A few weeks ago I snagged a chat with Justin Allen, who is one of seven artists we couldn't be more thrilled to present as part of QUEER TRASH: THE SYMPOSIUM at ISSUE Project Room on September 22.
Justin Allen is a writer and performer from Northern Virginia. He has read at the Poetry Project, Kampnagel, and Serpentine Sackler Gallery, and performed at Artists Space, Knockdown Center, and Queer Abstract.
Justin is also a fellow fellow of QT EA in QAM.
Justin Allen is a writer and performer from Northern Virginia. He has read at the Poetry Project, Kampnagel, and Serpentine Sackler Gallery, and performed at Artists Space, Knockdown Center, and Queer Abstract.
Justin is also a fellow fellow of QT EA in QAM.
Justin Allen, photo by Texas Isaiah
Justin Allen: Hey!
Queer Trash/Eames Armstrong: 🙂 how are ya
JA: Pretty good, you?
EA: I'm good, a little dizzy with too much on my plate but thats how I like it
JA: I totally get that
EA: Can't crash if I can't stop haha. Looking ahead to Queer Trash: the Symposium, I’m curious to hear how you've been thinking about the "symposium" format
JA: Totally. When I hear symposium, my mind immediately goes to someone standing at a lectern delivering information, but I'm hoping to interpret this format in a way that fits the work I'm presenting.
I'll be performing my piece Explain Totality, which I made in 2017, and will follow this with a reading of poems and non-fiction that are informed by the same research as the performance
I'm interesting in juxtaposing dance performance with reading
The performance is similarly split between performance and a reading by my recorded voice, so I want to keep this relationship going
EA: Can you talk about the research?
JA: For about 2 years now I've been researching both the origins of emo music, which I grew up an avid listener of, and the history of US suburbs, one of which I grew up in. I am very interested in linguistics, and I understand history, and strands of histories interweaving, as an etymology of contemporary culture and life. In this way, this research was very much inspired by a desire to understand my adolescent and present selves, and the regional and popular culture that shapes me.
From this research I found many intersections
I learned that the first band labeled emo, Rites of Spring, was from DC, where my dad was born and raised, and released their debut studio album in 1985, the year my parents got married.
Queer Trash/Eames Armstrong: 🙂 how are ya
JA: Pretty good, you?
EA: I'm good, a little dizzy with too much on my plate but thats how I like it
JA: I totally get that
EA: Can't crash if I can't stop haha. Looking ahead to Queer Trash: the Symposium, I’m curious to hear how you've been thinking about the "symposium" format
JA: Totally. When I hear symposium, my mind immediately goes to someone standing at a lectern delivering information, but I'm hoping to interpret this format in a way that fits the work I'm presenting.
I'll be performing my piece Explain Totality, which I made in 2017, and will follow this with a reading of poems and non-fiction that are informed by the same research as the performance
I'm interesting in juxtaposing dance performance with reading
The performance is similarly split between performance and a reading by my recorded voice, so I want to keep this relationship going
EA: Can you talk about the research?
JA: For about 2 years now I've been researching both the origins of emo music, which I grew up an avid listener of, and the history of US suburbs, one of which I grew up in. I am very interested in linguistics, and I understand history, and strands of histories interweaving, as an etymology of contemporary culture and life. In this way, this research was very much inspired by a desire to understand my adolescent and present selves, and the regional and popular culture that shapes me.
From this research I found many intersections
I learned that the first band labeled emo, Rites of Spring, was from DC, where my dad was born and raised, and released their debut studio album in 1985, the year my parents got married.
EA: how did the label come about? I tend to think about 'early' emo as more like Weezer-sounding
JA: Emo is short for emotional hardcore, and described Rites of Springs hardcore sound combined with emotional, introspective lyrics.
EA: Did you folks have any relationship to dc hardcore, or other music scenes?
JA: They did! Emo lyricism was a contrast to the aggressive, hypermasculine energy of the scene at the time.
It came out of DC's hardcore scene
EA: oh oh I meant "your folks" like your parents
JA: oh!
EA: typo lol
JA: My mom grew up in Texas, but my dad was growing up in DC at the same time as many of the early hardcore scene's popular figures, but he never knew about the scene.
Which is part of why it fascinates me that I would become such an avid listener of mainstreamed emo growing up in a suburb of DC, the city where the genre was coined when my parents were in their 20s and living in a totally separate world, so to speak
I found an article in the Washington Post from the early 80s noting that the county in Northern Virginia that I grew up in had just recently begun to see an increase in the black residents, but that we had been historically unwelcome there
So this was happening in the earlier days of DC's hardcore scene, and around the time my dad had left DC for college
Eventually my parents would move into the suburbs, have me in 1992, and by 2004 I was listening to Fall Out Boy and My Chem
I'm interested in that trajectory, as well as the history of rock n roll and its black innovators, without which there would be no emo
EA: absolutely
JA: Chuck Berry did an interview in the 80s where he mentions that in God Save the Queen the guitar and progression sounds like his, making a connection between punk and rock n roll sounds, and hardcore punk evolved from punk rock, so I've been interested in this aesthetic narrative
This research has involved a lot of music listening which has been great
EA: Ha I think I found that interview, on The Ramones he says "A good little jump number. These guys remind me of myself when I first started, I only knew three chords too."
JA: Thats the one!
JA: Emo is short for emotional hardcore, and described Rites of Springs hardcore sound combined with emotional, introspective lyrics.
EA: Did you folks have any relationship to dc hardcore, or other music scenes?
JA: They did! Emo lyricism was a contrast to the aggressive, hypermasculine energy of the scene at the time.
It came out of DC's hardcore scene
EA: oh oh I meant "your folks" like your parents
JA: oh!
EA: typo lol
JA: My mom grew up in Texas, but my dad was growing up in DC at the same time as many of the early hardcore scene's popular figures, but he never knew about the scene.
Which is part of why it fascinates me that I would become such an avid listener of mainstreamed emo growing up in a suburb of DC, the city where the genre was coined when my parents were in their 20s and living in a totally separate world, so to speak
I found an article in the Washington Post from the early 80s noting that the county in Northern Virginia that I grew up in had just recently begun to see an increase in the black residents, but that we had been historically unwelcome there
So this was happening in the earlier days of DC's hardcore scene, and around the time my dad had left DC for college
Eventually my parents would move into the suburbs, have me in 1992, and by 2004 I was listening to Fall Out Boy and My Chem
I'm interested in that trajectory, as well as the history of rock n roll and its black innovators, without which there would be no emo
EA: absolutely
JA: Chuck Berry did an interview in the 80s where he mentions that in God Save the Queen the guitar and progression sounds like his, making a connection between punk and rock n roll sounds, and hardcore punk evolved from punk rock, so I've been interested in this aesthetic narrative
This research has involved a lot of music listening which has been great
EA: Ha I think I found that interview, on The Ramones he says "A good little jump number. These guys remind me of myself when I first started, I only knew three chords too."
JA: Thats the one!
Justin Allen, photo by Cristobal Guerra
EA: And you also make music, right? Is that related to this body of research too?
JA: I do! I've been collaborating on a music project with artist Devin Kenny as part of a larger sci-fi project about life in a Post-Reparations US. For the project, we're both characters living in this world.
For this project, I've been writing emo songs about Virginia to the melody of Rae Sremmurd's song Black Beatles, which I perform to in Explain Totality
Song are to be performed a capella
EA: What's the relationship (or parallel?) with sci fi and emo, and how do you know if something is emo?
JA: I think of them as two different projects, the sci-fi and the emo work, but I think what draws me to both is an interest in history, and finding myself in histories that have been omitted or not taught to me. Black people have been involved in--and continue to be involved in--rock n roll and the many genres that branch from it since these genres' inceptions, from Sister Rosetta Tharpe, to Bad Brains, to Santigold (she used to be in this really great punk bank called Stiffed), to Brontez Purnell, to Tamar-kali and many more, but Black musicians in these genres are often written out of dominant narratives--an erasure that the Afro-punk documentary, for example, disrupts. So my emo work is about disrupting erasure on a local and first-person level, and my sci-fi, while fictional, is very much in response to the legacies I am learning about through my researching of the past.
Also worth noting, the word "mosh" is traced back to a Bad Brains show at 9:30 Club
EA: I didn't know that
There's now a J.Crew where the first 930 was
JA: Oh noo
H.R. of Bad Brains yelled "mash down Babylon" at a show there in a Jamaican accent, and it sounded like "mosh"
EA: innnteresttting
Can you talk a little more about moshing? really fascinating to think about it within a contemporary dance lens. Moshing, and at some point the term "slam dancing" came and went
JA: Yes! I have a pdf of an article that I need to find that talks about the creation of the word, and says that moshing came from slam dancing
When I was in high school choreographed hardcore dancing was popular- set moves you would do to the music
I've been interested in creating a movement vocabulary with moshing and hardcore dancing as its foundation
EA: is there anyone doing anything like that?
JA: The rapper Kevin Abstract has a music video where he looks to be moshing
EA: ooo and Mykki Blanco "Moshin in the Front"
JA: Brontez Purnell has a video performing with others to live drumming that's been a big inspiration. I'm not sure if he'd label it moshing, but the movements, while fluid, felt similar
Yes, Mykki! Mykki does wonderful things with punk aesthetics in general
EA: I guess that's not necessarily movement but there was a LOT of movement when I saw them live last month
JA: Yes, same when I last saw them live
I think components of moshing are present in many practices, whether the throwing of arms, the large movements at high speeds
EA: I've been thinking a lot in the last few years about how dangerous "the pit" was at certain kinds of shows maybe shaped the kind of music I like
JA: Yes, one big component of my thinking about mosh pits is thinking about their racial dynamics, and being one of few people of color surrounded by white men essentially enacting violence
EA: totally
JA: I remember being scared, feeling connected to and aware of other people of color present, and also oddly cared for. I remember people putting their arms up to protect others from being hit
For my piece, I was really interested in moshing alone, in order to think about difference within the context of mosh pits
I was also very inspired by Lorraine O'Grady's piece The First and the Last of the Modernists, and her use of the diptych to juxtapose two seemingly unrelated people, Michael Jackson and Charles Baudelaire, in order to highlight their connections. I wondered, how can I perform a diptych to draw connections between two genres that are seemingly unrelated, but between which there is a shared American history
Because black and white are stark contrasts, I decided to use contrasts and the diptych idea as constraints: the first half of the piece I'll move but not speak, the second half will be my voice with minimal movement.
The two songs juxtaposed I also considered a type of sonic diptych, accentuated by my movement
EA: Can you say what those songs are or do you want to keep it a surprise for our readers 🙂
JA: Let's keep it a surprise 🙂
EA: yas! Haha. thank you!!
<3
Interview on July 13, 2018
some edits made for clarity
JA: I do! I've been collaborating on a music project with artist Devin Kenny as part of a larger sci-fi project about life in a Post-Reparations US. For the project, we're both characters living in this world.
For this project, I've been writing emo songs about Virginia to the melody of Rae Sremmurd's song Black Beatles, which I perform to in Explain Totality
Song are to be performed a capella
EA: What's the relationship (or parallel?) with sci fi and emo, and how do you know if something is emo?
JA: I think of them as two different projects, the sci-fi and the emo work, but I think what draws me to both is an interest in history, and finding myself in histories that have been omitted or not taught to me. Black people have been involved in--and continue to be involved in--rock n roll and the many genres that branch from it since these genres' inceptions, from Sister Rosetta Tharpe, to Bad Brains, to Santigold (she used to be in this really great punk bank called Stiffed), to Brontez Purnell, to Tamar-kali and many more, but Black musicians in these genres are often written out of dominant narratives--an erasure that the Afro-punk documentary, for example, disrupts. So my emo work is about disrupting erasure on a local and first-person level, and my sci-fi, while fictional, is very much in response to the legacies I am learning about through my researching of the past.
Also worth noting, the word "mosh" is traced back to a Bad Brains show at 9:30 Club
EA: I didn't know that
There's now a J.Crew where the first 930 was
JA: Oh noo
H.R. of Bad Brains yelled "mash down Babylon" at a show there in a Jamaican accent, and it sounded like "mosh"
EA: innnteresttting
Can you talk a little more about moshing? really fascinating to think about it within a contemporary dance lens. Moshing, and at some point the term "slam dancing" came and went
JA: Yes! I have a pdf of an article that I need to find that talks about the creation of the word, and says that moshing came from slam dancing
When I was in high school choreographed hardcore dancing was popular- set moves you would do to the music
I've been interested in creating a movement vocabulary with moshing and hardcore dancing as its foundation
EA: is there anyone doing anything like that?
JA: The rapper Kevin Abstract has a music video where he looks to be moshing
EA: ooo and Mykki Blanco "Moshin in the Front"
JA: Brontez Purnell has a video performing with others to live drumming that's been a big inspiration. I'm not sure if he'd label it moshing, but the movements, while fluid, felt similar
Yes, Mykki! Mykki does wonderful things with punk aesthetics in general
EA: I guess that's not necessarily movement but there was a LOT of movement when I saw them live last month
JA: Yes, same when I last saw them live
I think components of moshing are present in many practices, whether the throwing of arms, the large movements at high speeds
EA: I've been thinking a lot in the last few years about how dangerous "the pit" was at certain kinds of shows maybe shaped the kind of music I like
JA: Yes, one big component of my thinking about mosh pits is thinking about their racial dynamics, and being one of few people of color surrounded by white men essentially enacting violence
EA: totally
JA: I remember being scared, feeling connected to and aware of other people of color present, and also oddly cared for. I remember people putting their arms up to protect others from being hit
For my piece, I was really interested in moshing alone, in order to think about difference within the context of mosh pits
I was also very inspired by Lorraine O'Grady's piece The First and the Last of the Modernists, and her use of the diptych to juxtapose two seemingly unrelated people, Michael Jackson and Charles Baudelaire, in order to highlight their connections. I wondered, how can I perform a diptych to draw connections between two genres that are seemingly unrelated, but between which there is a shared American history
Because black and white are stark contrasts, I decided to use contrasts and the diptych idea as constraints: the first half of the piece I'll move but not speak, the second half will be my voice with minimal movement.
The two songs juxtaposed I also considered a type of sonic diptych, accentuated by my movement
EA: Can you say what those songs are or do you want to keep it a surprise for our readers 🙂
JA: Let's keep it a surprise 🙂
EA: yas! Haha. thank you!!
<3
Interview on July 13, 2018
some edits made for clarity
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