JALEN ELK: THE CYBORG WHO LEFT HIS WILL ON FILM

In conversation with marlow magdalene
Photo by Davis Dylan
Film Stills by Jalen Elk

Jalen X Marlow - 3_26_24, 6.23 PM.mp3

The sound of T.V. static interrupts a clip from a 1990’s news outlet. 
The news reporter states, “A report for tonight. Thank you for joining us. 
We'll all be Black next..we'll all be back next week and I'll be Black. 
We'll be back, though. It’s not my night–.” The T.V. static cuts her off. 

A chorus of children eerily sing in the background as a murder of crows caw across the sky.

L.A. gothic filmmaker, marlow magdalene, interviews Detroit cyber-grunge filmmaker, Jalen Elk a.k.a. BIG UP MENACE. magdalene and Elk discuss his appreciation for 1990s Japanese Cyberpunk cinema, growing up in the motor city, and his effortless attempts at moving beyond a “Black Aesthetic.”





Elk: Yeah, we're just going somewhere. I’m very sorry.

magdalene: I'm the king of tangents. So the fact that I have not taken us on a tangent this entire time, I'm a little proud of myself. 

Elk: We're doing good. We’re doing great. Even though we’ve already broken the 12th wall of this experience. 

magdalene: What did you do this morning? Tell me how you started.

Elk: I've been recording a couple of pieces of work for the past six hours, so I woke up really early. I'm out in Chicago right now, so I've been going really far with these morning walks. So that's kind of how it started…I went for a walk, and then I recorded for the first couple of hours.


It's not corny, but I just listen to the sounds of the city, and that helps me. It's very therapeutic just to have silence for a bit, so that's where I've been.

magdalene: So the first time we met and began talking, you gave me a bit of a homework assignment, which I really appreciate; I love to do some research. But you told me to watch Pinocchio 964. 


magdalene: I truly think watching this cyber grunge [film] feels like an erotic fever dream. I haven't really watched something like this in a minute. 

magdalene: And it truly opened my world. I became very obsessed but I need to know why you wanted me to watch this film. 

Elk: It's funny because I was eating a brioche, right? And I was going to say, watch this Adam Sandler film or something deep like a Minister Louis Farrakhan ten-hour speech. 

So I decided to go easy on you and give you this film called Pinocchio 964, which is directed by one of my favorite directors, Shozin Fukui. 

I hope you enjoyed it.  How was the experience? Did you have fun?

magdalene: I did have fun. I was a little nauseous during it. But it was tight. I think a scene that really stuck out to me was the subway scene.


magdalene: Yeah, the subway vomit scene. I had to replay it four times because I was just so enthralled, but at the same time deeply grossed out.


Elk: Yeah, ironically, that film, I think is his second best, or more so it’s an honorable mention. His best film is Rubber’s Lovers (1996) and the parallel between both of those films is one is black and white and in color. The thing about Pinocchio [964] is that color gives you a more in-depth aspect to it, you know? So you can really feel the moment and it's very intense.


And I really feel like he transmuted heaven and hell in this one film. And it represents how people are caught up in this cybernetic realm now, to an extent. But most people are moving very machine-like. So I feel like he captures that aspect in such a grotesque manner. 


Like I was very flabbergasted, but I admired him for his guerrilla style.


magdalene: I feel similar to Shozin Fukui, especially with your work, you're not one to shy away from body horror, and you're also not one to shy away from being sort of this imitation of being a cyborg, which is a character that you really embody in specific in your short film, Anthology Du Motion Noir (2023). 


You're starring as the main character, but you're also the writer and director. I see so much inspiration from Pinocchio 964, but for me also, you being a Black filmmaker, I feel like you take it in such a different world and direction. 


I'm so curious as to how you navigate being on screen and also being behind the camera when you're writing your films.

Elk:  I think the biggest aspect of making a piece before I even actually execute shooting any type of body of work, whatever realm it is (art, music, film, dance) because you know, everything's one big dance of life, we're all a bigger picture of God's image or whatever God is to whoever. I feel like the important aspect of learning by yourself and studying your reference points is the biggest part for me. 


It's humbling yourself and saying, “Hey, you have something great in your heart, in your mind that you want to pour out on your sleeve with the work, but you got to study these other excellent legends first because they've done it long before you were even here in the physical essence at least.” 


So that’s the biggest thing I'll go back and study all these different references from all walks of life, and then it embodies itself to an idea. And I'll script it down and say, okay. And majority of the time it stems from personal life experience.


In 2008 I stayed in the Salvation Army shelter on the eastside of Detroit when I was in third grade. That’s when I first started skateboarding. I had a PSP and I watched this film, called The Zeitgeist. Around that time, everything was very metal; the building inside was just like a lunch hall, so everything was very silvery and metal—in a cold slab type of way.

And it's funny because I'll use experiences like that, from back then and that gritty Detroit reference, to now in such a divinely guided way that I really just stemmed from my past experiences in life. Long story short.

Audio Description: Soundbite from Anthologies Du Moution Noir (2022). 

magdalene: What makes you such a complex artist is this juxtaposition that you do between really grotesque imagery, showing the grittiness of the city, and these beautiful landscape shots. But at the same time, they feel like paintings, you know? 


Something that we were touching on a little bit too is throughout the chaos in your film it feels like this journey of rebirth. These landscape portraits, to me, create moments of solace where we kind of get to sit with all the chaos that we just saw.

You talk about going on these walks throughout Chicago, you talk about being out in the city…I'm so curious what brought on, in particular, editing these really quiet shots which again creates such a beautiful moment of rest within your work.


Elk: The most important aspect, I think, or I feel, is really keeping quiet when it's time to keep quiet. And that could be staying indoors. When I first started working on Black Sheep, I had COVID, and I wrote the script. Then I ended up building the set for about ten hours each day. 


Around the end of the film, I went to Chicago in the autumn of 2022, and I was there for about a month. I just wore this suit every single day, strictly wore this suit, had my tripod with me and my camera, and literally was on the go, just out and about. 

And those were the quiet moments because when I was in the world of the actual film in my sets, I had to be in that; I had to embody the essence of this character; I had to tap into that spirit of how this person feels or thinks. Because really it's Edward, it's not Tim Burton. And that's a reference point. As far as my directorial/character standpoint.


So I really had to step outside of myself. But this character's essence is really internal, it's an essence internally that’s inside of me that I just embodied. And I really made sure that when I shot outside, it was completely different from the world of the character, because it was really just the reality of what Jalen was viewing in nature.

...I really had to step outside of myself. But this character's essence is really internal, it's an essence internally that’s inside of me that I just embodied.

magdalene: These two very complex sides of one character that you embody show up in that shot with the beetles crawling over the model’s faces; I’m so obsessed with those shots. [It’s such a] beautiful cinematic gesture of showing something really grotesque, and yet, it felt like a commentary on how we're kind of really obsessed with beauty right now. We're in such a superficial era, in particular within our generation. That shot just felt so post-punk to me. It just felt like, “Who the fuck cares about this really beautiful picture of this person on this cover?” These beetles are taking over and almost eroding it. I'm so curious as to how that started.  Where did you get the beetles from? I want to just kind of be in your mind for a little bit for that particular shot.

Elk: Yeah, I really like your take and you pretty much hit the spot with that essence as far as the beauty standard. I feel like every being is beautiful in whatever way that means to them and the world, but I did want to capture an image of what I felt was a standard being pushed on the masses. 

In reverse, it might not even be about the image on the back, but what’s over that beautiful image? But it's both duality with everything. And that's why I'm glad you took that because really that's what it truly was about that beauty standard throughout the whole film of what is beautiful to me.

I learned transmuting life experience from a very young age so the most hellish things became very heavenly to me because I learned how to appreciate the ability to even appreciate. And I try to capture that with images like that because I used to have the faintest heart when I was younger. And I think when I saw how ruthless the world can be it created this beautiful image of sternness with visuals and I try to represent that with my work because it can be just as stern or off-putting to someone else. But if they know that reference point, it truly is a vulnerable, beautiful thing.

magdalene: When I first saw your film, I watched it and I just was like, ‘Oh, he’s sensitive’. There is a certain type of tenderness and fragility that you play with your masculinity that I think is really refreshing. There’s such a need to perform a certain type of monolithic Black masculinity and there's something that you do that just fully rejects that. Whatever expectations you came in with, while watching [the film], you completely shut it down within the first 20 seconds of your film.

Elk: The best reference to that statement is on “Dead or Alive,” [which is] the first track on my album. Like where I said ‘Your preconceptions projected are spine-tingling see rejected;’ I feel like I'm constantly trying to reject any preconceptions.  As long as you feel comfortable in yourself, as whatever being you like to interpret yourself as I feel like it's completely fine to be against the grain of that. 

Especially as a Black man from Detroit, you know, they wanted me to be overly masculine, or in the art game, people wanted me to be more feminine but I feel like we exude these things daily. As long as there is a balance with that, it can shock others because it's either one or the other, especially with work. You know? 

Most people don't want to stand. They'd rather fall or get in line in the crowd with everybody and deep down, they're heartbroken for the rest of their lives because they're portraying a role that they're not. 


And I think the important thing is just to be yourself and not be afraid of being excluded because it was divinely guided for you to be there at that time and place. No man can stop anything even if it appears that way in this physical way, you know?

So I think that is the biggest thing. Just own up to yourself. Look at the image, like what you see, or if you don't do something about it.  If you can't change your situation, you can change your outlook on it and that outlook can change your situation. 

And I think that's kind of what I'm doing with my sexuality internally. Just as a man out and about, I don't even feel like a man or a woman or anything.

I just feel like a being of eternal light. So maybe other people need to see themselves as that and that's how they can get comfortable. Just look at yourself like a light with a little bit of clouds around it. 

Most people don't want to stand. They'd rather fall or get in line in the crowd with everybody and deep down, they're heartbroken for the rest of their lives because they're portraying a role that they're not.

The soundscape of the interview includes electronic field recordings and soundbites from magdalene’s film archive. Interspersed throughout the conversation are sound clips from Jalen’s short film. 

Check out Anthology Du Motion Noir (2023) here. 

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JALEN ELK

JUS SOLI is a multidisciplinary project exploring Afro-Mexican identity within the coastal communities of Costa Chica, Oaxaca. As a group, Afro-Mexicans are largely invisible. In Mexico there are currently 1.4 million people that identify as Afro-descendant. The coastal region of Costa Chica (southern part of Guerrero and northern part of Oaxaca) currently has the largest population of Afro-descendants in Mexico.

Mexico's constitution is the only one in Latin America that does not specifically mention citizens of African descent. In 2015, for the very first time, the Mexican government included its Afro-descendants in a national survey. The survey served as a preliminary count before the 2020 national census, where "black" debuted as an official category for the first time. Constitutional recognition will hopefully give Afro-descendants access to educational grants, medical services, and social security benefits.

Upon moving to Mexico in 2018 Richardson learned about the often unacknowledged historical presence of African descendants in Mexico. The project, Jus Soli which translates to; right of the soil, concentrates on the Afro-Mexican community living in Costa Chica (Oaxaca) leading up to the census of 2020. This specific census was of historical significance as it was the first one (after the interim census in 2015) to acknowledge those of Afro-Mexican descent on the forms. In Mexico, census data are used as input for the distribution of economic resources to states and municipalities. Therefore the 2020 census communicates a promise for implementation of policies that extend to the needs of those of Afro-Mexican descent.

Richardson captured ways in which the community of Costa Chica navigates the duality of their African descent within the Mexican socio-political context. In the first installment of the project he explores the duality between being both present (on a social level), though absent (on a political level). This juxtaposition nearly renders the subjects as invisible. Richardson plays with this idea of invisibility in his vignettes. He considers the discrepancy between those two states a fundamental part of Blackness


As Richardson learned more about the rites and customs of the community in Costa Chica, he saw parts of his own African-American heritage mirrored back. Through this epiphany, the portraits ultimately became self portraits. Providing a portal to reflect on the overarching notion of a universal Black experience. To Richardson this is the core principle of the project and a point of departure for central dialogue.

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JUS SOLI

ECHOES OF REALITY: Nourished By Time's Musical Vision


Interview on 2/11/24 by Patrick No
Photography by Amira Green

In an office chair at his childhood residence, Marcus Brown, known as Nourished By Time, is casually sitting in his home studio. A place where he created his first album, where he learned guitar, where he evolved into the musician he is today. A Baltimore native, now touring the globe, is questioning his next steps… Do I move to NYC? London? For now, all he knows is that the Super Bowl is on national television this evening. 

Being heralded on multiple media outlets as one of the top releases of the year with his album Erotic Probiotic 2, off of Scenic Route, I caught Marcus at a moment of bliss within his jam-packed life schedule. I spoke with Marcus about his time before he was a touring musician, his love for the Beatles, and why he enjoys London so much. His new EP off XL Records, Catching Chickens, is out now.

Patrick No: How are you? How was your weekend? 

Marcus Brown: My weekend was pretty chill. Yeah, I went to a fish restaurant, got some sea bass, and chilled with my family. I'm going to watch the Super Bowl. I don't think it's going to be a good one.

PN: I've heard that you're a Ravens fan, actually so... 

MB: It’s a whole thing with Lamar Jackson. He went through this whole contract dispute with the Ravens. They didn't want to pay him, then he got paid. Now it's all good and we had a great season. It was supposed to end in a Super Bowl. We just got out the first round, but we were ranked first the whole season. I mean, he won MVP for the year, but just as a team, we have nothing to show for it.

PN: I want to talk about your time growing up in Baltimore. I always feel like whenever I talk to a musician or any artist, there's a moment in your youth, where something just clicks. It might be a family member putting you on to music, or a friend, co-worker, or teacher. Was there a moment when it clicked?

MB: I would say Baltimore was more of a dream state. A heavy “subconscious-like” time for me. I was there from where I was born until I was 17, which was when I left for college. I feel like that's when it clicked when I was in college. That's when I look back, and I'm like, "Damn, it kind of all came from my time in Baltimore." Baltimore definitely shaped my tastes and my sense of humor. I'm more dynamic because of it. I grew up pretty middle class, never really had too much or too little. I went to public school my whole life. So in Baltimore, that means you're meeting people like you, you know?

PN: It sounds like Baltimore and your time there has given your music a background, or story of your beginnings.

MB: More so in high school. In middle school, and when I was younger, I knew I liked music, but it was more so just like my iPod Shuffle and the radio. My dad got Sirius Radio.

MB: Yeah, it was a big deal. My dad's a hip-hop purist. He stopped listening to hip-hop around the 90's. When it got too gangsta rap, he was like, "Nah." He still listened to Tribe Called Quest and De la Soul. But his guys were more Eric B & Rakim. Those were his guys, ya know? During my shows, I have this sampler that I use, sometimes with this Eric B & Rakim song called "Paid in Full." There's like a seven minute, long version. It has all these crazy, layers of samples. I found some of the samples and use them in my live shows.

PN: That's awesome, I love the throwback to childhood. Let's talk about the music scene in Baltimore. You have like, people like JPEGMafia, Beach House, and Animal Collective. You know, people like that, with a pretty wide range. Were you going to like DIY shows when you were younger in the city?

MB: No, honestly. I was a really sad, depressed kid that, like, never left the house. I didn't have a ton of friends. I would watch a lot of movies. Once I started playing guitar, That was all I did.

MB: I started playing guitar when I was 14 or 15. Yeah, being in the marching band was really social for me. With the marching band, we played at a lot of highschool football games and parades and stuff.

PN: What were you doing in the marching band? I did some research but I didn't know about this!

MB: I was in the marching band all four years. I was in all the bands, marching band, symphonic band, and jazz band. I played the bass drum in marching band; symphonic band, I played the trombone, and jazz band, I played the guitar. Jazz band was where I actually became a good guitar player. Before, I was just like playing power chords. I remember all these seventh chords and ninth chords thinking, "Oh shit, what the fuck is this? Damn, I think I might quit." Then I was like, "No, I'm gonna just learn it."

I was a really sad, depressed kid that, like, never left the house. I didn't have a ton of friends. I would watch a lot of movies. Once I started playing guitar, That was all I did.

PN: It seems like being in all those bands and having music opportunities in high school was super pivotal.

Yeah, I would say so. My first music teacher was the type of guy who, in his free time, would take out a saxophone and practice the Omnibook. He would let me skip class. As long as you were practicing something, he would let you stay there and hang out.

MB: Guitar. I'd be in the corner. Like with headphones, just as he's teaching some other class.

MB: The person who taught me how to play guitar was this dude named Charles Simon. He was a really, really, big Frank Zappa fan. From a guitar standpoint, the first music that I ever listened to was just a bunch of Frank Zappa.

PN: Oh, sweet! Was your guitar teacher a neighborhood friend or someone you found on the internet or something?

MB: This room used to be full of junk, now it's the studio, but my dad had a guitar laying down here. I would just come down here to hang out and chill, listen to music. Then, I would just play guitar... or like, fake play. I remember I popped one of his strings. When he found out, we went to a Music Go Round, and they just happened to offer lessons.

PN: So when you started to play guitar, it was like, classic rock stuff?

MB: Red Hot Chili Peppers, Funkadelic. The stuff I wanted to play was more like Stone Temple Pilots, Soundgarden, and Nirvana—a lot of Nirvana. There's just a joke I always have that when you play guitar, you're transported into 1969.

PN: I've been told that when you were younger, you listened to bands like Oasis and the Cure and stuff. Were you in the corner listening to The Cure trying to replicate those songs?

MB: I was probably trying to read music, which was really important to me at the time.

PN: Or were you in the corner listening to All American Rejects hahaha.

MB: You know what? I would be on Wikipedia sometimes, reading about the Beatles. I was obsessed with the Beatles around that time, like obsessed. I was really big into listening to music and reading about it at the same time.

PN: I like doing that too. I like to go on Wikipedia or just Discogs or something.

MB: No, exactly! Exactly. I think Magical Mystery Tour is one of my favorite Beatles albums.

MB: The White Album too. I used to be a big Rubber Soul guy too. My first girlfriend broke up with me and I remember listening to "In My Life" just over and over and over...

PN: Hahaha. On repeat for three days straight.

MB: Like, I'm gonna fuckin' rinse this shit.

PN: Let's fast forward to Berklee. What can you say about your time there? Did you have a good experience there or...?

MB: It was kind of different for me. I had only been playing guitar for two years at the time. Everyone else there had been playing for a really long time and had this whole identity of being a musician from being a really young person.

PN: It sounds pretty scary or intimidating; Walking into a classroom and you're like, "Oh, shit. These people have been playing piano since they were six!"

MB: Brooo. I know. Exactly. I think the biggest thing I took away from Berklee was that like your skill is really important, but it's not as important as your taste. Most people don't really have great taste. Also, most people don't really think for themselves. When I was in those classes, I was on my own weird fucking journey. I wasn't really there to appease the teachers, compared to where a lot of students have this, "Am I doing it right?" mentality. That might work for like science, math, or something more academic but for music, it's very subjective.

MB: There's no right! That school was very out of touch when I was there. I don't know what they're doing now, but there wasn't even a rap class when I was there. When I was there, the kids were just figuring out who D'Angelo was. They had just discovered Untitled (How Does It Feel) or Voodoo, and Brown Sugar. That was the music my mom was driving me to school to when I was a kid. It was this weird, gentrification of the music I loved and cherished.

I think the biggest thing I took away from Berklee was that your skill is really important, but it's not as important as your taste.

PN: It's crazy to think that a school that probably has an endowment of about $100 million doesn't have a class about rap or R&B or something like that.

MB: Yeah, I won't trash them too much. I don't really talk about them too much, because I don't want to give them any more free promotion. Overall, it was good. For me, it was good.

PN: That's nice to hear. I'm happy that it was good. So a lot of people describe your sound as post r&b, or experimental pop with hints of hip-hop.

MB: I came up with post r&b because I think I like that more.

PN: Yeah, it feels like a term that doesn't get thrown around that much.

MB: I think it applies to other artists, like Frank Ocean. I understand the need to market or categorize something. It's all for marketing. The problem with marketing is it's attached to like, how we are as people. There can be sexist, racist, or homophobic tones to how we market or categorize something. If I were white, I don't know if I'd be called r&b. James Blake is not often called r&b. To me, he is... r&b mixed with other shit. I am heavily influenced by r&b music. I'm also just as much influenced by the Pixies, or Ian Curtis, or Cibo Matto. Even like, jazz too. 

PN: Your breakout album, Erotic Probiotic 2, has been featured in a handful of Best of 2023 lists. That's a pretty hard feat for anyone, congratulations. I also saw that you describe the budget for that album as $0. Tell me about the major differences from pre-, you know, EP, to, post EP.

MB: Before the album came out, I was on tour with Dry Cleaning. So like, things were starting to happen. People were slowly starting to know who I was. I was seen more as a punk artist... I don't know, it seemed like people didn't really know what I was. I was getting more compared to Dean Blunt, who I really love. I was still living at home and working a bunch of jobs. I just stopped working retail. I was like, this is a trap. 

PN: I heard that you worked at Whole Foods for a little bit. 

MB: Yeah, I worked at Whole Foods. That was my last retail job. It was the worst job I've ever had. It was like in the middle of COVID, and it was like across the street from this banking or financial building. They would come over for lunch and spend my whole paycheck just like that.

PN: It's so crazy when you see someone at a restaurant or bar, or even at the grocery store spend like $700. You're just like, "Literally how..."

MB: There were a bunch of sobering moments like that. By the time my EP came out, I was doing video work for construction workers, like safety videos and shit. I would just, like, set up a camera. I just had to drive to DC more, but it was cool. It definitely helped out.

PN: So post Erotic Probiotic 2. When did you start seeing the major life changes?

MB: It was definitely after Pitchfork gave me Best New Music. It was just a bigger bomb, that's when people took me more seriously. People who knew me started to take me more seriously. After the album came out, it was just like, "Oh!" I did the Pitchfork Rising piece with Julian Escobedo Shepherd. Being on Yaeji's album was a big deal. Being able to work with Dry Cleaning and all these other artists. I would say post EP2, it's life has been really fun. In my head, I've always been even bigger than this. I know what I'm capable of. It also comes from from being an athlete. I know how, like, you get better at things.

PN: You push yourself, and you'll get stronger. 

MB: And being being honest with yourself. Being honest with your strengths and with your weaknesses. Knowing where your blind spots are. Knowing like, "Okay, I need to call for help. I need to pass the ball." I'm still very competitive, but I try to internalize it.

PN: When someone might listen to Erotic Probiotic they might not see a lot of the overarching themes. Your lyrics talked about a relationship, depression, race inequality, capitalist America…

MB: Staring into the Fireplace is one of my favorite songs ever. It's definitely my favorite song to play live. I can get really deep into this leftist shit. And just some of the depressing parts of humanity and the world; also about how other people don't seem to really care sometimes. I think I'm at this point where I'm trying to be more positive in general, but still have that intensity. It's like a trap, you know? People start to acquiesce and say, "That's how it is," because they just want to feel better about themselves.

MB: Back to your previous questions. In the process of writing these albums, I've had a lot more anarchist friends. I used to work at a barbershop. Everyone there was an ex-con or like recovering drug addict or... something so relatable. You would never really know unless they told you, you know. Myself going through similar things and having family members go through similar things. Also, seeing how the consciousness of the world is realizing that everyone is kind of going through the same shit. We're divided by class and status, and all these imaginary things that aren't physical because we need to be controlled. I'm trying to use whatever new power or new attention that I have right now for good. I remember the first time I saw a postcard of Basquiat. I was at a bookstore and thought, "Oh, who is that? That looks cool." I remember when I looked him up, and I was like, "Oh, damn, he is cool." That's what I want to be for myself in another dimension.

PN: Having a young kid pick up your EP in the same way that you picked up that postcard.

MB: Yeah, if I influence anyone else, that's like the dopest shit in the world. I'd be very grateful.

PN: Let's chat about your new EP on XL Records, Catching Chickens. I love the intro song, Hell of a Ride.

MB: I think it's really good! I was talking to Richard Russell and he said, "Yeah, sounds like you're doing like a victory lap." The production is big and sounds definitely victory lap-ish, very triumphant, but the lyrics aren't. It's talking about still being hung up on your ex-girlfriend, not being able to eat unless you're high. Other verses about children being poisoned, and, not having a third place. To be honest, the song Hell of a Ride is about wanting to get the fuck out of America. Laughs. I like to have a nice theme song.

PN: Tell me about your international travels out on your Euro tour. Did you ever think you'd be going to like, Estonia?

MB: Yeah. Laughs. Only because I know me and I know how random I can be. Nah, but no. I didn't really know where it was until they asked me to come so I was like...

MB: I was like ohhh dope, dope, dope. That was probably my favorite show. Everyone there was so nice, the venue Uus Laine is really cool, the promoters were so sweet. They like met me at the airport and, I don't know, it was just like, a really good vibe. And I would definitely go back.

I'm trying to use whatever new power or new attention that I have right now for good.

MB: It's always great. I would move there. I'd rather move there than NYC.

MB: The people in London probably wouldn't feel this way, but London just feels more open to different music.

MB: Yeah, I went to the ICA. I just always see the dopest performances and shows when I go there.

PN: London has always been really good at making fantastic music, but especially in the past five years. I'd say there's just been like an explosion.

MB: No, yeah. I was talking to Richard Russell, and he said, "London constantly recreates itself. Every, like, three years." I just feel really good when I'm over there. I feel like I have a nice community there now. I have places to sleep and friends there. It's also where everything started. My first Nourished By Time show was at Servant Jazz Quarters in Dalston.

PN: I think you love London. That's awesome.

PN: What are what are some of the major differences from making a project on XL vs. prior releases?

MB: Catching Chickens was already done by the time XL picked it up. I would say for the EP, I got to work with a team now, which is really exciting. They're all really supportive. I'm so used to doing everything myself, so it's nice to just not have to worry about that too much.

PN: Has it been a dream to work with a group of people in a studio environment?

MB: People I trust. They get my vision, they get what I'm trying to do, they get how I work.

PN: That seems really exciting to hop in the studio and you feel like everyone is on the same page as you.

MB: Yeah, no, exactly. They will be as hands-on or hands-off as I want them to be. For the next album, I have most of the music recorded. I'm going back and fine-tuning certain things. I've been working with Anthony Naples on the next album.

MB: He's been helping me record everything, mostly acting as an engineer. We've been talking a bunch, and I've just been learning a lot from him. He's been this mentor figure that I've always wanted to have. For my next album, I think I'm trying to balance staying in my comfort zone and also elevating things to the next level.

PN: What do you define as your comfort zone?

MB: Me being in a room, doing everything. Not getting other people to sing on records and not pushing my imagination as far as it can go. I feel like before I would always have these blocks. "Oh, man, I don't know how to do this because I can't. I don't have the money. I don't have you know, this or that." Those just excuses. Now, I have no excuses.

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Nourished By Time

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Darryl Richardson (born 1987, Chicago, IL) is a lens-based visual artist specializing in documentary portraiture and experimental filmmaking. His work is deeply rooted in exploring notions of race, identity, and belonging, particularly within the context of the Black diaspora. Through his art, Darryl aims to challenge conventional notions of what it means to be Black, while offering a deeply personal and powerful perspective on the complexities of Black identity and belonging. His use of light and shadow, color and texture, invites viewers to see the world through a different lens. 

In ‘JUS SOLI’, an experimental essay-film, vignettes from Costa Chica Oaxaca intricately compose a poetic exploration of Afro-Mexican identity. Through a meditative exploration, the film navigates the nuanced history, enduring resilience, and contemporary narratives of this overlooked community. ‘JUS SOLI’ stands as a lyrical ode, seamlessly integrating thoughts, images, and scenes into a mosaic that vividly encapsulates the essence of a people deeply rooted in the pulse of a nation. 

I’m currently writing this from my apartment in Rio De Janeiro. Post carnival by a day, and a few hours and I’m feeling full.

I’m only two weeks into my trip. My next stop is to visit a friend in her beach town, Bahia, and then return to Rio before returning to London.

You would think that given where I am everything would be peachy but I’m coming out of a very intense and ongoing period of loss, grief and change. Not going to lie, it sucks but through these feelings, I found the title for this piece. 

My archive is a memory to me, strangers, friends, lovers. It’s a service to the different versions of me. The one that started this archive as a teenager seeking out something else in life! The me who as a young adult lost loved ones, made more friends, travelled, and is now carrying all of this, a little heartbroken but still full. I’m proud of this archive, I’m always in awe of the love it has brought me. A sweet reminder from my friend Ghadir last week: “You are so loved, do you know that?” That I do.

This archive has saved me, it’s connected me to people on a different level, it’s life through my eyes, it’s the mundane (not for me) with extraordinary people. It’s everything and it’s also nothing. It inquiries and requires. To think that next year will mark a decade of this collection of love and I look forward to birthing my first photobook!

To every single person who reminds me what my work means to them, who has let me capture them and been in #friendsonfilm - thank you.

Captured in London (always), Cuba, Greece & Paris

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Bernice Mulenga

Bridgette Hickey in conversation with Erika Nathanielsz
Photography by Paisley Lee
Installation Photography by Amber Capwell

The experience began with a single bell. The artist, Bridgette Hickey rang a silver handbell as the entire crowd went silent. Something about this gesture felt intimate and inviting, so many people in the audience, including myself, decided to sit on the ground. We wanted to listen. Bridgette walked through their installation of woven fabrics, mirrors and words, sometimes pausing, sometimes looking up at their work, as if they were listening too. Moments passed, and Bridgette sat in front of the crowd, paused, and recited their poetry.

I spoke with artist, weaver, poet, and medical anthropologist Bridgette Hickey about their process, holding space, and listening. Although Bridgette is creating across mediums, there is a connectedness to their work.

E:  I saw your installation at the Omens of Capacity Show at Oregon Contemporary. Can you tell me about your process of creating the installation?

B: Well, I guess the first thing to talk about is how it came to be. I was invited to be a part of the show, it’s the first gallery show I’ve been a part of. Research is a core part of my work. It’s a somatic process including movement, writing, listening to the land, to the past, with water and bone as conduits for travel. My work has always been fairly ephemeral, so the challenge to put it into a form was something I felt nervous but also excited about. In the end, I think it came down to trusting myself as the student and the professor of my life. I had to set aside fears around my language differences and imagined separation.

This being my first installation, I had to trust returning to my own original forms of communication. The installation was a movement towards preciousness; that my story and my own learning process is one that’s valuable.

For the making, I had this clear mental snapshot of what I wanted to make, and I started sketching it, which is quite different from my typical processes. A part of the trust was moving forward with this internal snapshot of my landscape and turning it into something physical. I don't have it with me here, but it would be fun to show the very first sketches of it. 

E: I’d love to see that. What does your creative process usually look like? What guides your practice?

B: Usually my making is very improvisational. I’m living and listening, which makes it possible for the container to come through. I have a moment in creating where it’s telling me, ok, it wants to be this. My process is a practice of how I attempt to keep myself well, and it is an accumulative one. I walk when I can or put myself outside. On days when I can’t leave the bed, there's always dreaming and window gazing. I need the relationship I have with the earth and with singing, and with writing to be able to listen, hear, witness the stories and the fragments that go into my archive. I hear words when I walk. I see images and stories fall out when I stretch and move. The plants I am tending give me song. 

My practice is about protecting and widening the pathway of what is sacred. It’s about remembering and orienting my attention towards lifeways that protect life often by intimately honoring the dead and fragmented. I collect memories coming to the surface; they are the maps that I follow. It’s trusting being on a different time. It’s not urgent, but it knows that slowing down will bring integrity and quality understanding sooner than the other ways of immediacy. It’s a trust and intimacy with the unseen, it’s company with the choruses. It’s trust in the teachers of the universe. 

B: My teachers are oak, maple trees and willow. These are my earliest protectors and guides. The cellular waters of my body, and their ability to tune and return to the waters of earth. Lately, the process of rock and bone formation and erosion are deep witnesses to my practice, and they feel like mentors. The fairies, the unseen, death, and what’s left over. My heart is my teacher, and my hands they’re what know the most. Sound is a teacher and the way it can operate, flood, and inform. Folk story, ancestral, Black, Irish, and Indigenous craft. 

E: Tell me about your relationship with words. When did you start writing poetry?

B: I grew up being told about the power of spoken and written words. Words were taught to me as prayer, as keys, or tools that could give and take life. In school, I struggled with how they wanted to train my livingness through language. I think I’ve always been writing poetry and understanding words through feeling and trust. I began to lean into and trust my words and formulations when they fell out from me. I was and continue to be curious about the maps and time spiral that they conduct. 

Before I left school, I spent a summer doing research in a classical Chinese Medicine clinic. Here, there were beautiful words that depicted life and brought into the room textures, dreams, sensations, and beliefs that stretched beyond the confines I had known in other institutions and daily life. The words held the truth of everything it could mean to live in a body with extreme trust in what the body knew. Language here was also largely exchanged without verbal words. This was powerful for me because I am partially nonverbal. It was the way a room was oriented, it had to do with a quality of listening and exchange between bodies. Fingertips listening to blood. Using the body as a vessel. It placed language back to the source where it belonged and could have grounded lived origin. 



I THINK A PART OF MY PRACTICE REALLY IS ME MAKING SPACE TO BE WHO I AM.

My practice is all of the things that institutional learning never was, and tried to take out of me. I talked to one of my older cousins and they were talking to me about their mom. They told me, “When we were little, my mom sat us down and taught us how to have manners with the ghosts that were coming in” So I’m like, it is about me, but I cannot also pretend like what I'm doing and experiencing doesn't have a huge history of sense-making and life-making. And is beyond me and beyond colonization too. 

E: I love the synchronicity that happens with you between movement and nonverbal actions forming into words. 

B:  That’s a big part of what the purpose of language and words are to me. In the clinic, I felt fed and strengthened and would write things that people may call poetry. Poetry, for me, is a way of listening back, back to time, my body, and often many others who are there with me. My words become most available when I am doing any kind of movement. Sometimes, when I am dancing, and stimming, doing repetitive motions, they arise out of my body. I can hear them, and keep a notebook close to empty them into. There’s a big experience between words and their availability to me and a falling quality that happens. Words and conversation often come through while I am quilting and dyeing and weaving. It’s praying in tongues, it's hearing memory, its communion, it's why I do it all. I am given words in dreams and stories. I take it all with a serious curiosity. I am devoted to curiosity about what is here and to listening. To all the way it may be possible to be in an exchange. That is fascinating to me, especially as someone who can experience verbal exchange with humans too fast. 

E: A chord that I’m hearing through everything you’re saying is the act of listening. Whether that’s to your own intuition or something bigger. I think your work also helps act as a vessel for people to pause and listen more. I definitely felt that happening during your show.

B: Yeah I think it would also be important to bring up care. Care is a big part of my practice. I think it’s also why I’m so devoted to my practice and it being the way that it is guided, because a lot of my family members had different abilities or disabilities. Or were these really powerful people who didn’t have the right support, or didn’t get to experience their own psyche in a beautiful way. And so I feel like a lot of it is me caring for the lineage for people with, quote-unquote, learning disabilities. There are a lot of autistic people in my family, including me, where there was no space to be cared for. So I’m very intentional about the way I bring my people in to experience this with me.

E: I can’t wait to see what you create. And for my last question, what does the color blue mean to you?

B: When I think about how it has come into my writing, it arrives again and again. It feels undeniable and is also something I have to have faith in. I think that the color blue is something that I'm in a lifelong process of understanding what it means. It's like some entity that holds a lot of direction, and that can feel consuming. Indigo, specifically the plant Indigo has such a magnitude to the history of the indigo plant, and colonization. 

Something that I think is really special is on my mother's side, my grandpa grew up in a Black commune in Virginia, where they tended the land and animals. And the mud there is blue. It felt like some kind of remembering. 

BLUE IS A QUESTION. IT'S AN ENTITY THAT'S AN EVERLASTING QUESTION.

The bone blue well of time holding time holding mineral holding hallway of blue holding echoes holding shadow density pulse pull through sponge core rupture rebuild reabsorption netted basket of 

Lotus flowers and family rings we cast in threes. 

Lotus flower lily pad we throw circles and plead for coverage 

Lotus flower lily pad water moss thickened rock 

Your girth has grown from the mucky threads that float by catching that which try to float through 

It’s important to know the faces whose faces are you wearing? 

Whose face are you wearing that knows what’s happening to you?

Where the moss was prevalent and lush and rain constant 

A home longing face longing lost longing what longing happened to us?

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A Path That Calls Blue

Out of Seam: 
A Studio Visit 
with Tajah Ellis

Tajah Ellis works with her hands – in the most literal sense of the word. She allows her background as an urban farmer to inform her practice by using natural pigments sourced from plants in her home country of Belize. A gifted bouquet that would have otherwise ended up in the trash becomes a part of her work. Ellis sees the beauty in the overlooked and discarded to create pieces that will last lifetimes with a story of intentionality to match. 

I met up with Tajah during a period where she was freshly transitioning back into city-living, her studio located in the same home she grew up in. We oscillated between there and Herbert Von King Park, another formative location to her upbringing. We spoke on the interconnectedness of nature, history, and art, the importance of standing in your own power, especially in a world where Black women artists are quick to be compartmentalized and why labeling herself as a designer would be a disservice to the roots she’s been sewing to build her world, Out of Seam.

Kristin: What would you say are some integral points in your work? And I mean that, environmentally, materialistically, and even emotionally because I know you work with a lot of plants and raw materials. How do all of those things intersect and show up in your practice?

Tajah: I guess if I had to sum it up, I would say experimentation, due process, and exploration. I see curiosity as a pivotal point for uncovery, and being able to lean into that just by saying — okay, I'm going to define rules in my own way. So yeah, experimentation is a huge part of pretty much everything. I'm not so concerned about the end result, I'm more interested in what it took to get there - and to create this unique configuration of whatever it ends up being.

K: That's beautiful. There's something special about just the act of doing rather than doing for an end result. Letting the practice or the medium take you on a journey – building and being informed through that. How would you say your practice has shifted over time, and what is something you value in practice in this current stage of your life?

DARRYL RICHARDSON'S: JUS SOLI

JALEN ELK: THE CYBORG WHO LEFT HIS WILL ON FILM