About

                             


photo by Sabine Dundure
photo by: sabine dundure

JAMIKA AJALON

BREIF Bio 
Inter-disciplinary artist and lecturer, fortunate enough to have collaborated with many brilliant  creatives across international borders, jamika ajalon is a creative polymath/storyteller; writer at base (poet, novelist essayist), she uses a melange of interdisciplinary practice as her pen, ( filmmaker, producer, songwriter, curator and electronic/digital artist/archivist). She has a BA Film/Video, columbia uni, Chicago / MACommunications in Culture and Society, Goldsmiths University,London.
Artiste interdisciplinaire et conférencière, assez chanceuse pour avoir collaboré avec de nombreux créatifs brillants à travers le monde, jamika ajalon est un polymathe créatif; écrivain à la base (poète, romancier,essayiste), elle utilise un mélange de pratiques interdisciplinaires comme plume (cinéaste, producteur,  auteur-compositeur, artiste électronique / numérique / archiviste). BA Film/Video, columbia unv, Chicago / MA Communications in Culture and Society, Goldsmiths University,London.  Droite a Travaille en France.

             

** links to work embedded in section headers & within the text

selection of published work,  publications,  literary work

2024-  "Baldwin en Transit collection"- selected poems featured, (tba)

2024- "Skye Papers Panoptic in 2d" -  Globalista Anthology, (tba)

2023- "Cliches of a Revolution" poem featured Maintenant:Dada Journal issue #17

2021/22-  Ambit Magazine,UK ,  Issue 246 guest poetry reader/asst to editor

2021-, SKYEPAPERS- Novel,fiction,  Feminist Press, New York  June 2021

A fictional novel- “A portrait of young Black artists in the 1990s London underground, whose existence is threatened by the rise of state surveillance.”  

2021 How Audre Lorde's Genre Blurring Zami Spoke My Truth Into Existence Lit Hub 

2021- TRANSMISSION 33-  Featured poem, Speculative City #10

Review :“Framed as a kind of rallying call, a kind of subversive, underground transmission to…everyone…To bend physics to resound, to remember. And it’s a lively, flowing, wonderful read!”

2020- Resurrection 2020-  Featured poem,  Paris Lit UP, Lit Journal no. 6

2020- "Fluid Code" Anti-lecture essay published in collection, Opposing Colonialism, Antisemitism, and Turbo-nationalism, Cambridge Scholars

2019"F.A.R. Space-ways; With out edges the center cannot exist in stasis, published in collection We Travel the Space Ways, transcript Press 

2019 - "TAKE BACK THE NARRATIVE" , conceptual poetry book

2018/19- Queer Plume, Fugitive Diaries,  - columnist,  Itchy Silk Magazine

2017-21 - Poems featured in  MAINTENANT: A Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing & Art, three rooms press, NY

2017 -  Poem featured, Paris Lit UP journal no 5,7

2015- “We Go Back to the Future to tell our Story”- in anthology, “now not now” Vienna Arts Acadamy

2012- “FUGITIVE ARCHETYPES OF RESISTANCE: a metamorphic narrative"- on black women, sci fi, and resistance, - in anthology 'Little Book with big visions:  How to be an artist and revolutionize the world' witnessed press

2010 -“DECODE/RECODE” , Generation X anthology of poetry and short stories

2008- “LOCATIONS OF THE MOTHERSHIP: The black female subject as site of resistance”, 'New Feminisms' anthology

2007 -  “IS SHE A BOY? Journals from life on the tour”, Female Consequences. Feminism, Antirassismus, Popmusik, anthology

Commissions/Residencies/Talks/Presentations

2024 -  Reading From Skye Papers & QA re film work exhibiez - Languid Hands, 198 Gallery London( March) 

2023 - James Baldwin Poetry Workshop, Maison Baldwin, Paris  ​​​

          - Poetry * Jazz workshop,  Dartmoth students, Les Lombards, Jazz Cafe Paris

          - "Blues as Root of Contemporary Music" Artist talk/workshop, Meeting Music, Netherlands

          -Elements of the Anti-Lecture: Challenging Systems of Reality- MM, Netherlands                  

         -Being a Writer Abroad While Being Black, Williams College, USA, artists talk  

2022/2023 -Skye Papers PanopticUCLA, USA, Museum of Contemporary Art, Biennale, St Etienne France

2022 -  Of Mud and Men - collaboration with artist Ali Cherri, vocal interpretation of text - VENICE BIENNALE (award winning work)

2021/22 -  Baldwin à L'Universitè :  Workshop Prof with Strasbourg University Students creating music and text around James Baldwin- in connection with  'Baldwin In Transit ' project (jazz and poetry homage to Baldwin )

2020 - Ain’t Nobody Caught Me, Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig & Berlin Germany, Feminist MagiX. Decolonial Inlets" the anti-lecture "afrofuture musiX",2020

This audio-visual anti-lecture, focusing mostly on Black American music made by women, from blues to hip-hop and a bit of the in between, re-imagines her cosmic  presence from time into the continuum.

2020- Take BACK , Lecture /Workshop commissioned by ZAK, Berlin, for students at the Academy of Fine Arts In Berlin & Lepzig Germany— 

Worked with students -speaking to artists that use found-footage to deconstruct, subvert dominant narrative, and how to create ones own.

2019- Art & Activism, Lecture — Hampshire College,  Amherst Massachusetts.   

2019- Interzone podcast curator/host- live art/performance/lecture 

2019- present,  -Spoken Word Paris host 

2019-  Audio Visual Anti-Lecture , -  Hampshire college, arts school

2016-18  “Squatting Gionvannis Room” , James Baldwin conference, AUP,      Paris (audio-visual anti-lecture)/Beta Salon Paris

2016  "Anti-lecture Multiverse"- Un_University conference, Vienna

2015  "Alien VS Humans" - Black Market project , Musée de l'Homme

2014  Kunstruam Noe, COPIE COMFORME Exibition- mixed media art project

2013  Vienna Arts Institute, NOW NOT NOW conférence, - audio-visual anti-lecture/ video exhibition

2012  IFA (institute for foreign exchange, Berlin/stuttgart) BERLIN TEXTURES, workshop, residency, collaborative installations, Berlin, Germany

2012 IFA (institute for foreign exchange, Berlin/stuttgart)- IN THE SEAMS, conference, workshop conceived, realized, and documented, Johannesburg, South Africa

2010/11 IFA (institute for foreign exchange, Berlin/stuttgart)- IMBUZI workshop & documentary, Capetown South Africa

2009 IFA (institute for foreign exchange, Berlin/stuttgart) L'ESPRIT , Pret-a-partager, video documentary, Dakar Senegal

2009 -145 THEATRE, residency for realization for audio-visual slam performance , DECODERECODE, Grenoble, France

2005- PROLOGUE: New Feminism, New Europe (commission TRANSNARRATIVES performance, installation, screening), Vienna, Austria

2004 ARTS COUNCIL, LONDON, Independent artists fund- production of TRANSNARRATIVES

2003 AIR-PORT Artist residency, Graz, TRANSNARRATIVES

Audio/visual Anti-Lectures, Performances, Exhibitions (selected)

 

2024-  "Memory Tracks" "Npoem" "Coffee Pot" - retrospective of film/video work 90s-present,      Languid Hands 198 Gallery, London Feb- April

2024-    Skye Papers Panoptic  (extended), Beursschouwburg , Brussels (may 2024)

2022/2023 -Skye Papers PanopticUCLA, USA, Museum of Contemporary Art, Biennale, St Etienne France

2020- "Alchemy of Cuts" Audio Visual Piece(TBA) - Disturbance Expo,  Lepzig, Germany

2020-  Poetry Performance/ Runway (improv colloboration)-  La Bonne Facture, (la mode/ couture), Runway Show, Paris

2019 - "Getting To the Otherside : Featuring Pearls"- Poetic sonic video,  Turtles Expo, Cites des Artes, Paris

2019- Audio Visual poetry set - featured poet Paris Lit Up, Paris

2019-  Sonic Poetry set -  Maison de Poesie Montpellier

2019- Salt water transmissions:queer lands of here remix, audio visual anti lecture , La General, Paris 

2019-  Poetry Performance,  Paris Lit Up Magazine Launch, Paris

2018/2016 Alien(s)kin: Daughter in another country squatting givovannis room,  Beta Salon, Paris, /American University Paris, Baldwin conference

2017  FAR: Deep sea Transmisions (sonic video presented @ “Black Market” event, Musee, de l’Homme , Docu-Kingdom Portugal

2014/15 - White Birch blues, sonic poetry video , vienna institute for arts research

2013 - We Go Back To The Future To Tell Our Stories,- audio/visual anti-lecture, Vienna Austria, Arts Academy

2012 - NPoem - sonic poetry video,London, England/Paris, France

2012 -Berlin Heros: Under Urban Skin – single screen audiovisual projection/ experimental doc installation as a part of Berlin Textures, Berlin, Germany

2012 -Alien seen/unseen- (camera/montage)- Multi-screen installation, collaboration with artist, Sinethemba, as a part of Berlin Textures, Berlin, Germany

 

2012- In the Seams, the Aesthetics of Freedom Expressed-documentary short based on Conference and workshop conceptualized and realized via myself and other pret-apartager artists/curators, Johannesburg, South Africa

2007-11- Locations of the M/othership: Black Female as Fugitive Archetype of Resistance, audio visual anti-lecture, NGBK, and Ladyfest, Berlin, Germany/South London Gallery, UK

MUSIC

Discography (selected)

Jamika & the Argonauts

2021/22-REBOOTED -

2014/16 DONT FEED THE GATE KEEPERS 1&2 (album in progressions)

Gigs include:

Meeting Festival, Netherlands 2023

Jazz Festival, Strasbourg, France  March 2023

 

Zenzile singer songwriter

(singer song writer performer/live tour  1999-2019)

Albums Include: (selected)

2018- "PEARLS" video/ single 

2012 ELECTRIC SOUL

2009 PAWN SHOP

2006 Modus Vivendi

2005 SOUND PATROL

2003  ZENZILE & JAMIKA MEET CELLO

2002 TOTEM

2000 JAMIKA MEETS ZENZILE 

Solo

2007 HELIUM BALOON ILLUSIONS