Transcript

Josh: Maleke, thank you for accepting this invitation to be on Busy Being Black. I'm so delighted that you're here.

Maleke: As am I. Thank you very much.

Josh:  To open all my conversations on the show, I ask my guests the same question: How's your heart? 

Maleke: My heart is bright. It's beaming. I'm smiling looking at you. I'm feeling good this morning. And I'm just in a positive headspace overall. We may get to some of the transitions in my life, but these transitions are bringing me very close to Spirit, and it's the first time in a long time I've felt this way. And so I'm appreciative.

Josh: It's really remarkable to me how many people in my life, including myself, are in a state of transition—and not subtle transition either; big, world-shifting, transformation. How would you characterise the type of transition you're moving through right now? 

Maleke: Slow but abrupt, and what I mean by that is it's been a long relationship with my knowingness, but my action has been immediate and abrupt. And it feels a little out of my control. I have my own autonomy and authority in what I'm doing, but I can no longer deny this voice and this intuition. So that's why it feels so urgent. 

Josh: Exactly the same. You very kindly escorted me around Washington D.C. when I visited Last year. And I just want to say thank you again because we had such a delightful time together. And what I didn't know when I met you was that you have an MA in Cultural Sustainability. Talk to me about what that means. 

Maleke: Yes. So, my master's degree is in cultural sustainability. I also like to call it “applied anthropology,” and it's really looking at cultural heritage preservation amid rapidly changing sociopolitical dynamics, particularly those that are white supremacist oppressive systems. So thinking about what we're seeing, and we will continue to see, mass migratory patterns; we’re in the face of a genocide; we are experiencing rapid technological advancements: How does culture progress with all of these technologies and movements and changes? And so it's a lens and a theoretical purview to approach cultural work while looking toward the future. 

Josh: When I think of cultural sustainability, what comes to my mind is cultural preservation. I'm thinking of the need and the desire for Black queer people in particular to call back our culture, to reinforce the gates, if you will, because we're seeing so much of that culture not only seeping out by nature of our expressive culture but being co-opted and sold back to us. Can you go into what role sustainability and progress play together?

Maleke: In this present moment, progress does not often elicit sustainability. Progress can be quite gestural; progress can be quite symbolic. We're in the age of representation, diversity, access and inclusion; and, to use film as an example, I think of the number of roles that we see in cinema for Black actors, which may be quite substantial in comparison to 10 or 20 years ago. However, that's progress in quantity, not sustainability. What kind of stories are being continued? What narratives are being forefronted? So when I think about sustainability, I'm thinking about that connection between the past, present and future, and progress doesn't always have an invitation to or respect for the past. 

Josh: It brings up the word acceleration, right? Because what technologies are doing, for the most part, is accelerating, not only in their generation and application out into the world—their scale—they're also accelerating our human experience and flattening the human experience. And those of us who are paying close attention are really having to forcibly, slowly and abruptly ensure that we have the space within these technologies to tend to our communities, to sustain our cultures, to learn about ourselves and figure out who we are. So, I'm understanding cultural sustainability as an analysis of what's happening in this moment with a connection to the past and an eye towards the future. Because the future is the next moment, right? It's tomorrow. It's an hour from now.

Maleke: And because you used the word technology, it made me think about maybe a more succinct example. In the cultural sustainability circles that I run in, when the Renegade dance came out, it was one of the first viral TikTok dances; and we saw a product of Black culture that grew and moved with a sense of immediacy because of technology but that then doesn't sustain Black cultural producers. And when I say sustain, I mean in terms of the economy of visibility: they're not getting those influencer checks; they're not seen. But also I think about my fear of the future as it relates to regional cultures and particularly participatory culture. And I'll use dance again, as an example. I'm someone who spends too much time on TikTok, and there are a lot of dance trends. There are also a lot of slippages when we get to regional colloquialisms, and suddenly we're all speaking the same; but because of this technology, we may have access to this cultural information, but we don't always have the privilege of knowing the source, and nor are we required to be in community with that source. So if I can learn the lingo and the dance coming out of Oakland, California, having never been to Oakland, California, there is some sustainability being lost because we know how Black people create: we're creating in a participatory communal manner, and the internet and technology do not require that we participate in communion. It often gives gifts and gives the relics of culture without foregrounding the environment necessary to sustain said culture, with the embedded cultural values of participation in the community. 

Josh: That's culture as costume only, not even ceremonial costume; it's just something people put on and take off. The example that's coming to my mind that might illustrate the difference in another way is Paris is Burning. We've got Jennie Livingston—and we can get to politics around Jennie Livingston's access—a white lesbian documentarian going into club culture and ball culture and hearing first-person narratives about life as a queer, Black and trans person in what Jafari S. Allen calls” the long 1980s.” So, the provenance is there, it’s documented, it’s included; we have the source right there in front of us. However, many years later, we're able to have a more curious, complex and culturally relevant conversation about the politics of capturing Blackness and queerness and transness in that way and with that lens, right? What you're saying is, we're not getting that, right? We're not getting a snapshot of the original culture. Instead, we're getting what Jean Baudrillard called a “simulacra” of the original culture.

Maleke: Absolutely. And I’m thinking of Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò’s book, Elite Capture: the persons who have the privilege to touch a particular industry may not have a relationship with a community, but they may be made a spokesperson—and sometimes a community doesn't need a spokesperson: they can speak for themselves. I often hear that in my work as a curator: people are “giving voice to”. A lot of communities have a voice. You need to maybe de-platform yourself and platform and centre the originator and the voice of the community. 

Josh: What drew you to this particular area of study? 

Maleke: I'm from the suburbs of D.C.: Prince George's County, Maryland. Go-go music is an Afro-diasporic music genre that is original to Washington D.C. It is now the official music of the city. And I love go-go. I love this genre. And what I love about it particularly is its economy. It's where the Black dollar stays in constant rotation. And a lot of its members are self-taught artists and musicians. A lot of its members have a relationship with the incarceration system; they are returning citizens who are now able to find self-employment as artists, and they have created their own creative economy. I wanted to study that insular creative economy, and when I was looking at graduate programs, I was visiting many schools and thought maybe it was performance studies or perchance ethnomusicology, and all of those programs really were fixated on the art form; I was interested in the sociality around the art form. So cultural sustainability has a bit of a broader lens and it allowed me an entry point to not only focus on the music, but to really focus on the economy of that music. 

Josh: You are my introduction to go-go. I was unaware that it was the official music of Washington, D. C., and it's music that my spirit is like, “Oh, this is my shit,” right? But what really stood out to me was the hyper-localness of it. Local go-go bands compete against each other across Maryland and Washington, D. C. on these nighttime club circuits. And it made me think of this enduring question around culture at scale. I'll give you an example. We've got UK Black Pride, which is now the world's largest free Black Pride celebration, and it gets bigger and bigger every year because the demand for this inclusive and celebratory space keeps increasing. But with that scale, concessions have to be made, right? To facilitate the type of space that we need, to celebrate in. And it's really made me think deeply about what I want for Busy Being Black and indeed the new social good company I founded, Black Fruit Media. I'm recoiling a little bit from scale and moving closer, more intimate with and closer to the people I care about. Go-go is almost an affirmation from the ancestors: “Yes, stay local.”

Maleke: I love that gesture and that want to stay intimate. I'm someone who loves intimacy—and I subscribe to your Substack! I love all of these intimate communities. I think we're moving to a very niche-oriented culture. People are finding their communities in a very specific way. But as it relates to go-go, D.C. is the city that has the most rapid rate of gentrification, and as we see rapid changes in the population of Washington, go-go is our local, unofficial but official documentation of the Black Washington experience. So those stories that may not be covered by the news, or may be covered by the news in a skewed and particular direction; the colloquialisms, the language, the way that we self map. There are neighbourhoods I know that will not be found on paper, like Trinidad, a neighbourhood in the Northeast. I'm someone who's from the area and who doesn't really know the history of why it's called Trinidad, but that's an informal name of the neighbourhood. But that name is then affirmed in go-go. I think go-go is a method, and any insular cultural production is a method of cultural sustainability—continuing to progress the language and the politic and the ethos in a way that is almost impermeable; it cannot be penetrated by an outside force because what is keeping it going is that communal, human touch. We are looking for humanity at this moment.

Josh: I'm having an a-ha! moment. I'm reading The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram. It's my new erotic ecology tome. The short version is that David Abram is talking about our relationship as humans to the “animate rondure” of the earth, to this sensible and sensuous, more-than-human world around us. And I'm in the chapter about flesh as language and where he's going into the history of the alphabet. What does the alphabet have to do with erotic ecology? It turns out that the 26 letters of the alphabet have, ultimately, a connection to the ways that our predecessors were attempting to describe their felt experience. Symbols and cave paintings and smells and tastes were also directions and ways to move and things to look out for. And all of this sensuous and sensible experience was a way to get around; it was also a map, right? And so that's coming up for me around this closed circuit of go-go; this language is a way to communicate with each other. It beckons towards Trinidad and to these spaces that tell those of us in the know how to get from point A to point B. I love making connections like that. That's so exciting to me. Speaking of which, you're a curator for the Go-go Museum and Café in Washington, D.C. Talk to us about your work and your practice there.

Maleke: The Go-Go Museum is getting ready to open, and they have several exhibitions opening when it first opens, but one of them is called “The Royal Pocket,” which is my curation and which connects go-go to its Afro-diasporic roots, particularly in West Africa and South America. That work was talking to scholars across the globe around these sonic connections but also looking at the visual culture of go-go, the gestural culture, the performance culture, the dance culture and looking to make connections across the globe. I'm very proud of the forthcoming Royal Pocket exhibition. In go-go, we have this particular cadence called “the pocket.” When you're really in the groove on the congos, it's called the pocket. You're really in something. You think about putting your hand in the pocket, you're stuck. You're locked in a particular spiritual moment. And so Mo [Ronald Moten, co-founder of the Go-Go Museum] decided to call it the Royal Pocket to put some respect on the influence of this cadence. And,  as you said, go-go is specific to Washington, but other artists have collaborated and certainly been inspired by go-go musicians. But that constant groove, that pocket, is the staple of go-go. The Royal pocket puts respect on the pocket, but also it acknowledges that the pocket is not fully and wholly distinct to Washington, that it is the great great great great grandchild of other music forms across the diaspora. 

Josh: I imagine that in the process of this curatorial practice, you must get surprised so often. What surprised you? And maybe surprised you and transformed your understanding of go-go in the process?

Maleke: I was coming into this scholarship around the same time I was really coming into my understanding of ancestral veneration and thinking about some of the performance gestures of go-go—and maybe “performance gestures” isn't the best way to define them; they are rituals. Go-go has embedded spiritual properties. When I was first starting my graduate program, I went with a go-go band, Backyard Band, to Accra, Ghana. They were the first go-go band to perform in West Africa. They were, at the time, shooting a documentary about these connections; and we were at The Door of No Return, they built a stage and it was a beautiful performance. And when I tell you, it was a spiritually moving performance. We are returning these drums home, and I remember they performed the go-go version of Adele's “Hello.” So, if you imagine, you're seeing the Ivory Coast, you're on the shore, you are in the slave dungeons hearing “Hello from the other side.” 

Josh: Wow. Oof. 

Maleke Yeah. It was a moving experience, and it shook me and made me realise that this work is not just as someone interested in culture, but let me lean into the spirituality of this work and how might a cultural sustainability lens inform how we sustain and continue those indigenous ideas and genetic knowings of ancestral connection. How can we continue them and share them with future generations through go-go? A big part of the genre is call and response. A big part of the performance is shouting out and calling out a list of those who have recently departed. You might have a performance where the audience members pass a notecard, or show their cell phone screen, and ask the band to call out the names of their ancestors. This is a very spiritual engagement. And I think that's something that maybe was not surprising necessarily, but was enlightening. And it's something that I wanted to take a little bit more seriously as it relates to the continued research I'll do in go-go.

Josh: Do you ever feel anointed? 

Maleke: Always! Did I ever?! 

Josh: I can only explain the feeling visually, which is odd for me because I'm a language person, but when you were talking, you and I were travelling through this kind of creamy iridescent energetic stream and the phrase was, “Oh shit. We've been dropped in!” Because you're a messenger to me in this moment, right? I understand my spiritual stimuli as head-to-toe goosebumps. And I just had them as you were talking. And so much is coming up for me right now. This return to West Africa via the music and drums and music as a portal, right? What you're talking about is gatekeeping, in the West African cosmological sense. It is Mikael Owunna who talks about this—and many others—that queer West Africans, back in the day, were understood as the gatekeepers between the spiritual and the physical worlds. We had access. We were the ones who were in charge of the rituals, the anointings and the message delivery. And so here you are on my show talking about a return to the slave dungeons, acting as a portal, right? You are in a literal portal and returning these drums to the source—and your role there as a queer Black person in the diaspora. Wow. That's amazing. 

Maleke: Thank you for recalling it in that way, ‘cause now I'm feeling the goosebumps. It was a great privilege and honour to be in that space and to continue to be in community with such thoughtful artists and musicians within the go-go economy and community. I'm a nerd, like at heart, I'm a nerd. So to be among fellow nerds, it's beautiful. And these are cool kids, these are cool guys. It's a cool energy. And coolness doesn't always equate to nerdiness. Sometimes those things are conflicting.

Josh: Not all cool people are nerds, but all nerds are cool. 

Maleke: I love how you phrased that because I absolutely agree. And these are cool nerds. I just feel at home.

Josh: The Go-Go Museum really piques my interest around a particular curiosity I have around art and civic spaces. Perhaps it might be best to begin with how you understand the role of the art gallery as a civic space.

Maleke: A civic space for me is a space of communion and conversation, but I think in the present time, there has not yet been a welcoming of disagreement. I think that the U. S., politic does not welcome contention or conflict, and I would love a gallery to be a space that welcomes conflict and contention for the sake of progress, not for the sake of just entertainment. When I think about the gallery as a civic space, it is my hope that the works—meaning the works on view—the framing of said works and the persons who are viewing said works have an invitation to feel good, comfortable and confident enough to share their thoughts. I think galleries have an embedded power dynamic where you view the stagnant work on the wall as “correct.” You are just meant to appreciate it. We no longer have ... there is a lot of cultural criticism on TikTok, but it relates to popular culture. When I think about an art museum or art gallery, there's not quite yet a popular, critical lens for the way that we engage with discourse around art. It typically is meant to tell us something, and we're meant to receive it, but we're not often meant to have a discourse. And so when I think about a civic space, I think about discourse. And in that way, I believe that the art industry has some work to do to welcome more conflicting, contentious, generative discourse.

Josh: For listeners, “civic spaces are areas that foster community, social interaction and civic engagement. They can include parks, libraries, community centres and other public places that are open to everyone, regardless of background or socioeconomic status. Civic spaces are important because they provide a place for people to come together, share ideas, learn from one another and build a sense of community. They're also critical for democratic participation, allowing citizens to engage in civic discourse and debate and to hold government accountable. At their best, civic spaces help to promote social cohesion, strengthen democracy and cultivate a sense of civic pride.” Now, I feel like this conversation around the art gallery, and the museum more broadly, as a civic space is incredibly important because you're absolutely right that the spectrum of conflict or dissension that is enabled in democratic societies writ large, but within the cultural institutions that uphold those nations or those ostensibly democratic societies, also limit how we can have a conversation about history or the present or the future, I'm thinking about someone who sent me a screenshot of a painting from some guy in LA and she said, “Oh, I love this.” And I was like, “Oh, I hate that.” It was a black and white picture of James Baldwin and the really well-known picture from during the Civil Rights Movement, with the police and their dogs attacking Black protesters. And there was some glitter on it and some rainbows on it. These are rehearsed images at this stage, right? These are images we know very well. How do these images with glitter on them help us move this conversation forward? And you and I began to talk about it. And I would love us to go into it here about the limitations within these spaces imposed upon Black artists and Black gallery goers.

Maleke: Yes. I was so excited when you were posting Legacy Russell's Black Meme. The book is so beyond and necessary and powerful. And so I'm thinking about the idea of memetic Blackness. There is this snapshot, if you would, of an iconic image from a particular point in history, but what it does is it requires the image to perform a certain moral gesture, to finger wag at the white patrons or perchance to be affirming to the Black child who's looking at it; and all of these pretences and expectations of Black cultural production, to me, are quite limiting because they do not allow for ugliness or evilness or the full spectrum of humanity. I think Black artists, in particular, have been canonised by their ability to affirm the American racial contract. And what I mean by the racial contract is the unspoken rules and hierarchies of race in the United States. To the conversation earlier about progress: it may be progress that, in 2021, the New Museum for the first time had an exhibition of Black artists about Black art. But what is curious about that show, which is called “Grief and Grievance,” is that death and the visuality and spectacle of death were the invitations for this progressive moment. So visibility is not always in our best interest. 

Josh: Was it Kehinde Wiley that did the Black man in a hoodie on a horse in Times Square?

Maleke: Yes.

Josh: Mmmhmm.

Maleke: Is that progress or is it promotion? Who really gets to create Black popular culture? There are also some stats and data that point to the economic and educational backgrounds of those Black Americans who are creating what is most visible about Black culture. And the majority of the time, the communities that they are representing, they have no intimate social relationship with. And when you say “a Black man with a hoodie on a horse in Times Square,” I think about a Black kid in a hoodie, who is a very real person, walking around New York City. They don't necessarily get the benefit of that commission, of this visibility; they still have to walk around with the real-world dynamics of what that symbol of a hoodie and Black skin means. 

Josh: What infuriated me about Kehinde's approach to that was the inspiration. And it's been a couple of years since I read his response about this, so don't quote this as gospel, but it was at a time when these intense conversations about public monuments of those who owned slaves and the immortalisation of those who caused horrific violence to Black people. And so Kehinde was looking at, in particular, these white men on horses and went to reclaim the kind of emblematic, visual language of this, but that is an aspiration to terror. That's what that aspires to. We're not reclaiming the elegance and gracefulness of the horse. We're not celebrating the hoodie as a token of refusal or escape or marronage or subterfuge. There's no celebration there. Instead, it just plops a Black boy in a hoodie, on top of a horse, and in Times Square. It was just so infuriating to me. It felt so lazy.

Maleke: It brings me back to cultural sustainability and cultural progress: what about Black culture is being sustained and communicated in that gesture if it requires us to foreground white cultural iconography? A lot of Black Americans live in culturally insular spaces. I'm not someone who often compares Black culture to white culture, but my industry requires that I make such connections. And I think it's a disservice to the sustainability of my cultural posture and politic because the connections are not quite natural. And when I say natural, I'm talking about just the way that culture develops and sustains itself. It requires certain social interactions. And if we live in a nation that is continuously quite segregated, it's not natural in the way that culture would progress that I would think about a comparison or a reference to a culture that I'm not intimately in relationship with. 

Josh: I read a wonderful interview with Neferti Tadiar about how she's documenting the lives and resistances of women and marginalised people within the so-called global south. She says, “The feminist politics of art is a politics where art is a site of struggle and transformation, not in or for itself but rather as an inalienable part or medium of flourishing socialities, a vital activity that is part and parcel of the collective making and remaking of our life worlds. So a feminist politics, not so much of art as refusal, but rather of the ends of art.” And that made me wonder what politics informs your outlook and your curatorial practice.

Maleke: I was really excited for this prompt and curiosity, and I'm going to take a moment to read a guiding light for myself, which is E. Jane's NOPE Manifesto:

"I am not an identity artist just because I'm a Black artist with multiple selves. I am not grappling with notions of identity and representation in my art. I am grappling with safety and futurity. We are beyond asking should we be in the room. We are in the room. We are also dying at a rapid pace and need a sustainable future. We need more people, we need better environments, we need places to hide, we need Utopian demands, we need a culture that loves us. I am not asking who I am. I'm a Black woman and expansive in my Blackness and my queerness as Blackness and queerness are always already expansive. None of this is as simple as ‘identity and representation’ outside of the colonial gaze. I reject the colonial gaze as the primary gaze. I am outside of it in the land of NOPE." 

And it relates to what we just mentioned with the sculpture in Times Square. I do not have to affirm the colonial gaze by referencing it in the way I approach my artistic practice or my daily life or my personal politics. It is quite exhausting for my existence and thus my creations to always be in response to and in reaction to the oppressive systems that I live within. I think about the neighbourhood I live in, for example. I live in Anacostia in Washington, D. C. Anacostia is a part of town they call East of the River. It's east of the Anacostia River. There is a man-made segregation and partition, which has been scapegoated as this river, this natural water flow. But truly what it is is the continuation of redlining and systemic deprivation. The way that my neighbourhood is talked about is one of scarcity and lack. And one may feel combative to that, meaning they may want to fight for the humanity of this community. I do not want to fight for a humanity from someone who's already made a judgment based on the socio-economic and racial makeup of this area. What I am more concerned with is It's seeing the beautiful children every day. I'd rather just be in pleasure. I'd rather be in what feels good and what is here and now and not spend my life and thus my practices—my writing practice, my curatorial practice—and I'll give honour and flowers to our ancestor, Toni  Morrison, who said racism is a distraction. I could spend my time fighting for my humanity, or I could just live in my humanity, in my fullness and affirm the people who share that humanity with me, and who share, create and sustain from an insular, self-sovereign position. And so when I think about my practice, I'm thinking about cultural sustainability. I'm thinking about not necessarily educating en masse, which would be a byproduct, hopefully; but I'm quite interested in educating those who are already attuned, who are already interested, and for whom the stakes are higher. The stakes are literally life and death. That is the primary goal and audience. 

Josh: When I started Busy Being Black, very well-meaning Black mentors said, “At some point, you will have to speak beyond queer Black people.” And I said, “No, I won't.” I have no desire to be a medium or a mediator [between white and Black culture]. Take this conversation for example. This is just one of the hundred-plus conversations where a queer Black person has sat across from me, another queer Black person, and taught me something brand fucking new. We're robbed when those of us who feel called to this cultural work—who are called to tell stories, who feel called to be messengers—when we're distracted by trying to convince people, as you said, who've already made a judgment. In doing so, we're leaving behind the people literally around us who are asking for more and that we have the capacity to give them. And so I'm with you I'm staying right where I am. Toni Morrison also said she claimed the edge as the centre. Even as I build a new social good company, I’m choosing to focus on Black LGBTQ people. Let me stand on business.

Maleke: Absolutely—and my mouth was fixed to say period. So I might as well say it: period. Absolutely. Because those who are meant to come will come, and also those are keywords for people who want to learn from Black queer people. And those are my people, people who want to come to the source. But I think about institution building and the age of diversity, equity, access and inclusion. A lot of DEI initiatives also threaten and thwart the sustainability of Black institutions. Because the dollars, the attention, the audience goes to the homogenous, white cultural institutions and their values. These large-scale, well-funded funded institutions now they have one Black artist or one Black show or one Black curator. As someone who's gotten their start in Black museums and has experienced the great scarcity of Black museums, not in quantity, but in their resource-ability, I want us—and for those non-Black, non-queer listeners—to think about the value of their attention and how their attention translates to material value and thus the ability to sustain not only an artwork or community, but an institution, especially Black institutions that serve a myriad of civic purposes. These spaces have been where people can get their HIV testing and go for their Medicaid. Black people think in a very generative and communal way, and a majority of the time, Black cultural institutions are not just the artwork on the wall but have embedded social amenities and services. 

Josh: We could almost say that within these Black liminal spaces—and we should say they're often forcibly liminal, right?—we're actually seeing rehearsals and practices of the world as it should be. Here we are tending to our communities. Here we are showing up for each other. Here we are offering HIV testing and Medicaid services, whatever is needed in that community is provided by that institution. And I think there's something so powerful in this, right? This takes us full circle back to this idea of locality or hyper locality versus scale: when you remove that desire to aspire to spaces that were never designed to accommodate us, the abundance we’re able to offer to our communities feels limitless.

Maleke: Asé. 

Josh: Anyone who has listened to me talk for more than five minutes will know that I am obsessed with surrealism. It's absolutely my favourite type of art. And I'm a big fan of the Manifesto of Surrealism, which was written by Andre Breton in 1924. This is my favourite quote, perhaps of all time, “The marvellous is always beautiful. Anything marvellous is beautiful. In fact, only the marvellous is beautiful.” And I wrote in the first edition of “Field Notes” that “the marvellous is beautiful because of its demand for our presence and attentiveness. The marvellous is testament to our aliveness.” When you think about your role as a curator, as a scholar, as someone embedded within his community, what role does aliveness or liveliness play in your vision for what the gallery can be not only in community but in the larger art world?

Maleke:  This is such a great question. Thank you. I think about improvisation, improvisation being a central and shared value of Black culture and one that is not often welcomed in cultural institutions. As someone who works between the academy and cultural institutions, primarily museums, I hope that I am a facilitator and encourager of improvisation, of reacting in real-time to the artist's needs, to the audience's needs, to create that civic engagement we spoke to earlier, to not be quite so fixed. If someone has a reaction to a work that it's taken seriously and it's informing what the institution produces next. I would love to continue to practice a posture of improvisation. It's been such a privilege in my life to be flexible and nimble and open to the universe and to the abundance of understanding that is not from my ego. In my work, I would love to also de-centre my ego and my authority, be open to all influence and really allow the practice and the work to be in relationship to the real world. I use “real world” intentionally because the art world is a colloquial saying, but it's already a fixed segment of people with its own sociality, rules and cultural norms. And it's quite white supremacist in the way that it requires us to perform and engage. 

So I want to be improvisational. I want to be like jazz. I want to be alive and to be flexible and fluid and queer and curious—and ugly. I'm having such a good relationship with ugliness right now. I don't think Black culture has privileged our curiosity and participation in things that are not overtly, morally astute. I no longer want to perform morality. I want to be enlivened to improv and to have some darkness and to be attracted to darkness. And to me, that is really Black excellence. That's a phrase I often reject, but if I can queer it a little bit, then excellence is the ability to have full autonomy and authority in your particular Black experience.

Josh: Maleke, thank you for this really wonderful, intellectually invigorating, spiritually enlivening conversation. I adore you. 

Maleke: I also want to say thank you. You're the first person I'm speaking to today. This is such a great way to start my day. Thank you.