Selected Journalism

I s s u e I I I: J o u r n e y s

Body As Home

Body As Home

Just about to embark upon a brand new film venture, an exploration of travel and our sense of identity, titled ‘Body as Home’ she recounts the journey that led her to this new project, via her initial Let’s Talk About Sex exhibition, which included a revealing mix of partial and fully nude portraits.

Her mission to emancipate the body from the constraints of our cultural moment continues Karpowicz is part way through her journey to capture participants in four cities to shoot a new film exploring our complex relationship between our sense of self, our body and the places we live and travel to.

It began with one hundred complete strangers. These strangers not only consented to be captured so candidly, but also began to reveal far more than just skin. Invited by Karpowicz to step beyond their comfort zone and into a sexual persona the effect was liberating and unexpected. Emboldened by the characters that emerged from their subconscious soon there were more than images, a series of raw, fascinating and occasionally shocking stories emerged.

FAYAAN: Your forthcoming film project ‘Body As Home’ debuting this year, explores the relationship between our sense of identity, our physical location and our physical bodies, Body as Home is shot at four different locations and features nine different subjects. Taking each participant in and out of their comfort zones, you explore what happens to their conception of themselves and their environments as they interact with new parts of the world. Most often they are made vulnerable by appearing nude; the artist included. Why was nudity important to the representation of the participants?

Revelations of off the grid sexual subcultures, familial abuse and religious restraint provide vivid snapshots of the truth of life behind closed doors…or in a park near you. The secrets are out and running free; the unspoken is rendered in flesh of all shades, shapes and persuasions. Karpowicz’s gaze isn’t simply voyeuristic; she builds a genuine and honest rapport, the confessions range from the titillating to the horrifying, but never exploitative.

E s s a y a n d i n t e r v i e w b y Fa y a n n S m i t h Fa y a n n i s a a r t i s t , a m u s i c i a n a n d w r i t e r w i t h a l o v e o f e t h i c s , f u t u r i s m a n d f r e e t h o u g h t .

All photography by Aleksandra Karpowicz

“Generally speaking I’m interested in people, people are always the subject of my entire work, whatever I do, either film or photography. Physicality is a big part of it, but I never treat physicality as a separate thing from psychology so it is all very mixed up together.” Aleksandra says.

AK: We are searching for the meaning of home; what home means. We are going through all the definitions of what home is, which can be anything from a country, a city, a home where your parents live, your apartment, where your friends are, your community, or, a body. It’s a very personal project, as I myself am looking for a definition of what home is and I was going through all those different stages of thinking. So home is a country, home is this, home is that, the city I live in, country I come from, the apartment I used to live, but now I’ve started thinking that home can be a little bit more global. It’s not even the concept of Earth as home but its more finding peace within yourself. Therefore home can be anywhere. Why naked?

Because that’s the body, we are born naked and that’s how we come to this world. That’s who we really are. I’ve got nothing against clothes, obviously they can be warm and looking cool, but I think the most important thing is how we see each other and how we feel about ourselves when we are naked and stand in front of the mirror. Or not even in front of mirror, even if we can’t see ourselves, we can just be more grounded in who we are. Creating a project like Body as Home and having people in fashionable clothes would be a complete disaster, it wouldn’t make any sense.

F: You have encountered censorship, tell me about that?

SOUL

THIIIRD Magazine

“Diminutive, wide eyed and full of energy, multimedia visual artist Aleksandra Karpowicz makes an impression, but she shimmers rather than explodes into your reality, beguiling and gently seductive. Her ability to observe and not be seen, to become completely fascinated with the lives of others, has given her unique access to some of the most intimate regions of her subject’s mind and bodies”

Karpowicz acknowledges the body is politicised, a focal point for polarising opinions on identity, a constant source of insecurity in the age of social media and increased social pressure. To be nude and to talk frankly about sex is still taboo and open to censorship, even in a reality filled with hyper sexualised advertising at every turn. Stigma and shame surround the physical, the body is detached from psychological as a commodity, defined by societal standards reinforced by capitalist demands. Karpowicz returns the personality to the form, places it within a narrative and thus returns nuance to the nude. ‘Body as Home’ takes its cue from the vitality and revelation of Karpowicz’s previous projects but hones in on whether we find ourselves through our internal lives or through exploration of the material one.

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There is also a censorship of bodies that are not deemed acceptable; I’ve had the situation where I will post something on social media, Instagram, where you couldn’t even see female nipples, but I was showing a person who is larger. In fact the first time my instagram account was shut down was when I was showing a non–explicit portrait of a man who was a bigger size and my account was shut down without warning. Recently a photograph was deleted that showed a woman with big breasts, but she was holding her breasts. It wasn’t breaking any of the

rules, no female nipples, no genitals but as an older woman whose size might not meet the accepted standard of beauty she was removed. This brings us to our standards of beauty in Western society, the ideal being, say, a twenty year old with beautiful skin, pert breasts, skinny, these notions of an ideal also apply to men.

At the end of it all, none of those people exist in reality, it’s all photoshop anyway. The subject is over sexualised, so it’s very vulgar, even if you don’t show the body, these accepted images to me are vulgar as they are sexualised, rather than just nudity. You have fitness bloggers, influencers, taking pictures of themselves in the mirror, posting revealing selfies that are allowed on Instagram, but when you show the same thing in an art context it’s bad.

F: Your own story is one of those featured in the work, how has the filming challenged or affirmed your ideas about the significance of travel to an individual’s sense of self?

AK: I think Body as Home is my favourite project that I have done so far, for many reasons, because I’ve been travelling, I’ve been sightseeing from a lot of different perspectives as we’ve been filming everywhere. I got this amazing connection with different places, with people that I’m filming with, so it is personal and then within myself, as I’m filming myself, as yesterday, last night, I went to Time Square and I was alone with my camera. I was topless in the middle of Times Square with lots of people and I’m in the centre of the biggest city and I still feel very grounded.

There was something spiritual about that journey, especially when I’m filming myself in a public space. In the middle of a crowd, I have similar footage from London, in Bank Station. I realised that wherever I am in this massive crowd, I have learnt this ability through doing the film, of completely switching off myself, feeling this energy of everyone around me, but I’m actually by myself, if you know what I mean. There is no sense of loneliness, just an amazing feeling of being grounded, which was very interesting as I never experienced that before.

What I found about myself is that through journeying, going to different places plus London where I’m living, I realised that in every city I feel similar, which was amazing, because I had a lot of fun filming, visiting those places. I had an amazing time meeting the people I’ve been filming in every single city it was a distinct journey and then I realised that I can feel sacred anywhere if I want to. It’s just a mindset—how I feel about myself, the way I react to people and my surroundings. This is exactly what I think will be the summary of my film, that I can feel at home wherever I want to be.

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Tr a v e l B u g

AK: I think there is a really interesting conversation going on about the image of the body, in Western society particularly, as that is where we are living. The discussion is very important, naked images are often considered negatively, there is no fine line between porn nudity and nakedness, everything is put in the same category. I find this really wrong because we treat being naked as something wrong, which of course affects how we feel about ourselves, as how can we feel good if we cannot be comfortably naked because of society, therefore most people admit to not being happy with themselves. This discussion that is happening includes a lot about consent, which has featured a lot in the dialogues I’ve been having with lots of people.

The idea being that we should be able to show nudity, but we have to give people the option of consent. This would mean that in the ideal world we can decide what we want to see. Do we want to see violence? Do we want to see the human body?

I think that is a great idea, I’m not against it, but at the same time I’m questioning it as I’m thinking, if we are going to look at nudity in the same way we look at say, extreme violence, we are yet again underlining that it is something negative. I had some conversations about this with a very open–minded subject, a photographer himself, who thought that consent regarding nudity was a good idea, as some people might be triggered by images of the exposed body. It could trigger trauma, if somebody was abused, but at the same time we could say that about anything. I feel a bit icky with that, I find when I speak to people who I think might feel the same way I do, they can be more conservative about it. I would say ok people let’s stop fucking around, if somebody wants to be naked let them be naked, if we want to post naked photos we should be able to do it. It is freedom of speech. So I have a bit of a problem with this; another aspect I find infuriating is the gender discrimination factor, the censorship of women and non binary people, who may be censored on their assumed gender. It is so messed up, it is an expression of patriarchy, with censorship as part of it, what you show as a woman and what you can show as a man is completely different. I’m obviously mostly referring here to female nipples, is it a joke? I cannot show my nipples if I want to? This is another consideration regarding this complex issue of censorship and nudity.

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Body As Home

we treat being naked as something wrong, which of course affects how we feel about ourselves, as how can we feel good if we cannot be comfortably naked because of society, therefore most people admit to not being happy with themselves.

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I s s u e I V: A c c e s s 148 THIIIRD Magazine

“Censorship reflects society’s lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime” U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart

Wo r d s b y Fa y a n n S m i t h Graphic by Coral Hoeren

Defining the Deviant

Defining the Deviant A Treatise on Censorship

When people begin to feel uncomfortable discussing or doing something, taboos are enacted. Some cultural taboos are enforced by law, for good reason, like murder. Some are more diffuse in their moral certainty, due to a confluence of changing social attitudes and rapid transformations in everyday lifestyles. There are blurred edges around what is and is not taboo and these ethical hinterlands are a place of great contention. The advent of the internet brought with it a deluge of taboo content and ideology, some of it still within the bounds of legality, but beyond the pale of mainstream acceptability.

As a staunch anti censorship proponent it is difficult to see and experience the uglier and more prurient aspects of the internet and not feel embarrassed and despairing. Openly vile commentary on all aspects of life, from the subjugation of women to racially charged diatribes and gutter level trolling that impacts people’s offline worlds may not break the law, but contribute to a tense and unsafe feeling environment. It is in this reality that our current explosive and politically polarised times are forged. A time when it is alleged that fake news and the insidious manoeuvring of Cambridge Analytica were powerful enough to sell the country Brexit.

A transformative moment when we are hyper sensitive to, but unable to consistently tackle, perceived amoral influences on the culture.

What could be challenged in a public forum metastasises into a unscrutinised movement, legitimised by being “shut down” by its opponents.

Beyond politics we have the realm of human intimacy in all its variations, a constant source of anxiety for the religious, as demonstrated by the recent demonstrations against LGBT education in Birmingham. There is considerable pressure on institutions to avoid causing offence or face real economic consequences. Once censorship is an acceptable way of removing the undesired from reality it can be mobilised to crush any group. The same hammer that smites a political foe could also strike a work of art from popular appreciation.

This is the dangerous implication that demands that I maintain an intellectual commitment to anti censorship and focus instead on vocal denouncing of exploitation, bigotry and disinformation.

It may seem untenable to maintain an anti censorship position if it allows for points of view I find distasteful, upsetting or transgressive. It is not. You cannot attack an enemy you cannot see.

It is a position that is part of a broader commitment to human freedom, a commitment to not giving our leaders the ability to frame what reality should be in their image. It is exactly when things enter into grey areas and governments threaten to invade personal autonomy that we should fight to retain ownership of the boundaries of acceptable thought.

SOUL

All of a sudden the call for censorship became deafening.

Social media platforms rushed to scourge themselves clean of anything vaguely objectionable. The ongoing war on the female nipple raged in earnest, with #freethenipple enthusiastically adopted by the pro camp. Gallery shows were shut down, celebrities deposed and undesirables banished by new rules on most major outlets. I was not sad to see people who I thought held reprehensible views silenced, but my understanding of the principal of free speech means that I

Airing an obnoxious opinion could give it credence, but conversely when given public scrutiny ideas that are fuelled by prejudice alone fail to gain traction with modern ears.

When such ideas become clandestine, they transmute into the mythic and those barred from speaking become martyrs.

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Extreme political beliefs across the spectrum, a flourish of endlessly inventive pornography and graphic violence became easily available online. Virtual communities formed around every ideological position and kink that could be imagined. On the digital frontier everyone was liable to find a like minded person or two, even if they strayed way outside of the orbit of the everyday.

cannot condone the removal of legal self expression, even if I find it repugnant.

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Fear of a Green Planet A Report from the Frontline of the Cannabis Access Debate

“The truth is that it is all semantics. I am an educator, actively engaged in cultural shifts, and an advocate for safe and ethical access to cannabid for medicinal use.”

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BASIA is a co-founder of the law changing campaign Families4Access and founding team of the Centre for Medicinal Cannabis. A former Arts & Special Educational Needs Educator, Basia is motivated by ethical and meaningful change as well as driven by a lifestyle of functional health and wellbeing. Post immersively exploring various cultures at different stages through reform since 2016, Basia has chosen to dedicate her attention to patient advocacy, cofounding CannPASS (Cannabis Patient Advocacy & Support Services Ltd.), and public education, founding to-be-launched CANNTalks, Curating A New Normal.

My first public talk was at the European Parliament. I assumed it would also be my last so I went for it; “My name is Basia Zieniewicz. I’m a school teacher and I’m also an outlaw in three countries. I’ve smuggled medicine across borders to bring it to the people I love, and I have committed civil disobedience many times - and the chances are, that I will likely do it again.” It was invigorating. More catchy than my website bio and would certainly win me street cred with my

Words by Fayann Smith and Basia Zieniewicz Photography by Basia

students. Proudly, it started a “me too!” wave of agreement in the audience… and it was a moment, probably my “claim to fame”.

CAMPAIGNING Fayann Smith: You recently participated in the 3CM conference, the first ever gender-specific conference featuring female CEOs and influencers from the world’s largest, science-driven medical cannabis companies. This sounds like an incredibly important moment, where the positive applications of cannabis are given center stage.

What are your thoughts on the event?

Basia Zieniewicz: I can’t stress enough the importance of events which place an emphasis on diversity. Cannabis is an emerging space, which hardly even exists in the UK, and the banker wankers are all over it, before the integrity of why this industry is so important has had an opportunity to solidify its skeleton. That might sound abstract, but it really is that simple.

The very first cannabis networking event I’d attended in London focused on entrepreneurs. I was the only female.

When I confessed that my former career was as an arts educator, I was patted on the back and told ‘good for you’ with the most patronising melody in the old fuckers voice. I was quite chuffed with myself when I told him he’d overspent on his $5 million cannabis farm, and that I had invested substantially less and had far more to offer. My point is that women, as well as people who don’t identify with that dominant niche, speak to one another differently. There is an entire cohort of people who believe in collaboration, expressing interest in others, empowering their sisters and fellow community members to inspire, lift, and learn.

A COMPLICATED CURE

Unfortunately, these are ongoing cases. We haven’t ‘won’, but we have accomplished small victories, and that’s pretty huge when you put it all into context, the knock on effect is undeniable.

The campaign I was a part of coordinating over the summer, Families 4 Access, with Volteface (a Think Tank focused on drug reform) and Charlotte and Billy Caldwell might not have been as successful in changing the law had it not been for other people echoing and mirroring this story in less high profile ways across the UK. I flew out to Canada with the family and we returned to England with medicinal cannabis oil for the then 12 year old boy, who has severe, drug resistant, intractable epilepsy.

In open defiance and as an act of civil disobedience we boarded the plane home, with the illegal medicine, albeit prescribed by a top paediatric neurologist. The story was dropped in the Mail on Sunday one day before our return and so, of course, a line of border security were awaiting us at Heathrow airport. The medicine was seized and a week long battle ensued. With politicians and policymakers furious at our demands, whilst deliberating and fumbling over the ethics of whether or not to allow this 12 year old boy his anti-epileptic medication.

Billy was granted his Tilray 2:100 oil over the summer, but when it stopped containing his seizures as Billy hit puberty, there was nothing left to offer him. There are over 500 different strains of cannabis, over 144 identifiable cannabinoids in each strain and millions of different endocannabinoid systems as each one of ours is unique to each. Imagine the variations of the ratios you’d have to play with to get the right combination for the corresponding person to stabilise the symptoms of their version of a condition. We’ll have a few generations to wait at this rate.

My point is there is not a one size that fits all, and that’s how we are left with treating it at the moment. Billy’s mother took him back to Canada and they found a variation which was effective for Billy, but it is now running out and it needs to be prescribed privately as it doesn’t come accompanied with a manual booklet and it’s clinical testing so the price is sky high.

Charlotte can’t afford to continue to do this, its unsustainable.

The situation in which she is left facing is unethical. There is a risk for a child to not be granted access to his medication, because her pockets aren’t deep enough.

But we all know that is really a symptom of the real problem as an artist, I condone thinking outside of the box. Simply put, cannabis does not fit into any of our existing boxes.

That leads us to Carly Barton. My fabulous mate, a fresh force, and proudly, a fellow artist. Carly was a university lecturer of sculpture, exhibiting at the Tate and many established galleries. She had a stroke in her early twenties which left her battling a debilitating condition of fibromyalgia. She’s not been able to work since. She’s weaned herself off of opiates and other strong meds using cannabis.

Knowledgeable and articulate, Carly had managed to support her physician into writing the first cannabis prescription in the UK thanks to keeping a detailed anecdotal diary for several months prior to seeing her doctor (hint, hint). That signed piece of paper entitled Carly to one month's supply of 50g of flower in exchange for £1400. Seriously.

It gets better. One can’t expect anyone who is “economically

SOUL

All the while Billy’s seizures started to return, increasingly

In my teaching career, we would call this the starter activity, the ‘shock’ to hook people's attention before you teach them a lesson. It was a bit like that. What has happened, is that due to the lack of vital in-depth knowledge on the subject of cannabis for medicinal use, our professionals here are limited to what is available and the data from the limited amount of clinical trials which exists. That’s a pretty tough call when your career depends on it.

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You have been intimately involved in two high profile campaigns based around the legality of cannabis-based medicinal products (CBMP’s) and treatments for the chronically ill in the U.K. Can you outline those cases for us and where they currently stand?

frequent and worse by the day. It was devastating. He once had a seizure in my arms, I was terrified, and I could only think - that is one out of 100, every day - and any one could be fatal, that his mother would have to contain - without this medicine. Eventually after Billy had been rushed to hospital with repeated seizures escalating, Home Office began to understand the gravity of the situation. It came down to a person’s decision. Five days later the medicine was returned, and on Billy’s 13th Birthday, the Home Secretary announced that cannabis would be rescheduled for medicinal use. Let’s not kid ourselves here - this is a patient led revolution - for everyone else, it is a culture shock.

Fear of a Green Planet

To the bare bone, this is a patient-led revolution. “Pioneers of Passion”, is how one of the women at the conference coined it. We haven’t even got it right here, yet. The bottom line is that patients are not getting access, despite cannabis being recognised as having medicinal value by the Ministers of Health, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of anecdotal testimonials across the globe. I stress this because cannabis has become this buzz word for bankers, venture capitalists, hedge fund managers, even miners - most of which happen to be men with suits in boots. Somehow, when they congregate, their energy is far too familiarly unattractive to women or anyone who feels out of place in a male, chest puffing and pounding arena.

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disabled”, as most chronically ill patients are, to be able to afford such prohibitive price tags on medicine on an ongoing basis. Even to those of us who work full-time couldn’t afford it. It’s no wonder you see an increase in so many people turning to the black market.

Carly has planted seeds of the exact strain to the exact amount she’s prescribed, declared the location to her local authorities, and sworn to hand over any excess in the amnesty. She’s since started a campaign, Carly’s Amnesty, whereby patients who would qualify to be prescribed cannabis, based on the conditions outlined in the scoping guidelines of the National Institute of Health and Excellence (NICE) - spasticity, epilepsy, nausea and chronic pain - are supported should they choose to do the same and grow their own medicine.

I’d asked Carly what it would cost her to grow the same amount of the same strain every month: £55.00. Clearly, the only thing prohibitive about cannabis, at the moment, is the cost.

LEGALITIES

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Why do you think that cannabis is still illegal in the U.K. and to your mind what would be the best possible scenario for how the substance is legislated for in this country?

So technically, cannabis for medicinal use is no longer illegal. Technically, the war on drugs is over. The reality is another story. The only legal route to obtain cannabis is via a prescription from a Specialist, as it is classified as a ‘special’, which means that it is advised to try every other treatment possible before considering to turn to cannabis as a prescription. This in itself is ludicrous, as there are pharmaceutical drugs, being used in the first instance, which are far more harmful and deteriorating than cannabis. The

argument is that cannabis comes with risks, well, so does every single prescribable drug. Effectively, in some cases by definition, a child with epilepsy would have to have brain surgery before being prescribed CBMP, as a last resort. It truly makes my blood boil. In saying that, I understand why there are reservations from the medical establishment point of view.

Prohibition has fear mongered intelligent people with the best of intentions into a wobble at the mere mention of the c-word.

There hasn’t been any reference to what an endocannabinoid system is (we are born with this), most doctors can’t even say “canna-bin-oid” properly - and there are over 144 identifiable ones in each strain of cannabis and we are obsessing over two of them (CBD & THC). The truth is, in all fairness, there really isn’t enough randomly controlled clinical data. That’s the bottom line. This is what is needed for it to be prescribable confidently by GPs. Ultimately, in my opinion, we would need a new definition of how to classify what constitutes as medicine, and then work out a way to standardise it across the board so that countries aren’t making it up as they go along.

Medicine and its borders is an entirely separate problem… which is another one on my agenda.

This comes down to ethics - and the philosophy of what constitutes medicine. And with all that we are learning we do not know, perhaps our current version of how we define medicine needs to evolve as well. I have personally witnessed the transformations of an individual's suffering. I speak to desperate people almost everyday. Some will attest that their lives have been saved, others have been able to leave us with ease. Because it’s not just about how people live, it’s also about how they die. Why then, deny them an appetite, a rest or, god forbid - a giggle!

Perhaps, the first step in de-stigmatisation is to reframe our personal outlook, ​what we see in front of us.​And secondly, to be unafraid of championing something that we know in our

Fear of a Green Planet

hearts, is right. Because sometimes, the cannabis questions feels to me like an over intellectualisation of something really - very - simple.

that exhibition, for now, as Carly Barton so eloquently phrased it, “I’m an accidental activist.”

I am one, amongst millions, who have found the means to provide safe and ethical access to cannabis for medicinal use, ​ to provide relief from suffering by aid to a substance. The rest turn to a dangerous black market. I have dedicated my adult life to look after the vulnerable, and been privileged enough to have been able to turn it into my career.

NEXT STEPS

When I look through the eyes of the people, now, I would like to see something more immediate. Decriminalisation and regulation would be a good start.

As would be an immunity for prescribers so they are not deterred from writing a prescription due to fear of being held accountable for green lighting a CBMP for a desperate patient.

I got into this because I was on a journey of self-discovery. My story starts in 2016 in the rolling hills of Northern California, during the wave of change and legislation that was hitting the entire west coast at the time. I was on sabbatical after spending a decade teaching the arts to at-risk youth in London, and my time in California was supposed to be a holiday​, part of my adventure of self-discovery and the seeking of my artists voice. Discover, I did indeed. The pivot was the patient.

Each story I heard about these individuals whose lives had been transformed by medicinal cannabis was so profound, and so moving, each one past the point of no return. And the testimonials fuelled me with indignation, as well as hope - and I could never turn back again.

So… I spent nearly two years with patients, academics, doctors and campaigners, travelling the entire length of the West Coast, understanding their journeys and deconstructing a lifetime of misperception I’d accumulated. By the time I left California, the stoner stigma I had grown up with, had been completely dissolved and now my idea of a reality without access to cannabis in ones medicine cabinet was completely unfathomable.

Returning to the UK this time last year, was a culture shock.

But, the next part of my journey proved to be even more transformative. Because, I’d learnt that sometimes you have to break the law - to change it. Next thing I know, I was on a plane to Canada with Billy and Charlotte Caldwell, part of team coordinating a campaign to get families access.

We’re now partaking in a movement to create a different reality, to Curate A New Normal, and engage the public to become more informed. Our shit hot team are launching to bulldozer down the stigma, called CANNTalks. Effectively, it’s a fusion of artists, scientists, philosophers activists and academics creating a platform for the cannabis conversation to explore the full spectrum. CANNTalks is an expansive forum for a new kind of connection and community. In focusing in on the current cannabis issues, and their associated debates, we seek to initiate increased cross-cultural awareness and consciousness of the many trans-global impacts of this complex plant; of an equally complicated industry; and of the social dynamics born of these interwoven aspects. As the global landscape surrounding cannabis undergoes rapid transition and multiple regionally-specific changes on a legal, social, and practical level, new and vitally significant questions continue to be generated. CANNTalks engages with these questions - and with the history, policy, philosophy and concerns that act as cultural buffers to these questions - right now, as they arise. And from the standpoint that our choices and our debate hold the power for change from an ethically potent position. This links to our essential placement as a Not-For-Profit Organisation, seeking to engage with fundamental human rights and better-life for all. This comes from a dynamic principle of open-development; changing communication; and increased acceptance - from every possible perspective.

And just to get it right, we’ve formed an academic partnership with the University Art London and their post grad students in Art Direction, and secured a couple of science co-curators, including DrugScience. Artists, get in touch to get involved.

SOUL

The rest is history and we still have an insurmountable amount of work to do. Families can’t afford access. One day, I’ll get to

Since the campaign, I’ve had the privilege of building the Centre for Medicinal Cannabis and evolving into its Patient Advocacy and External Relations Lead. All this had positioned me to become a registered stakeholder with key organisations, to form relationships with key integral policy decision makers and key leads of social responsibility and clinicians for many major cannabis companies across the globe, as well as equip me with insight into how the medical establishment and law enforcement respond to this constantly evolving landscape, which is more positive than people wish to believe. Let’s not kid ourselves, there is a lot of work to be done, and we’re on it.

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What inspired you to become active in the debate about medical cannabis?

If people want to support your work to provide access to therapeutic cannabis where can they find the latest information and offer support?

I s s u e I I: F e m m e

Sarah Maple

SARAH MAPLE is an unlikely hate figure; her gentle communication and pleasant manner do not belie the fact that her mischievous, challenging art has courted controversy, even threats of violence. Brought up a Muslim, with parents of mixed religious and cultural backgrounds she uses her own identity conflict as fertile ground for examination.

Fresh from a triumphant run as one of last year’s five Sky Arts Academy scholars she gives an insight into her varied work and fascinations.

Inter view by Fayann Smith Fayann Smith is an ar tist, musician and writer with a love of ethics, futurism and free thought.

Photography by Sarah Maple

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SARAH MAPLE: That is why I made the work. Because I don’t know. For me they are two such diverse things, such different things. Part of this work was my own experience of growing up and not really knowing which one I belong to and then trying to marry the two and not knowing if it is actually possible. If you want to stay true to a faith, it is hard to do that, if you want to live by the Quran word for word, is it actually possible?

FS: You feel then your work provides a basis for this discourse, for people to explore those issues?

“Fighting FIre With FIre”

SM: Yes, I think two things. One it is quite a painful experience that you are going through, because you do feel guilty and bad about it and also it is quite funny. People say that you are taking the mick, or I’m mocking, but I’m not. I’m actually just putting

FS: I think that it is very brave; especially since you’ve received death threats. Did death threats frighten you enough to change your behaviour?

SM: I’m actually writing a talk about this at the moment. At the time it was quite scary and upsetting, it was about ten years ago. I always thought I wouldn’t give in and I’d always stay making the work I was making, but then you look back and realise that you have been self–censoring you just didn’t even know that you were doing it. I said I’m finished on this subject, I’m not going to talk about Islam anymore, I don’t need to talk about it, I’ve done it now. Then you think how did I convince myself I was done on it? You look back and think I haven’t touched on this subject for all these years and is it because I didn’t want to, or is it because I’m self–censoring?

That I’ve just convinced myself of that. I wonder how many activists do self–censor because it is just too difficult to go through. You don’t want to put your life, or your family’s life at risk, so it’s a tough one to call.

FS: I’m thinking that this kind of abuse has risen with the ubiquity of social media. Women seem to bear the brunt of this particularly vile trolling culture. How can we mitigate that for young artists, or is this something we just have to learn to live with?

SM: It’s sad to think we have to learn to live with it, I suppose in a way we do. The internet, social, media, it’s all relatively new and we don’t really know how to deal with it. I’m glad

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THIIIRD Magazine

For me I always found it difficult with what sort of rules you stick to and which ones you don’t. There are certain cultural ones like drinking that are so embedded in this culture and it is hard not to do that, to be in groups and not join in. Also with sexuality being a huge issue as well, you are surrounded by it, but you are told to be modest. I just didn’t know if I could marry those two things, or embrace those two things. That was my internal struggle but then realistically that is the struggle of most young British Muslims I think.

So it was my own experience but also the struggle of maybe many British Muslims.

those things together. When you put those things together, with how different they are, it highlights that. I like playing with that juxtaposition in my work, of putting the two things together that don’t make sense and they are sort of amusing.

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FAYANN SMITH: In many of your self–portraits there is a juxtaposition of sexuality and religiosity which is extremely jarring to some viewers, it feels indicative of the disparity between Islamic identity and the lifestyles of the West. Do you feel this disparity is reconcilable?

I s s u e I I: F e m m e

I haven’t had half as much as some people have had and it is still really hard not to get caught up in it. Somebody writes something to you, you can’t help but write back and you get into it for the whole evening, answering back to a person on Twitter. When the death threats happened for me, it was before Twitter, before it was a thing, so I didn’t get a backlash online as such. I think that trolling is a way to silence people.

“I Love Orgasms”

SM: Exactly. Also, I am kind of goading people as well in my work, I am jabbing them to get a response. So I feel like I can’t worry about it too much. I don’t want them to thank me, but I want them to respond. “The Opposite of a Feminist is an Asshole”, it is insulting people, in a way, to get the message across.

FS: Speaking of “Opposite of a Feminist is an Asshole”, you mentioned in an interview online that this piece really riles people up. There has been a lot of debate recently about what a feminist is, can you help us?

SM: I made this work before this amazing feminist movement we’ve seen in the last few years. I made it when it was just on the rise and I thought it was interesting that people then didn’t know what a feminist was, they assumed it is just the same stereotype, you hate men, those kind of things. I think once you understand what a feminist is, that it is somebody who stands for equality between men and women and in general, then you can’t really dispute that unless you are an asshole, so that’s fair enough.

“Menstruate With Pride”

SM: Nobody in my family really wears it. We would only ever wear it to pray, so that is the main link I’ve had with it, in terms of religious function, for praying. In my family none of us have ever really worn one, my grandmother never really wore one unless she was going to the mosque or something, so it is a symbol of that for me. Personally if I was to wear a head scarf it has a nice comforting feeling, because it reminds me of being younger, being with my family, but it doesn’t feel like my identity, it doesn’t feel like me. I’m sure for many people it is their identity, it is their choice about who they are. From a feminist perspective it doesn’t sit so well if you look at the reasons why you are meant to wear one that is the only issue I would have.

FS: What does Britishness mean to you?

SM: I think the whole Britishness thing is just a fantasy; people say they want to return to traditional British values, but what exactly do they want? We’ve always been a multi–cultural country, if you look at what British values are, one is democracy, another accepting all faiths and cultures. I think we’ve been caught up in all these slogans, “Take back control” or “We want our country back” What is lost? Is it just an idea?

I’m interested in that, I want to explore that next, this whole identity thing and where we go from here.

FS: You began your exploration of identity long before the recent turmoil of Brexit, the rise of Donald Trump and the cultural volatility that has come in the wake of these events.

With the escalation of this rhetoric has come violence, as an artist what role do you feel you have in the chaos and is it harder to respond when the climate is so ugly?

SM: Well right now I’m trying to respond but everything is changing all the time, so every day is a new story or something that’s ridiculous. I’m finding it quite hard to digest it all, I don’t know how to make a comment on it right now. Also with Trump, for example, the worrying thing is you kind of get used to it, it’s like “What’s he said now? Ohhhhh you know, that’s Trump”. That’s the worrying thing, it just gets normalised.

With the show I’ve just done I’m having a breather I think, I’m just trying to think how we can reflect on it, because it’s such an important time, things are really changing and I just don’t know how to articulate that in an intelligent way right now. I wonder if other artists are feeling the same. I don’t want to be so blatant as to just be like “Oh this is a work about Trump” but I don’t know how to respond.

FS: Do you feel it is your job to respond? Do you feel conflicted about not speaking so much about these issues right now?

SM: Well I think I do see it as my job really and I think part of my practice is to respond to those things, I always want to make comment on those things. I will, but I don’t know how right now. For me it would be mental not to comment, I just know that I have to. Something needs to be said, but I’m not sure what, God knows where we are going to be in a couple of months.

FS: Are you anxious about the future?

SM: Yes! When there were the elections in the Netherlands and France, when the right wing parties didn’t come through, I

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THIIIRD Magazine

FS: What is your relationship to the hijab?

SM: This is something I feel really angry and frustrated about.

The idea that a man can’t control himself is quite ridiculous don’t you think? The hypocrisy of it really, really bothers me, people have a go at Muslims about this, the modesty aspect, but then it is exactly the same when people say, “oh she was asking for it” it’s the same attitude. We have this frustrating image of women always being to blame. It is such an ingrained view we have, that we are sex objects, but if we dare to dress that way you are a slut, or if you act on it, a whore.

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FS: There is an aspect of your work which involves self– publicity, as that is the way you critique the issues, you draw attention to them, using yourself in the pieces to do it. You need the oxygen of some kind of commentary about the work. Some of your more guerrilla projects, like the protest against Page Three, need to be covered by the media to give them potency as a protest. So you have a fine line to negotiate between being visible and generating a debate and not ending up a victim of a very toxic environment. I guess that is something you have to reconcile.

FS: This idea of modesty we discussed earlier, is problematic, as it puts the onus on the female to conceal herself because a man cannot control himself. You actually created an “Anti– rape cloak” as a garment to satirise this.

Sarah Maple

that people are being found, getting arrested, that there are some consequences for trolling. I think it does affect people, some of my friends who are feminists and activists, they aren’t writing articles and they don’t want to write online anymore, because it is so much hassle for them. They get so much shit back they just don’t want to do it anymore and I think that is fair enough, why would you want to deal with an onslaught of abuse on a daily basis?

I s s u e I I: F e m m e

FS: Have you personally experienced any of the backlash from Brexit?

SM: Not yet, no. I don’t think so, we will see what happens later. I have witnessed things but I’ve not experienced it myself.

Probably because I don’t get out much!

SM: I really love David Hockney, Peter Blake, artists that have detail, and then really lovely flat colours. Pictures that are really engaging and beautiful. I love going up to paintings and just staring at them, really close and just seeing how they were done. Frida Kahlo, obviously, I love her technique as well, I haven’t painted for a long time, I should really get back to that. All sorts of people really, I do like the old Hockney portraits, from back in the day, “Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy”, those ones. I really like the symbolic things in paintings, like the Old Masters, they have certain things which have certain meanings. So I really like incorporating little symbols into my work, maybe people wouldn’t even notice it but I know it’s there. I like Holbein, as he was just a portrait painter but then he started to rebel, put his own little symbols in things. He started to do things in his own way, to put his own thoughts in the work; that just really fascinates me.

FS: Pop culture permeates many of your pieces; “Keeping up with the Capulets”, your Shakespearian reworking of Keeping up with the Kardashians, portrays a great sense of humour, it is also a very humane send up of celebrity culture. Do you think there is a darker side to our fascination with fame?

SM: I think part of it was my own fascination with it, I find it interesting that people think that celebrity culture has no value and it is just stupid. Kim Kardashian is just dismissed as an airhead, but she is shaping the kids that love and follow her and she has a big influence. So I wanted to look at it more in–depth, to look at how, well it’s not Shakespeare, but how is it influencing our kids. Like Kylie Jenner, people just love her, I don’t think that is something we can just disregard as meaningless. Why do they love her? She has this huge following, I find it fascinating.

SM: I think maybe if it was just her it wouldn’t work, but I think because it’s the whole family thing, with this brand they have built up, really carefully and strategically with the mum navigating the whole thing. I think they are very clever with how they get stories out there, keeping themselves in the public eye.

FS: I’m speaking to you during the last days of your exhibition Not My Cup of Tea at the Mezzanine Gallery, in Nottingham.

This came about as part of your Sky Academy Arts Scholarship Award, what did this support do for your practice?

FS: So how does the mentorship aspect of it work? With an artist the work is a personal thing to some extent, how does mentoring fit in that picture?

SM: Anyway you want it to really; with my mentor I went to see arts shows, if I had any questions I could ask him, bouncing ideas, any problems I had I could speak to him. I’ve never really had that before, the guidance as well is nice. When you leave art school you don’t really have it, at art school you have all that lovely support and people you can talk to and stuff.

So, after that you are on your own, trying to figure stuff out.

FS: Who was your mentor?

SM: It was Godfrey Worsdale, who is the director of the Henry Moore Foundation; that was pretty amazing, he’s got years of experience and he has worked with all sorts of people I love in the art world. So it was great to hear his insight on things, he is just a world of knowledge and having his feedback was great as well. It was somebody I really respect, so that was awesome.

“Mojave Cloak ” “Recovering Misogynist ”

FS: Despite the controversial nature of your work the art world has been very responsive to it, as you have been the recipient of several awards. How do you understand the dichotomy of being lauded by a system that you are critiquing?

SM: I suppose I don’t feel part of it still, I still feel on the outskirts. I’ve got a lot more to do.

FS: So from your position you don’t feel as if you are part of the establishment. It feels much more tenuous from the inside? From the outside your practice looks very much like part of the Art world.

SM: For me it doesn’t feel like that, I feel like I am still on the outside scratching “Let me in!” Maybe that is a good thing.

FS: Your brand new book You Could Have Done This is out now, I’m guessing the title is inspired by some of the more facile commentary artists get about their work. What can we expect from this first publication?

SM: It is a collection of all my work, about eight years’ worth, my best work from that time. There are a couple of written pieces in there, one from Margaret Harrison the controversial artist, there is a piece about my Cock Series, by Ann Swartz, I love it has been written about academically! A piece by Beverley Knowles the curator, I feel really proud of it, it’s a nice collection of stuff. The exhibition Not my Cup of Tea is also set to go on tour across the UK in 2018, so if people couldn’t make it to Nottingham they will get a chance to see it.

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THIIIRD Magazine

FS: What do you think it is?

SM: Having the team there is a nice support and everything, to bounce ideas off them and have them to help is really good, because sometimes when you are working on your own you do feel quite isolated. You don’t know who to ask for help and things, so it’s really good having them there, I have a mentor and everything. Also, the financial support is massively helpful because it just gives you that freedom, and you can go and pursue things you probably wouldn’t have pursued and that’s actually amazing. That bit of help with the money is so, so helpful. It’s led to so much other stuff as well.

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FS: Aside from its visceral and bold content, I really love that “Menstruate With Pride” is so well painted, you are an exceptionally good painter. What are the works that you return to that inspire you and inform your technique?

Sarah Maple

thought that maybe Britain had taken the brunt of this horrible time right now, thanks to Brexit other countries had learned from that. Then now with the elections in Germany you see all the right wing parties coming up again, it’s quite scary.

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The ‘Unteachables’

My department at one point were hailed ‘the lion tamers’ My 22nd birthday had come and gone. I remember clearly when I stepped into the Crib youth club in East London, this time, as a member of staff. I was excited at the prospect of volunteering and mentoring some of the young people who were now regulars. That first week was mainly about building a rapport and having light-hearted conversations, nothing too serious at first.

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During the second week, I found that five of the boys had been excluded from school. Two of them had been permanently excluded and the others had been put in shortterm respite alternative education centres. As the weeks went by, it became quite clear to me where the intervention work was needed. I’d overheard conversations of potential criminal activity and planned actions that could land the boys in prison or even worse, killed.

Growing up in Hackney, this was not the first time I’d heard these types of conversations. Before going away to study at university, I had seen the direct consequences of similar

Wo r d s b y E m e k a E g b u o n u Graphic by Coral Hoeren

conversations to the ones the boys in the youth club were having. Many people I knew had been stabbed or locked away, some even for murder. Others had lost their lives.

I knew I had to do something to intervene. I did not want history to repeat itself. I started a few workshops and debates by rebranding some of the social nights at the youth club.

The sessions were focused on healing and building for the future. While all this was happening, things on the streets intensified. In the space of 12 months, 2 young people I was working with were stabbed and shot. Unfortunately, one passed away. This hit everyone hard. At this point, I felt like what I was doing at the youth club was not enough.

With my renewed passion to want to do more, I was given an opportunity to work in schools in Barking and Dagenham as a behavioural mentor. This was part of the education service and was my first job. The service was a hub for those on the verge of permanent exclusion and the set up allowed me to work closely with a teacher and student who could only be

relationships and respect with the students. For these learners, I believe this is the foundation to teaching the so called ‘unteachable’.

One of the students, Mike, was only 12. My initial thought was one of questioning. Why could he only be taught in a private space in a public library?

Everyone in life needs a purpose. Our job as teachers is to help students on their journey and to inspire them with our methods. This responsibility however needs to be shared, parents and carers need to do more to encourage learning at home. Often, these students lack basic skills like reading and writing. This makes it that much harder to teach. Schools need to do more to show that a non-academic route to success exists. There need to be campaigns to remove the stigma of the non-academic route being a second-class model for success. Once the youth have been excluded from school, this needs to be prominent and promoted. Professionals from other industries outside of the academic route should be called into speak. Let them display their path and success stories. Lastly, it is ultimately down to the young people which path they choose. They need to want to change and they need to want success for themselves.

It was not long before I found out why. Mike had a very short attention span and had a bag of tricks he used to intimidate teachers. His older brother was in prison and his mum worked most days and most nights. Mike refused to listen or participate in any tasks he was given. The teacher used to take multiple breaks out of frustration. I sat with Mike to get a better understanding of why he was acting out. It took three months of being around him before he opened up. When he did, he spoke about his home life and why he was constantly getting into fights at school. The teacher and I eventually worked out a plan to get Mike on board.

With this progress, Mike was placed back in the unit with other students. All the work we had done pretty much went out of the window when he was placed back into this setting.

I made it my duty to make sure he did not revert back to requiring one to one teaching.

I have found that there are many issues and barriers to learning for a lot of the young people I have worked with.

Many were in care or abusive households. Many felt neglected and were damaged emotionally. This reflected in their school life. When mixed with the archaic education system we have, it was and is a recipe for disaster. I say archaic because the current model is focused on academic excellence. This creates a sense of exclusion especially where students have mixed capabilities. At this point, the behaviour of these troubled learners starts to deteriorate. Once it begins to disrupt other learners, it is easier to move them into alternative education provisions.

The truth of the matter is, they are on a journey.

Sometimes, our words do not makes sense until further down the line. Never assume it is in vain. You never know who your words might affect.

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Whilst working with Mike (and other students), I was able to observe in more depth why these children had ended up in educational limbo. For the next 2 years in my position, I stopped many fights, dealt with bullies, racism, ignorance, teachers being spat at, hit and some more serious cases issues involving knives. I watched and I learnt. Following this, I decided I wanted to train to become a teacher. I wanted to be able to make more of an impact from a position of authority within the classroom.

I bumped into Mike last year. He is now 18, focused with a plan and wants to attend university. We had a laugh about his antics when he was 12. He showed appreciation for those that never gave up on him. Sometimes, we expect instant results when we speak to young people and share all the advice we give.

The ‘Unteachables’

taught one to one. My thinking was that maybe here, I could make an impact before the students got to the point of feeling total hopelessness.

As a teacher and a writer, I am always thinking of new ways to engage and inspire young people. My second book Ambitions of the Deprived is all about changing the narrative and showing young people that with hope and hard work, all things are possible.

Emeke Egbuonu is an author, professional speaker and entrepreneur. Raised in Hackney, East London he has spent the past 15 years empowering young people and creating opportunities to help fulfil their potential.

For my whole teaching career, I have only ever worked with learners who have been deemed challenging, unteachable.

My department at one point were hailed ‘the lion tamers’.

There are many great teachers out there who are able to teach students who are willing and ready to learn. For me, the challenge has always been how can I help those who are not ready to learn. Part of what I am good at is building

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“There’s an eerie silence over our total lack of inclusion, with no one really speaking out about why we are being ignored. I think it’s because Asians, in general, are seen to be privileged through education or subservient in one way or another”

Wo r d s b y B i s h i B h a t t a c h a r y a Photography by Zuzanna Butkiewicz

The WITCiH and Her Craf t

The WITCiH and Her Craft

Highlighting female creativity in music technology

The novel pointed out that since Ancient Egypt, women were divided by patriarchy into two camps; wives or mistresses.

Nobility was the only path to be liberated in terms of your education, status & sexuality. This is the reason why so many women able to break the mold, historically, have been royal or upper class.

Only in the past 50-100 years, have the stories started to shift, accelerating since the feminist movements of the 1970s. Whatever they weren’t ‘woke’ to then, it’s important to remember that women’s choices at the time were very limited.

For example, prior to the 1970s, in the UK, Women couldn’t open bank accounts or rent flats on their own without a male signatory. Don’t even get me started on sexual harassment, immigrants, women of colour or the stories of disabled, nonbinary & transwomen!

Although our stories are gaining visibility, we are still struggling with equal pay in the majority of industries. It is in the age of the internet that people have been forced to acknowledge women’s stories dues to the democratising impact of technology revolutionising society at large.

Rather than garnering support in my struggle to be heard, I’ve had intense pushback from industry gatekeepers, with statements such as ‘I can’t sell you to white people,’ & ‘white hipsters will never get you,’ or ‘I can’t sell you to middle England’ expressed to my face.

It’s really difficult when your liberal friends and support network are so shocked when you admit what you’ve gone through, that they accidentally gaslight the horror of the discrimination you’ve received.

It’s exhausting when it’s happened to you throughout your professional career. You see, if there are no stories that look like you or reflect your experience, you cease to exist, so it’s a deeply alienating position. I could have named names, but I would never work again. With the limited resources & time available to me, I have prioritised making work, multi-genre music and collaborations with galleries and institutions - all put through my own label.

In 2015, I headlined The Queen Elizabeth Hall with my one woman show, ‘Albion Voice Live,’ to promote the album of the same name, directed by my then creative partner, Matthew Hardern. Musically, I was exploring my identity as a second generation British Indian and a cultural child of immigrants, caught between cultures.

As an executive producer on the show, I was struck by the resistance from music venues to stage interdisciplinary work,

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Since reading ‘The Story of Sex’ I’ve started to think of the narrative surrounding women in music, because narratives are more inclusive to people from all walks of life. In December 2018, the annual UK Diversity in Music survey, showed there was better visibility for BAME women in general, although it was vague on facts about what sectors were improving and at what level women were actually being employed.

There was zero data available regarding South Asian Women in Music, over the age of 30. So there’s virtually no evidence of our existence, or we are in the single digits, if we are in our 20s.

There’s an eerie silence over our total lack of inclusion, with no one really speaking out about why we are being ignored.

I think it’s because Asians, in general, are seen to be privileged through education or subservient in one way or another.

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I recently read the graphic novel, ‘The Story of Sex’ by Philippe Brenot & Laetitia Coryn a compendium of the history of sexuality in the west, which proved to be a real lightbulb above my head moment. It provided a context for some of the struggles I’ve faced but found hard to articulate, mostly around how cultural narratives are constructed and who is controlled in society.

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although this has shifted vastly as technology has sped up.

It’s a different approach to just staging music, as you are effectively staging two bands in one go; audio & visual. I had grown up loving artists such as Laurie Anderson, Delia Derbyshire, Daphne Oram & Laurie Spiegel, whilst being inspired by tech pioneers; Hedy Lamarr & Ada Lovelace to name a few iconoclasts. I realised that in the burgeoning AV scene in London, there was a need to carve out an inclusive space for women in tech. I was interested in identifying the granddaughters of these technology witches, so I decided to start WITCiH - The Women in Technology Creative Industries Hub. WITCiH is committed to increasing the visibility of women and non-binary artists, providing a stage and a voice to those spearheading creative technology media.

In two years WITCiH has staged salons in East London, one off events for The Tate Modern & collaborations with Guerrilla Science. Guest performers so far have included Imogen Heap, Gazelle Twin, Ana Matronic & Mira Calix, the majority are good friends, who have rallied behind my cause. WITCiH curated their first festival, commissioning 7 new works from artists as diverse as Chagall, Miri Kat, Rebekah Ubuntu & Lia Mice.

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It’s confirmed my deep love for other artists & other women/ womxn; learning about the life, work & journeys of everyone who’s been involved and feeling inspired by all of their different stories. WITCiH emphasises the stories & accomplishments of Womxn in Tech and I’m excited to be a part of a change in the dialogue, the reframing of many narratives, as much as a curator & commissioner. WITCiH has been the start of my life as an artist/entrepreneur and it’s one hell of a marathon.

It’s a massive struggle to be an artist & run an organisation on your own.

The internet has empowered millennials & Gen Z artists to take the reins to write their stories on unprecedented levels. As artist/entrepreneur models become more commonplace, there must be empathy & transparency over the reality of what it takes to be an artist and front a startup. It’s an uphill struggle and horribly lonely, even though I thrive on it.

Before the algorithms created by technology giants turn us into a mass of polarised bickering idiots (oops, has that happened already?), I want to praise the majority of progressive men I have encountered in the brave new world of the artist as boss. There’s still a long way to go in terms of equality & representation, but the tools to make change are literally at your fingertips.

If I was to give advice to anybody who wants to participate, I’d recommend that if you have a passion for something, then jump on it & manifest. This is your story.

Bishi Bhattacharya is is a British, London-based, singersongwriter, multi-instrumentalist, multimedia performer, producer, composer and DJ of Bengali heritage. She is the artistic director and co-founder of WITCiH, The Women in Technology Creative Industries Hub, a platform to increase the visibility of women and non-binary artists at the intersection of music, creative technology and STEM.

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LEO KALYAN: A POP LIFE LESS ORDINARY

by Fayann Smith

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February 7, 2018

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Producer, song writer and pop artist Leo Kalyan’s speaks to THIIIRD about developing his own sound of progressive pop and being the importance of being visible as brown, gay musician coming from a muslim background.

Interview by Fayann Smith Leo Kalyan’s debut EP blew up in an unprecedented way. His single “Fingertips”

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became one of Spotify’s biggest viral successes, thrusting him into the global popular music consciousness and onto the Radio 1 playlist. Despite this mainstream recognition he is not the usual pop success story, far from it, his music and identity offering layers of complexity that usually elude chart popularity. He talks to THIIIRD about how his unique journey has inspired his distinctive sound and challenged the perception of what a pop star can be.

F: You have described yourself in previous interviews as left-field pop, what does that classification mean to you and does it still stand?

L: I would define left-field pop as music that sits outside of your mainstream radio and mainstream pop songs. So One Direction to me are the most to the right, so to speak; One Direction would be on one end and on the other end I’d put someone like FKA Twigs, or Björk. To me she is the most left-field pop you can get, because to me pop is anything that has hooks in it, memorable hooks, memorable melodies and memorable lyrics. Something that is essentially catchy is pop, if it is catchy it can become popular, if it is catchy and popular, it is pop.

That applies to the “Macarena” as much as it does to R.E.M’s “Losing my Religion” because they are both pop songs just different kinds. I would say that that’s my definition of left-field pop and all kinds of artists today whether we are thinking about Arca, Kasabian, Charlie XCX, Iggy Azalea…They all sit on a continuum, everything sits in different places as to how pop it gets. On one end it’s very catchy and perhaps more formulaic, then say FKA Twigs is somebody that is very nonformulaic and is breaking down structures, it becomes more of an ideas based presentation of music. Not everybody has the desire to express themselves in that way, a desire to express anything in particular, some people are happy singing love songs and that’s absolutely fine. Adele is amazing, but is not conceptual it’s always telling stories, that is what makes her so popular and therefore pop and I love that.

There’s nothing wrong with being formulaic because there are ways of being very intelligently formulaic, as Adele proves. I’m a big fan of pop music as it informs my music in a big way, that’s why I describe myself as left-field pop. I feel that my music is conceptual, I am struggling and grappling with some big ideas that I’m trying to convey, sometimes successfully and sometimes I become too abstract and beat myself up about it.

F: I get the impression that you pay great attention to detail with all aspects of your work, your lyrics in particular stand out as considered and poetic in contrast to many songs I could hear on the radio. How do you devise your lyrical content?

L: Sometimes I see a word that sets me off, sometimes I’m sat on the train and I’ll see a word on the front of a newspaper and that will give me an idea. Sometimes I’ll

be watching something on TV, something will jump out at me and I’ll write it down straight away, or I’ll sit there with the chords I’ve just played and I’ll let the emotion of the chords guide me on what the song is about. I usually have themes in my head, I want to write a song about this experience or this feeling and if that feeling fits with the chords I’ve written that becomes the song that I’m writing that day.

F: So at the root of this process although the methods are diverse, is an emotional resonance, so it’s something that makes you feel a certain way?

L: Absolutely.

F: You produce all your own music, in addition to production for other commercial artists, what inspired you to produce and does it give you an advantage?

L: I’d say yes it does give you an advantage, because you’re able to think about song in more ways than just a singer, or a singer or songwriter turning up to do something. It allows you to know about the possibilities of space within production, or things you can do in terms of effects to make things sound interesting or create hooks. You know the language.

What inspired me? I’d say I worked with a lot of people before I started producing and I learnt to produce just by watching friends of mine. These were just friends of mine with whom I was trying to write songs, we were just kids fucking about, trying to make some music. I found that nobody was making what I kept thinking about in my head I wanted to try and make that. I was watching my friends and I thought you know what I can have a go at this and I tried. I started off shit, got better and better slowly and over time I became a producer and other people started approaching me and said can you produce this for me. Then I started finding fun and joy sitting down with other artists and helping them express themselves. It’s nice to get out of your own head sometimes and get into somebody else’s, to not have to worry about your own problems, or your own issues, or baggage. That’s usually what you’re grappling with when you write songs for yourself.

F: I believe that you are classically trained…

L: I’m classically trained in vocal, I trained in Indian classical music, I did that for years and I should really return to it, because it makes you think of music in a different way. Indian classical music is not about fame or glory or success, it’s much like yoga, it’s a spiritual process and you’re doing it to get better at it. It’s about the discipline of it, the pureness of being good and expressing yourself, kind of like gospel I think, so there’s a lot in common with gospel and jazz and the improvisational nature of black music. It is a completely different entry point an emotional entry point, Indian classical music is all about emotion, I don’t mean emotion in terms of subject matter, because often there is just one line, one couplet or one verse that is just sung again and again in five hundred different ways and it’s all about how you convey the emotion of just those two lines. So just a handful of words and how you were able to convey the emotion of that poetry for about twenty minutes.

F: A word that comes to my mind is transcendence; a sound that feels like it connects you to something bigger than yourself. Even if this is just an illusion it is a powerful one, like hearing a spiritual in church.

L: I often describe in my music what I’m trying to always capture is a feeling, the one thing that is in all of my songs is the fact that they feel very dreamy, ethereal, summery, oceanic, I like to use that word because I want all of my songs to make you feel like you are floating on a wave. Or to make you feel that feeling of the heat on your skin when you are driving in a hot country by the ocean. That’s a very specific thing, but you know it is almost my own test when I make a song for me, a Leo Kalyan song that I make for myself as opposed to a song for somebody else.

When I make a song for me I like capturing these feelings and is an interesting challenge to give to yourself.

F: The lyrical content is often quite challenging in contrast to the lush

F: The lyrical content is often quite challenging in contrast to the lush soundscapes; as in your song “Fucked Up” – on one hand the music is very seductive, soothing almost, but the ideas can be much darker.

L: That wasn’t a choice, in terms of I want to necessarily give people soothing music with more hard themes. It wasn’t a choice it was just naturally what happened; now I’m thinking in a more deliberate way, I’m thinking okay well there are some that even grittier and harder I’d like to talk about. Stories I’d like to tell about my own life and my own experiences, I’ve only been able to come out about in the last eight or nine months.

In the “Fucked Up” EP I finally talked about my sexuality, I talked about my cultural background, my ethnicity and all these kinds of things that I didn’t want to talk about for a long time because of the controversy around these things. Somehow I’ve just found myself as an adult having all of my labels of identity intensely politicised and always on the news, so you almost feel like everybody is talking about you and your rights. That’s not a choice that I made it’s just strangely where I ended up, just because this is a point in history where we are at right now.

It took me a long time to talk about those things, because in a world post 9/11 everybody who was from a Muslim background and had brown skin dealt with it in a different way. The increasing rise of Islamic terrorism combined with Islamophobia, the actions of a few all of a sudden having to represent billions of people around the world. How in the West those who are brown and from Muslim backgrounds how we dealt with that, whether we acknowledge it or not, whether we talk about it or make excuses for it. Everybody deals with it differently and is dealing with it differently.

It’s only in the past eight months I’ve been able to start talking about the really hard-hitting things and now I’m in the process of figuring out how soothing the music should be if I’m going to talk about things that are really not soothing. I’m not very soothed by the world at the moment, which is why I like to travel, take photographs, why my imagery is a lot to do with escapism. This is all subconscious and I’m only now able to look at what I’ve been doing for years with my visuals, my music and my Instagram, all the creative things I do and recognise a theme, escapism. Wanting to connect with these surreal blue oceanic landscapes because I can see a sort of freedom, an escape from the boxes and trappings of everyday life in a city as a queer person of colour.

F: It is a time of decreased attention spans and high paced media; to fly in the face of that is something quite profound, especially as a pop artist, have you found it harder to grab people’s attention or has it not been an issue for you?

L: I guess, yes in a sense, if I wanted to I could sit down today make a big pop House tune and put it out and I have many friends who have global careers doing just that Making bangers Do I want to make bangers for myself? Do they express

just that. Making bangers. Do I want to make bangers for myself? Do they express my truth? No, but I will happily write them for other artists. I’ve been involved writing bangers for the people and I love a good banger. I love a good banger but at the end of the day I don’t think that my truth as a human being, as an artist is necessarily expressed best through a banger. I think the ideas I want to convey through my music are different but I’m happy to write songs for other people that are bangers and fun and frivolous, I have no problem with that kind of music, in fact, it inspires me.

F: You are one of the successes from the new online streaming model of music consumption. MTV described your breakout single “Fingertips” as the most viral track on Spotify in 2015. It must have felt good to get such an organic response to your work from your fan base. The ground reports from other artists about their experience of Spotify and the streaming model vary, how did it work out for you?

L: It got me lots of other opportunities in terms of getting my music in front of lots of people, therefore lots of people took me seriously, it helped to build and create my fan base. In terms of bringing me a big old cheque, no. My song was played on daytime Radio 1, in the middle of the day, it was number one on the worldwide Spotify chart. For me that is something that makes me feel incredibly proud because I didn’t see it coming. It just happened with “Fingertips” I didn’t even want to put that song on the EP and it just came out and did so well. In many senses I wasn’t prepared for it.

F: You recently went public as a gay Muslim, partially via the bluntly titled “Fucked Up” – it struck me this was a bold move in our divided times, why was important for you to become visible?

L: As a gay brown person, you don’t exist. You have no identity, your existence is denied. It is strange to me to think that I am the only gay South Asian person who is out and living life publicly as a musician in this country, possibly the world. That is crazy to me, it’s a weird position to be in but there simply aren’t any others. It’s important for me to show other people that it is okay to be gay and you can actually live a full life and be a complete human being.

You can tell your parents that you are gay and if they have a problem with it, then they just have to deal with it the way everybody else’s parents have to deal with it.

You were born gay, you don’t choose it and you just are what you are. I think that more and more people need to be visible because I think in South Asian culture there is a huge stigma around it. The same way there is in African culture or Caribbean culture, there is huge stigma around sexuality for all people of colour. I thought long and hard about whether I wanted to start talking about this, then I just thought to myself, fuck it, life is short. I only have one life that I can live and I’m sick of not being my full self, I’m sick of having to cordon off important parts of my

identity, personality and interests. Why should I do that?

F: This is very brave, especially when you are occupying an outsider position, but you still also have this ability to be a mainstream pop artist.

One of your idols George Michael remained closeted for the first part of his career and sadly you can see why the industry thought it was necessary.

L: I’m a huge fan of George Michael, vocally, musically, everything. He is a fantastic producer as well, people don’t realise he produced a lot of his own records and played the instruments. What I love about him was that he ultimately wasn’t afraid to put his sexuality out there, with Fast Love and Outside. When he came out he came out with bells on! I’m here I’m queer and you can fuck off! I think that was really, really amazing and we haven’t really seen anything like that since. We have out pop stars now, but they aren’t doing quite the same as he was able to do.

We have some incredible artists who are doing great things for gay people in the public eye, Sam Smith, Olly Alexander, both of whom are friends of mine, they set a really wonderful example. The thing is they are both white; we need to see more.

There is also MNEK who is out, he is trailblazing a path for people of colour who are gay, you see him and you are just like, wow, I don’t need to be this stereotypical thing, he doesn’t give a fuck and we need more people to not give a fuck. We need more labels to take chances on artists who are actual artists, who don’t give a fuck and who were doing things that are ground-breaking and pushing culture forward.

F: Do you feel the need to reconcile your gay identity with your Muslim heritage and if so how do you do it?

L: Oh God, what a question! There has been a long tradition of gay poets and musicians and artists within Islam. Within left-field spiritual Islam, Sufism, there have been a lot of poets, the most famous being Rumi, a 13th century Persian mystic. Beyoncé has named her child after him, I’m sure knowingly, as she does her research, he is also one of the bestselling poets in America. His poetry sells by the bucket load in America! Islam has got a long tradition of these kinds of things.

How do I reconcile the two? I don’t necessarily reconcile the two in the sense that I am what I am and that is the reconciliation. If there is no reconciliation and I wouldn’t have been born that way. There is a really interesting article my friend sent me when I was about to release “Fucked Up” about why modern Muslims have such a problem with homosexuality, because they haven’t throughout history and now they really do. It gave lots of examples of gay people who have existed in Islam, from Islamic countries, hugely successful ones, so it does beg the question what has happened now. A lot of it stems from Wahhabism, a very stringent form of Islam, but that just isn’t the way most Muslims think.

F: How was your truth received by your loved ones and fans?

L: I feel like my fans started talking to me about things on social media in ways they hadn’t before, there were certain fans who send me heart eyes on everything I post and they still do! The people who are my fans are here for the music, they weren’t bothered; if anything they reached out to me more because they feel like they know me more. As for my loved ones, I’ve had such amazing support from people, I’ve had messages from cousins and my aunties and my uncles, people just saying I’m brave, can’t believe you had the guts to do this, you should be proud.

F: The positivity was unexpected?

L: I did not expect it at all, I really didn’t.

F: So this is really encouraging to a fan is perhaps in a similar position?

L: I can’t promise that that’s gonna be the result; I talk to my fans about it, if they message me I talk about these things with them and my main piece of advice to them is that if you do really fear for your life, fear for your safety, fear you will be thrown out, make yourself financially independent before you tell them. I do understand that it is potentially actually putting people in danger and the last thing I want to do is encourage people to be at risk. It can help to make yourself

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independent, I did, before I told my dad unequivocally that I was gay. Luckily for me my story is positive and I would like to hope there will be more positive stories, but there is no guarantee of that. All we can do is band together, build a community that we can rely on, a place for queer people of colour to find support and advice.

F: Love is a recurrent theme in your work, would you agree that is good to demonstrate there is a universality to the subject of the agony and ecstasy of relationships, putting homosexual love on a par with the endlessly eulogised heterosexual union?

L: I think it is incredibly important to have that. The fact is, even I don’t use male pronouns, I just use “you” and that is a deliberate choice. Somebody Tweeted me the other day to say how much they love me. I never use pronouns like “he” or “she” and I do that on purpose so it is universal. I just want to tell the story and not have it labelled as gay or straight.

Do I think that there should be more songs from man to man that use a male pronoun? Yes and maybe I’ll write one actually, I haven’t done it and perhaps that is because I’ve been afraid, when I think about it. I heard an artist recently called Serpent with Feet, very abstract sort of songs, but all telling stories that are very much gay love stories, people are definitely doing it. Maybe I will. www.leokalyan.com Single “No Man’s land” out now.

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