Towards a Diasporic Architecture of the ‘In-Between’
Jayden Ali, co-curator of the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture reflects on how the rituals of immigrant communities can shape cities and their design.
‘There is a reason, after all, that some people wish to colonize the moon, and others dance before it as an ancient friend’, James Baldwin noted in No Name in the Street, his 1972 reflection on the Black experience in Europe and America of the 1960s and early 70s. Baldwin refocuses his metaphorical telescope on what it means to live in and among others: other people, other objects, other ways of being. This trilogy neatly sums up mine and my co-curators’ – Joseph Henry, Meneesha Kellay and Sumitra Upham – definition of architecture; it runs contrary to the hegemony of a profession that still pays far too much attention to the literal building of walls, when the space and streets between them is where society unfolds and our experience of a place is shaped.
Baldwin’s ‘ancient friend’ is the guiding force behind Dancing Before the Moon, our exhibition at La Biennale di Venezia’s 18th International Architecture Exhibition. The exhibition aims to shift our collective gaze so as to centre on how Britain’s diasporic communities – through their active occupation of the spaces in-between – help to construct the supportive framework of contemporary British life. We looked to celebrate how, through everyday ritual acts like dance and worship, they shape the architecture of the world we live in. This definition of architecture should not be read as radical. It is inevitable that our experience of a city will be informed by the activity that takes place within it.
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Image: Dancing Before the Moon (film still) by Jayden Ali, Joseph Henry, Meneesha Kellay and Sumitra Upham. Contributing footage by Steve Shaw (Steel ‘n’ Skin, 1979)courtesy of the BFI National Archive. © BFI National Archive
Cover: Dancing Before the Moon (film still) by Jayden Ali, Joseph Henry, Meneesha Kellay and Sumitra Upham. Contributing footage by Issi Nanabeyin. ©Issi Nanabeyin