Poet and artist Julianknxx took his camera around the continent, filming people sing, dance, recite poetry – or refuse to do anything but sleep. As the lyrical results go on show, he explains his odyssey.
To make his latest work, poet and film-maker Julian Knox went on quite a journey – literally. The artist, who styles his name as Julianknxx, visited nine European cities – Lisbon, Hamburg, Berlin, Marseille, Antwerp, Barcelona, Rotterdam, Amsterdam and London – and in each one collected what he calls “encounters” with Black residents there.
“Some people read a poem, some people sang, some people danced,” the 36-year-old says. An artist in Lisbon would only let him film her while she slept, “’cos I’m tired of talking about Blackness and want to rest”, he remembers her saying. He giggles: “The offering could be whatever it is. I couldn’t say no.”
Chorus in Rememory of Flight is Julianknxx’s first institutional solo installation and is set to debut at the Barbican in London this week. Well, it will when he’s actually finished the poems he’s writing for the exhibition. When we meet, a few weeks before it opens, Julianknxx is still applying the finishing touches. In their central London office at workspace-cum-exhibition area 180 Studios, editor Harry Deadman sits at a desk in the corner with headphones on, silently sequencing the show’s main film. Julianknxx shows me some of a rough cut featuring sweeping shots over cityscapes, spliced with scenes of the artists, choirs and locals – many now friends – whom he and his research team met during the journey.
The idea came to Julianknxx in 2021 when he was collaborating with choirs and dancers for his Black Corporeal series, which blended poetry, live singing and films into an exploration of Blackness and belonging. Julianknxx has first-hand experience of a shifting notion of home: he is Sierra Leonean, and fled the early 1990s civil war with family to spend a few years in Gambia before settling in London as a teen.
The London section of Julianknxx’s new film focuses on the financial Square Mile. “I’m looking at how it played such a big part in the slave trade and the movement of people,” he says. “And how it still has its own government now. Money runs things.” He chuckles as he recalls learning about the feudal quit rents that the City of London annually pays to the Crown. “Like, this is such a gangster thing. Why are people letting this happen?”
The stories he collected are so rich and varied that Julianknxx intends to mostly step back from the finished work and let his film’s subjects take the lead. Well, once he’s written the remaining poems, that is.
