the living daylights out of my mother because of course I don't know my father and this kind of thing she found really intrusive. She also found the idea of sort of families or in working, working situations if anyone sort of talked about that family idea at all, which I can understand as well, but for her it was really difficult. So I'm really catching up on my personal ancestry and that I find sort of displacing as well, you know, personal history where I clearly don't belong, where I live and that's been made clear to me, not something that I have courted in any way, but at the same time so dislocated and I think that it's just really helpful to be able to maybe make inroads on that kind of understanding of our own situations if only for sort of health reasons right so that you know what you might expect in your life, which is, you know, half of that I have no clue at all. Yeah, I just think trying to make connections between collective histories and personal histories is generating new knowledges and helping us to make decisions about how we can bring them real wild and world I suppose. I wonder if this question of dislocation that a blockage in a family tree can have and what what other blockages are happening or dislocations that are happening in our current lives and I was really struck by what you said as comment that you became a migrant and that was a new experience and at first it's a word but then it changes you in many ways. And I have a really sick joke with a friend of mine who's a person that's recovered from cancer and we always say there are just two types of people, those who have had cancer and those who are going to have cancer and just don't know yet. I was quite sick. But I equally think the same with migration and the experience of being a migrant. I think you're either a migrant or you're about to become a migrant. And I'm really curious about what kind of strategies that tuner and said you took as you were transitioning into this new experience. When you faced a very hostile environment. What did you have what were your strategies. We made art. That's the only thing we know how to deal with anything basically so we made art for actually performing boarders last year about the hostile environment. We did this performance called moibus stripping where we had to post that year to the home office. One and a half kilo of documents each. And we have to do that every year to keep on being here. We sort of sat down in this duration performance and cut up the documents in strips and then turn them into moibus strips where the inside and the outside is not obvious. So that was quite terrific. I have to say, for instance, but in terms of what happened this year, we came to this country when both of us were 40 something quite age wise. It's time to start from scratch to begin anew in a place where you know no one. So everything that you've done up until that time is sort of erased and you start again so this displacement is also like going back in time. We do feel a lot like teenagers starting out. So we're like in our mid 40s, I'm even 50 now. So, yes, the change in space and change in time is interestingly interconnected, basically, and of course the perception of people, a lot of people here is that we come from a place that is backwards in time in the sense that people usually have this one line of linear development where every sort of culture goes through and the culture that we came from is in backwards time, which is of course ridiculous and is not true. But still there is this very interesting sort of shift between time and space that we keep on experiencing and I think lockdown has made other people experience that as well. There's a regression that comes with lockdown that sort of seems like it as well. If you want to add anything to this. I mean, how can I put this? I mean, when your relationship with home changes, lots of things change and one of the main things that changes is the sense of time, I guess. So after we moved here, after we became migrants, I realized that I luckily, very luckily, I mean, it's a sort of privilege, I guess. I mean, we had a very, very stable lives. I mean, socially, mentally, emotionally, economically, whatever. The life that we had before was, I mean, pretty stable. But when this sense of home starts to change, it really shatters your sense of time. I mean, the time just becomes something fluctuating. I mean, just three months before feels like three years ago and sometimes just the opposite. I mean, five years ago feels like yesterday and you just, I mean, I personally lost that fluency in time, which comes, I guess, with stability and becoming a migrant just produced new anxieties that I never experienced before. But I was starting to get used to it after, I mean, three years and it's kind of a high and I was just trying to cope with that thing. But then the pandemic happened and it produced similar experiences. I mean, in kind of a different way, I mean, the relationship of ourselves with our homes change and that's, I mean, affected our sense of time and new anxieties are produced kind of a thing. So this is kind of overwhelming for me right now and I cannot just put it in order in my mind. But yeah, I mean, being a migrant and living in this pandemic have some resonating feelings. This is what I feel now. I mean, I'm still in that thing so I cannot just think about it objectively. I am first of all feeling it, but this is what I feel. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, I know the conversation that we're having is in the middle of these experiences and feelings and emotions. And yeah, I don't think any of us have comprehensive ways of summarizing or making those connections. And if we, if we are, we're lying or simplifying. So let's just sit with that super messiness. But it is interesting to think about, yeah, the precarity that a migrant feels is can be, can find similarities with the precarity that we're feeling in this moment of lockdown. And yeah, I was interested in what you were saying like a fluency and time equating to stability and not knowing how to deal with time equating then to some kind of instability. Speaking on emotions and the spectrum of emotions that that we might be feeling at this moment. I'm calling both the jades by their surnames so we know who that we're talking to but it sounds very formal. But Jade Foster, in your residency, I was really struck by a question that you were asking. You noted Tony Morrison saying, there is no time for despair, no place for self pity, no need for silence, no room for fear, we speak, we write, we do language. And you asked the question, how to hold space to sustain outrage and radical love in equal measure. And I think this is a tension that many people are feeling how to kind of channel that rage but then also channel that love. And I wondered if you could speak more to this and what does it look like for you or what have you learned from asking this question. I think originally, when I was thinking about that question, I was thinking about black people in this moment and how what is expected of black communities in terms of our response to, you know, George Floyd to kind of disproportionately how COVID is affecting black communities to the kind of onslaught of expectations and just what people kind of put on you and what people kind of expect you to kind of handle, respond to. And yeah, I've just been speaking to a lot of people and the one emotion that comes across is exhaustion, tiredness. It's both kind of feeling irritated by like expecting to do the work, you know, in terms of expecting to educate other people expecting to respond with kind of, with a kind of fighter energy or, you know, and always be in resistance to think and resistance being something that is kind of perceived to be kind of intense will come from a place of anger come from a place of like aggression, but actually, you know, speaking to Roger rage. And it was really insightful and beautiful just to kind of have a space to talk. And one thing that came from that conversation is generosity. And I'm not talking about generosity with kind of non black people I'm talking about generosity between ourselves. You know, and how we take care of each other how we take care of ourselves that was collective care mean being a really important thing. And how do how do we sustain that. And I think that creating networks and creating supportive systems that aren't operating within a kind of institutional violence that I'm going to speak about cultural workers that caught you know black brown cultural workers people of color are experiencing creating systems outside of that where you can feel rested you can feel that you're sharing care and being generous with each other I think that's what I mean by kind of sustaining radical love. Like, I was in a conversation yesterday and someone kind of said that the most. The most kind of radical thing you can do for yourself is is get up in the morning and you know, I don't know, draw yourself a bath or kind of center yourself ground yourself. And yeah, kind of all the conversations I was having with these artists and curators, everyone was telling me just how they are tired of addressing a kind of current landscape in terms of like black lives matter that you know it's exhausting it's been you know, it's pretty much hyper kind of hyper visible within this moment and that with that hyper visibility visibility comes extra pressure extra stress extra, you know, burden, I think, on communities. So, and then with the with the kind of sustaining kind of radical kind of radical love and kind of also sustaining a level of I wouldn't say anger but I would definitely say sustaining the conversation beyond just a moment, or, you know, it's, it's not something that's fleeting it doesn't kind of come in and out and I think having these conversations with these artists it's like what kind of structures enable us to kind of sustain that communication to stay in that conversation, centre ourselves, you know, like healing justice for example, that's incredibly important in in kind of loving ourselves like what is it you know it's quite radical to love yourself when the world. And, you know, it's telling you that you're not beautiful that you know it's telling you that you're that you're angry black woman it's telling you that your life isn't valued. You know, you're constantly, you know, you're seeing images of black bodies dying or, you know, in pain constantly to circulate in social media it's kind of like to, to, you know, the kind of to hold a space for love and care is radical within this moment is really important and key so a lot of these conversations I've been having is around slowing down is around creating these kind of stops for care stops to have conversations that Roger was telling me I was asking them what you're doing yourself for yourself in terms of care and they were telling me cooking, gardening, you know, just spending some time outside, creating wholesome in that way and it's, you know, it's those kind of conversations are as valuable and as needed, you know, as the kind of political conversation or political discourse so it's just finding that balance basically, I think it's important. But yeah. Thanks Jade. Yeah, really hear you about finding that balance and addressing exhaustion equally equally as you know the urgency of this moment in time and taking care of oneself. I wonder when, when, when you say these conversations are with black and brown colleagues friends bodies that the trajectory of that energy is to take care of oneself, but I also wonder what is the role and how accountable decision makers need to be because they often take that same stance, but often when we are we are speaking or I am speaking or you are speaking, there's a there's a specific audience that you have in mind. And there are different roles that all of us play in a very complicated ecology which has very unequal power relations. And if, in your case, one of the most important things is to heal restore and build those connections and those networks outside of those mainstream spaces. I often wonder what are those mainstream spaces doing, and how can they respond to this moment and what is their sense of time in it, because often in those spaces. The language that I hear is, we need to do this slowly when actually I wonder if a different timeline needs to be set for these spaces as well. I wonder if Zarina and Gabrielle. You want to speak about the work that you that you have been doing to really amplify voices and challenges to many institutions currently, and how that's changed your role as critics or embodied critics or commentators or writers. I think you've kind of voiced something that we've we've been writing about or around during lockdown. I've had quite a prolific lockdown when it comes to art like the institutional essays like the art thoughts that we publish. I think, in terms of the way we work, it's been a politic that we've always held on to within like the website and writing about institutions and exhibitions like I've always, like both of us have always kind of run up against the structure of a gallery. And like, you know, all the baggage and fun stuff that comes with having a registered charity number and like working in a specific way. But it, I think, I don't know if we ever took the time to nail it down in an essay and there have been a series of texts that we've written that have kind of made it explicitly clear where we politically stand and what we politically want from institutions like how, when we say that this is broken, what do we mean and what do we want to see fixed. I think that's been what we've spent most of our time doing, which has been actually quite like, where this has been a frustrating time, it's been really therapeutic to like kind of put it in words and hear people kind of like respond to it in a way that like makes me feel like I'm not a crank. I think it's it's interesting like we've so we've we started the website in 2015 and we got we had our fourth birthday last year in London together. And remember we sat down together and we were we kind of are in this routine of, okay, what do we want to do over the next year is something that we should try and focus on or like like New Year's resolutions, but for our school year and it was just a realisation of we've accidentally amassed this weird power and a substantial audience. So like, we need to do something with it. And we need to start to instrumentalise because otherwise what's the point. Like what we we write about these like flimsy exhibitions and whatever but and that's kind of our practice in a way but what's our political practice. It didn't it hadn't felt like anything was really visible enough at that point we have done bits like there's there's bits on the website that I think manifests that in, you know, making the accounts public or stuff like that. And I feel like Serena especially it partially as well because you were London based this year is has been able to like attend protests and speak up protests and write about these things. For me, I've not felt as able to to give or to be as useful because it's been Instagram and then I do forget how powerful that is like, you know, we jade, we kind of like helped amplify a little bit of that, you know, almost at the very years later, and straight away because the Tate commented on the Instagram post, the Guardian were able to write about something because the Tate had been so slow to say anything publicly and and then the Guardian again in touch to ask questions. And then you just saw this and then you realize like okay, this is taking place on a really strange social media stage that at this point is having implications. So I don't know for me I'm constantly I feel like this strange guilt of like never doing enough and then because I'm not able to be in London at protests and, and then trying to remember that stuff does happen as a result of it. It's always been something we've like kind of tied the line on like feeling like, oh my God, we're not doing enough and like it's also feeling that control that like mad kind of angsty frustration right like not being able to affect the change you want to see in the world or like an engineer a situation where like you and the people you love and care about have equitable terms of engagement with the places they're forced to work with like, we have no choice this is where the money lies like financially like how many people can say no to working with, you know, all these places that are kind of treating them badly and not treating them on equitable terms but what is the alternative like, I think, in that frustration it kind of feels like we're so unable to affect change but like it kind of, we've seen the pace at which it kind of unfolds. I think this summer, and you're right it absolutely happens on at a glacial pace like it's so slow, so slow, and we've really seen the unwillingness at the heart of these institutions to change in any meaningful way like, like the Rex Whistler mural right like they've been fanning about with that in ethics committees for years they've known that it's an issue like but it kind of, they're willing to wait for it to become newsworthy and I think that's the bit that we haven't quite clicked yet, like how do you fucking tell them to hurry up and do so in a way that endears them to do that like do they have to be willing participants in that because with all the Tate strikes like there was a like towards the end of the strike period there was an evening standard article where Maria Bauschel was like oh yeah the white people have been very unhelpful and made personal attacks about me going to the beach and it's like well well Han, like you're moving at an incredibly slow pace and like how do, not just we but like how does any kind of collective sense of like art workers at large move that pace along when it's like you're being unhelpful now it feels heavy action to that also if kind of mirrors like Tori's kicking off about the word scum where like is that really the issue like why are you like building this victim you know identity around yourself when no one's going to buy that I think it's that figure of the cry bully right like you're willing to like throw the weight around then cry when someone says oh can you not like yeah recognising these institutional patterns it's just clicked I wonder if anyone else on this panel wanted to talk about how we move things on how we move that glacial speed for institutions but also in equal measure how we slow down for ourselves I was just going to add something off the back of Jade Foster, what Jade was saying I listened to like an incredible podcast episode this week by I can't remember the guy's name but it's like a new podcast called Resistance by Gimlet and one of the episodes is on the Warriors in the Garden protest group in New York and their kind of energy of coming together to say well we don't want to make, we don't want to get to a point where this conversation drops off and that you know none of the protests are visible anymore we want to make sure that we're there every single time at every opportunity every vigil everything but the podcast was kind of asking ask them at the beginning of it really like how do you keep that going and if you put in this pressure on all the time like what you do and the response was like oh like you know once a week we just drink and it was like such a just clean answer where they said you know we get together and there's this place that does like really cheap cocktails and we just drink and then the next day we're back on it and it felt like it just yeah I just wanted to put that on I put that out there before someone else picks up how to how to continue I guess there are so many people currently putting pressure on institutions the YP, Dave Montserrat, there's you know collectors being formed, there's artists that are putting pressure, Emily Fakoya, you know there's a lot of like open letters, you know all these big institutions are being put to you know put on kind of judgement basically and I think it's just like yeah it's just how there needs to be all these conversations need to be kept in the mainstream they can't become fringe conversations they can't just be activists you know the same group of activists or artists or culture workers doing that work it needs to be a mainstream conversation and I think that it kind of needs to be yeah it's like who does the work kind of thing like you know it's not for just black and kind of people of colour to do the work it's also you know white culture workers which is pretty much the majority of culture workers you know they need to pick up that work you need to sustain that work institutions that say they're anti-racist I'm going to put that in quotation marks like if you're writing you know your BLM statement you need to you can't just do it internally you need to also support people outside of institutional spaces I think that's as important and whatever you can just if you know yeah whatever you can just share you know and respond to and just be yeah keep the conversation mainstream because it will you know I mean we're in blackish month at the moment it's that thing of like why is there still a blackish month like why is this you know why isn't black people in the conversation all year round it's that thing of like hypervisibility in one in one month and then it kind of drops off out of the mainstream conversation after October so it's the same thing in terms of it can't drop off it needs to be you know it needs to remain as top priority both for funders both for you know big organizations like ACE and both for like culture institutions and you know from artists led to multi you know yeah multiple like you know big institutions like Tate and some set house and things like that also you know it's what's that thing of like you know like there are so many times I've walked on the street and someone has said a comment about my hair one time they said this woman just like literally like jumped on me and then started touching my hair I'm not even lying like it was a night out and she jumped to me and started literally like ragging my hair around and her boyfriend had to like pick her up and like remove her and loads of people bystanders just watching you know on the street and it's that same thing of like no one is deaf to what's happening you know it's hyper visible but there's a lot of people that currently just watching you know what I mean just kind of in the background they can't you can't hold that position anymore do you know what I mean you can't hold that position of I'm just going to watch or somebody is being you know torn apart you know when you can see there's institutional racism where you can see those issues you can't just watch you know and I think when you hold that position you're as complicit let's say let's be honest in it really so I would say to anybody watching I'd say like also you know to like non-black people white people you know just just call people out you know and don't just be watch whilst things are happening around you be active get involved listen actively listen and just ask what what can I do you know also ask other white people what you can do so don't just put that on black people brown people etc to tell you what to do you know talk with the other white colleagues the other white culture workers what can what should be do you know to mean and have that conversation within yourselves as well so yeah just don't be bystanders to it all that's what I would say to kind of help sustain the conversation and keep it moving Thank you Jade, Serena Gabrielle, we've got some questions from the audience and the first one is from Cecilia and the question is if public institutions aren't going to change maybe the public needs to defund them exclamation mark exclamation mark thoughts I like I supplied that in the in the little doc and I was like oh like yeah I think I think it's a it's an it's a it's a trajectory on like an approach that we've kind of seen little glimpses of I think this year like there was talk of the arts council introducing that diversity quotas and cutting the funding of I think it was theaters or maybe wider institutions that don't meet those diversity quotas and there's been like moves in the past from the arts council. Like a few years ago all NPO's had to make their creative case for diversity but it was never quite defined what that would consist of. And so, you know, places like the tape past and places like, you know, that I'm aware of that pretty good track record was working with like pretty diverse artists and, you know, like they didn't quite make the cut so like the problem I think is with in some cases the problem lies with the funding body and I think we kind of are able to see the way that the structure itself because like very often like the structure isn't really it's quite opaque it's not really visible it operates in a way that's very misty and foggy and like super mysterious. And I think recently we've been able to see like with the publicity around the funding waves as they come and the urgency of it. Like we're able to see that like sometimes priorities are out of whack and the system through which our funding is distributed is kind of almost the problem. The fact that the arts council is now a neoliberal organ that is meant to be at arms length from the state but kind of simultaneously doesn't really do much to kind of disrupt or resist the state's own interests is a problem like the fact that I think it was the recent wave of cultural funding like the arts council were pumping six figures into organizations that were backed by venture capitalists and like, you know, like, was it six figures to boil a road like. Meanwhile, community organizations are like community and grassroots organizations are like starved of funding, like the way that this funding is being distributed is is almost the problem and I think defunding them yes but like creating a new system through which that like funding structure can. I don't know, basically, because I think the funding structure itself is the problem and it kind of. I don't know how defunding would work logistically when defunding has been a stick with which to kind of manipulate those own ends like it's a sticky one basically. Yeah, and the question of the provocation of defunding also comes with the provocation of then what do you fund and how do you redistribute those resources to those most impacted by austerity by a conservative government by immigration policies. Yeah, by transphobic attitudes. Yeah, it's a that's a big question Cecilia. Does anyone else want to respond to that or we can just just very quickly like they're I know an island they I like the idea of this model instead I don't know how successful it would be and whereby the Arts Council does not fund like institutions and organizations they fund artists and like local authorities will fund the institutions and and something about that seems like a lit like slightly better just in the sense that like you know there are these very disparate Arts Council England and officers and for example the Northwest is in Manchester. So, but so everything goes to Manchester, like, live a full 40 minutes away. It has like a completely different experience of that funding. And I just wonder whether a local council shape would would be better. I don't know though. Thanks, Gabrielle. I'm going to move us to another question. This from Ellis and also Cleo, who are both asking about what does solidarity look like, especially when we are all isolated and yet connected online. How do we build collectivity how do we build solidarity. I'm just wondering if maybe Jade Montserrat, Annika and Tunde and said I can can speak to that. I think it was creating space to recognize the different perspectives that are there because even in the previous discussion about doing the work. I mean to do the work. I mean, for some, you know, institutions or organization doing the work is just giving money away and just, you know, doing a few things for Black History Month and that's it. So, just in terms of solidarity it's creating space to sort of engage with different perspectives. In terms of like long term that there's like more sustainability that can be achieved. Yeah, I think that's, there's a lot of, yeah, there's just a lot of a lot of things that are occurring in terms of money being thrown meetings wanting to take place events wanting to happen. And if all of these things aren't sort of, if the basics aren't sort of being checked, then then it kind of just feels a bit showy and mismatched. So returning to the basics. Jade or Tunde and said. I think I spoke, I spoke about solidarity in a something called parallel state, I think, maybe Sheffields. I wrote about it a little bit. It's really difficult to find. I'm interested in sort of picking up on what you meant Gabrielle about because I think that leads into solidarity about like your role in my case, like, I, yeah, I sort of refute the premise that you were speaking on then that maybe like the solidarity that I found in relation to that has been sort of, you know, widespread sort of people sort of picking what they want to demonstrate solidarity on that doesn't apply to you, but I do sort of, you know, I'd be interested in having sort of clarification about what you meant, just learn about that particular post but like, it's very difficult to maybe convey everyone's individual circumstances as well, because we relate it to ourselves right, trying to measure what solidarity can be in terms of how you can actually implement that the idea of refusal or whatever is all well and good. Practically, it's really impossible if you're not so socially mobile. And what you were talking about about sort of back to basics again this idea of reviewing what it is that and who we're being in solidarity with. I think that, you know, for me and what Gabrielle was referring to is totally sort of located in the UK as well and I'm interested in how it connects really interesting that you bring up Ireland and how the foundations of public new funded organizations that models could be possibly applied to here or elsewhere. I was really interested also in Jades speaking about the idea of radical love and I suppose if we have to talk about Tate today. I think that they, you know, they're doing a whole program on that's called a year of love and I think that what I may be seeing is that we have a very, we have very different ideas around love as well or loving in solidarity or, you know, and I think that the communities and the position that Jade is coming from Jade Foster is very different from any perception of what love has the possibility to be institutionally or structurally. There's a complete dissonance and I think there's a displaced responsibility whereby we can talk about things and I, I think that solidarity as well as action. Maybe it's more difficult for, well it's difficult for every one of us to call things out, you know, and sometimes that can feel like you're dying, and I don't advocate that to anybody, I don't advocate having to show like sort of bleed your emotions in a time with which to get anyone to pay any notice. Solidarity for me is maybe something quite sacred in that it's not, it's not something that you will see necessarily it's not something that will be demonstrated or displayed or it's not performance. So that's, you know, I think that's my take on it. Jade, and I think this can be a space where we do not need to talk about tape anymore. But thank you for sharing. Yeah, those really powerful ideas around solidarity, not as a performance something as a, something sacred. And I'm going to go to the next speaker and said, would you like to share. It's a bit of a long story but let's like try to jump in from an outsider's perspective as people who are new to the UK. What you see as someone new to the whole scene is that there has been some institutional structural problems that have been going on for some time. There are a few things that are happening at the moment as well. And I think that when you see all of them as new, you get the picture where for instance when we are talking about the funding as a way of making things go a bit more faster. From the perspective of an outsider, I can also sort of see that actually the UK might be very happy with the funding arts of any kind. And that when we start to sort of pick on institutions on how much lip service they're actually paying and not doing real things. So I sort of also see that some institutions have stopped paying that lip service even which is I think much more dangerous step towards where we're going. For instance, we have been talking about Black History Month and now the government is like saying things like talking about this in schools. In a way might be considered illegal even so it seems like as an outsider it seems like we're moving towards a phase when even lip service is going to look like something we would want basically. Like I said it might just be how you feel when you're overwhelmed with everything with the history and the new stuff as well. But yes, so in terms of solidarity maybe there needs to be like a bigger picture in the sense that there might be a time coming where the entire art institution as a whole might have to be protected. And even lip service is will have to be sort of like something that you look at. I don't know but this is like a bit of a more pessimistic look. Maybe I don't know. But it's like it's quite it's quite a realistic outlook because like as you're saying that I remembered as well that I am. I think the National Trust are being are currently being investigated or they're calling the charity commission to investigate them for not fulfilling the terms of their charitable aims because they're taking a closer look at National Trust buildings and their their role and place in the history of colonialism and slavery like that it's the proximity of the state and the state's own interest that this particular government's interests are like it's too close it's too close and like you're right and like cause to defund can be taken the other way like it's, I think cause to defund have to be quite carefully phrased because while we might understand it to mean one thing. God knows Tories have been fucking raring at the bit to defund the arts in exactly the same way. Yeah. Yeah. And that's a really good point towards at the same time of trying to create accountability. In decision makers who currently hold power. We also have to recognize that. Yeah, we're as a culture sector, we do have to collectivize our struggles. And sometimes these binaries are not useful. I mean, you know, the critique and the, the call for action is completely valid. But yeah, just trying to create two categories of, of art beings institutions and artists is sometimes unproductive. And like you said, Zarina, the conservative government is rearing to destroy the Arts Council. So working with them to transform how they fund and redistribute resources is, is, is needed. I just want to maybe to bring it back to how we will be spending our time over winter and what what what practices will be. What will we be what will we be putting in practice over this winter. What opens new doors rather than closes them. So I'd love to hear from from each of you. What will you be putting into practice across this winter. I might, I got in touch with a guy called Alan yesterday and it's in hell he might have a border terrier for me. So I intend going out and doing more walks. Me as well. I've signed up for nine week and black women's hiking group in London. So I'm going to be learning about navigating through forests. And I'm also learning Europe, which is my mother tongue. So yeah, connecting to your ancestry as well as as being outdoors. Me and Zarina always take December's off, which I'm looking forward to. It can be a bit full on when your job is like 24 seven because it's on the internet. I will be playing the new Zelda game on Nintendo switch. It's been my December break doing sweet, subtle. I mean, I feel like we have accrued the holiday to like have an actual rest like you imagine I'm not going to log on to anywhere. Well, we we come from a culture where there is no Christmas and we're still trying to get used to it. Right when we were trying to get used to it now it might be canceled so we're a bit. But we that's why I think we're going to be working with we just opened a new digital platform and exhibition without console funding. And so it's going to be open throughout December and there's going to be like live streaming performances as well so we're working. I'm going to spend some time drinking. I think I'm going to take Gabrielle's a lovely suggestion about just getting pissed once it to sustain yourself. No, no, I'm going to whiskey. That's a really good food. Spice and peace. You know, some planting food for the soul. And then probably like, I might watch that in the sunset back to reality TV. Again, because I've watched season three. I think it's season three now isn't it, but I'm going to rewatch it. I think and yeah just spend time with people who want a whole space with me and vice versa. People just exchange of really good energies. And just being around people just to ground myself really so December is a month of grounding, I think. Beautiful. Thank you everyone. I really enjoyed this conversation and in each track or question feel like we could have spent a lot longer speaking about it. So thank you for your honesty and integrity and generosity today.