"I Listen and I Channel"

Tourmaline on archives' power to "ignite possibilities"

(Still from Tourmaline’s ‘Atlantic is a Sea of Bones’, 2017)

This summer, my sisters and I attempted to run a freedom school for the kids in our house. We wanted to focus on stories of Black liberations—the plan was to have a unit on Juneteenth, one on Pride, one on Black beaches and another on West Indian Day Parades. We’d planned this back at the start of June, in a rush of self-satisfaction, happy to finally be in sun and warmth and fine weather after this cold and miserable and disorienting spring; happy for a brief break from teaching Zoom classes and tending to students shook loose by the upheaval of COVID.

And then all of the events of the spring and summer began to coalesce, hang heavy, and getting up and finding something to laugh about with the kids became a lesson in and of itself. But before we (temporarily) gave up on the idea of our impromptu Freedom School, we read, together with the children around us, Tourmaline’s essay on Freedom Dreams. Tourmaline is an activist, filmmaker, writer, and theorist. For the July 2020 issue of Vogue magazine, she wrote this: “Freedom dreams are born when we face harsh conditions not with despair, but with the deep knowledge that these conditions will change— that a world filled with softness and beauty and care is not only possible, but inevitable.”

Tourmaline’s work has shaped so much of how we understand the roots of our current moment. Whether it is through the research she uncovered when making her film Happy Birthday, Marsha, on the life of Marsha P. Johnson; her research and film on the life of 19th century Black trans New Yorker Mary Jones; or her writing on the uses of the archives and activism, she has continually engaged in what the past can teach us about how to build in the present moment. Here is a condensed version of an interview with her.

KG: How did you come to view the archives as a resource for your work?

Tourmaline: I was politicized when I was 13 years old, around Black Liberation. I was part of this program that was called IndePrep, that was like a Black nationalist program in Boston at Roxbury Community College. It was for young people and it had a whole mission—the part that resonated with me was learning about Black history in a way that you wouldn't necessarily (learn) in schools…Around the same time, I was reading Before the Mayflower…I was 12 or 13 (and) Black history was very, very important to me.

And then I made a class in my high school. An African-American Black history class. I think maybe it's still taught today. But I was maybe a junior when it got instituted. It was so important to me that I created this as a student (that) I created this class for other students…That to me was when I started feeling the power of being called to the past and trying to make it material in the today as a way to move forward.

And before that it was listening to my parents and my grandparents, who were from Memphis, my dad’s parents who were involved in the sanitation strike there—there was something about the power of that moment. Also, I grew up watching “Eyes On The Prize” and that really has like a big effect on me. I went to college and I worked for Robin D.G Kelly as his research assistant. And that was also clearly a powerful way of learning about the past. All these moments started to build on top of each other.

15 years ago was the first Trans Day of Action in New York City, the first trans march. I was an intern with Queers for Economic Justice and then learning a lot about Marsha [P. Johnson], just really putting all the pieces together. I was a member of this group called Fierce, hanging out a lot on the pier. My whole life was shifting to this really beautiful way and I was finding community and wanting to lift up and have us hold the stories of who came before.

KG: It's so funny because you're describing all of these types of interactions with history that I have had as well. I'm remembering how all those things coalesce over the course of a life. And then like you're 20 years in and you're like, "Oh, I guess this is my life now".

What do you think that archives give us to help us imagine new worlds or new ways of being? I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about using archives as a portal to help us imagine new futures.

T: Saidiya Hartman’s Venus in Two Acts had a profound effect on me, about thinking about the limits of the archive and the reproduction of things that aren’t really helpful for us.

What to me was so powerful in terms of sharing Marsha's life in that particular way was the abundance of formal and informal spaces that held the imprint of her life. Whether it was Randy Wicker’s bathroom and refrigerator, or VHS collection or Arthur Bell who was a journalist with the Village Voice, who was friends with Marsha and had the box at the New York Public Library; or Diane Davies who took photographs of her; or Darrell Wilson who filmed Marsha in 1991 and who donated the footage to me and Sasha Wortzel, where Marsha says we’re “fucking up her life.” There's just such an abundance of spaces that have imprints of Marsha and that feels really powerful in so many ways.

The part of it is like the possibility being a free person who's messy and beautiful and has touched so many and offers the dream of something beyond formal organizing or a kind of respectability—that level of spilling out on to so much, feels like a reminder of what's possible when you aren’t putting limitations on yourself. You're really aligning with your power.

You’re doing things like walking naked down Christopher Street and then people witnessing that and then talking about it many years later. The possibility of what happens when you are aligning the freest version of yourself and then you're imprinting that version all over the place. And that feels really beautiful.

KG: You mentioned Saidiya Hartman's work. I'm wondering how you work with silences in the archive? What do you do when you encounter them?

T: Sometimes I just make the things up. I listen and I channel.

I found Marsha's birth certificate. And this is after (the historian of Stonewall) Martin Duberman’s researching and other people translating Marsha having a party—which she did have but she didn’t come to—that translated into Marsha having a birthday party. Which is also a cool thing because she (and that party were) responsible for birthing Pride. That’s very cool. But me and Sasha were well on our way to making the film when we (discovered) "Oh wow, Marsha's a Virgo. Like (her birthday is actually) August 24."

I think it's really important how Hartman distinguishes truth from fact. Something can be very true and resonating in a truthful way that isn’t adhering to what the archive allows you to say is factual.

The factual story might not have anything to do with the truth of who we are. A factual story based on the very limited representation of us in an archive is not a story that I want to tell.

I'm really looking for the truth of the matter. And sometimes it aligns with like the fact of the matter, but a lot of times it doesn't.

KG: How do you incorporate and work with the problematic side of a historical figure or problematic elders in a movement?

T: It's so important to not have a history (only) of moments when people were…acting correctly. That isn't aligned with my desire, in terms of sharing the deep importance of a life.

The limited history that was recorded figures people in such a way as taking a snapshot in their most heroic moment. It took longer to get a real full picture of the person's life. So for example, Marsha and Sylvia's conflict. It seems like Sylvia stole some money from S.T.A.R. to go to the Revolutionary People’s Conference in Philadelphia and hang out with Huey P. Newton. Marsha was really upset about that. Sylvia didn't see it as stealing and other people did. Or like moments when Marsha was having a really hard time.

Marsha was a person with multiple disabilities, including psychiatric disability and was HIV positive. I think it's really important to not kind of create this ableist narrative, too. People who were disabled and living a powerful, messy life—we don’t leave out those people.

KG: Why do you think so many people are turning to archival work in this moment?

T: There's such a richness to the lives of those who came before. I just did a film about Seneca Village. And part of that started with a mutual aid society named the African Society for Mutual Relief. At the time Mutual Relief was created, no one was selling black people land in New York. And yet people lined up with this powerful desire to have land, to have sanctuary, to build community in a time when slavery was still legal…in New York, specifically.

And that powerful desire reshaped the belief about what was possible. Do you know what I mean?

They had to let go of the belief that it wasn't possible in order to really fully line up with that desire, to know it was possible. It ignited this beautiful possibility. And that to me is at the base of the freedom dreaming. And so I think that people are gravitating to that all around, whether its stories of Seneca Village or stories of Marsha P. Johnson, or Mary Jones.

Those freedom dreams just feel so rich and alive and remind us about what is possible and the power of lining up with desire and how you can really shape a world on that.

At least that's why I gravitate towards it. Because it feels so good to be close to that. It feels so good to be in proximity to that power.