The articles we have included for this coursework edition range from postcolonial critical thought on the complex relationships between African diasporas and music, by Paul Gilroy; to Édourad Glis- sant’s poetics on the routes and roots between the Caribbean and West Africa.
We have also included a chapter from Krista A. Thompson’s Shine, published in 2015, on the discourse of visibility in Jamaican dancehall culture, as told through the critical role of the light, attached to video cameras, used to illuminate the bodies of dancers at dancehall parties, in Jamaica.
Interview with artist and activist Jessica Lynn Whitbread
With this publication of selected readings, "IMA READ" aimed to focus critical and reflexive attention to the history of voguing and ball culture, its origins within Black, POC and LGBTQ2I+ communities, and accordingly, the politics of appropriation of the practice, for example, by various pop-culture agents - from Madonna to FKA Twigs.
‘Chapter Two’ was therefore an introductory education on what, and why, voguing is; how its appropriation is affected by unrelated groups - what is harmful about this practice, and finally, why “Vogue is not for you”.
“IMA READ THAT BITCH” was a showcase of video works that the organisers considered to be meaningful articulations of their individual experiences, and understandings, of what it means to be a feminist, today. The festival programme included the launch of ‘Chapter I’, which was to become the first volume of IMA READ’s subsequent series of publications for collective education on intersectional feminism.
