blackness

We dig up some unreleased fragments of our conversation with interdisciplinary writer, artist, editor, curator, and plant lover Imani Mason Jordan. We discuss Audre Lorde’s call to action in “Your Silence Will Not Protect You,” exploring Imani’s interpretation of it. Additionally, we talk about tuning in—rather than out—as a strategy to find rest and respite, to nourish ourselves and recharge through simple things. Finally, we delve into Imani’s collaborative practices.

In this podcast, researcher, writer and curator Tania Safura Adam takes us inside her research processes and strategies to revive the individual and collective memories of blackness in Spain: an urgent and tenacious writing operation based on fragments that are often scattered and disjointed. The public dissemination of these silenced and ignored narratives has the power to make us feel uncomfortable, and in this discomfort lies the potential for transformation. We also talk about gaps in the archive, about potential archives, and about what it means to take responsibility for this. And on a more personal note, about what motherhood and child rearing in the diaspora means for her and for many other women.

In this podcast, Mikaelah Drullard dismantles the clichés of Western progressivism and reminds us that the plantation has not gone away. With words that cut like machetes, she shows how human rights are still the key to a house that only white bodies can enter. Against the impunity of a livestreamed genocide, Mikaelah takes up a radical gesture of decolonisation: the rejection of humanity itself. She also criticises white feminism, whose promise of equality breaks down when skin is in the game, and she draws on insurgent genealogies that invent other ways of living. Her defiance also fuels the power of transvestite technologies: fingernails as political accessories, beauty as revenge. A celebration of that which has been denied. 

We dig up some unreleased fragments from our conversation with researcher, writer, and curator Tania Safura Adam. Here, she reflects on the inner drive in the face of injustice, writing as a form of healing, and the need to protect one’s own time. We also talk about the personal and collective implications of assimilation, denial, and trauma within the context of the African diaspora and migrant life, sharing family experiences that connect Mozambique, Lisbon, and Madrid. Kizombando the past, she also shares how music, literature, and art help to recognize what one tries to forget: to understand and share experiences.