Zinzi Minott – Ancestral Interference

Busy Being Black

In the face of the ongoing and various violences experienced by Black women in the UK and across the world, Zinzi Minott wonders why more people don’t ask, “What do Black women’s bodies need?” It’s a question I’ve been sitting with since we recorded our conversation, which includes us exploring what our duty of care is to each other. Zinzi is a dancer, artist and filmmaker and she’s interested in ideas of broken narrative, disturbed lineage and how the use of the "glitch" can help us to consider notions of racism one experiences through their life. She is specifically interested in telling Caribbean stories, highlighting the histories of those enslaved and the resulting migration of the Windrush Generation.

In this sweeping conversation, we explore her work commemorating the Windrush Generation, how we might show up better and more meaningfully for Black women and how her queerness kicked the doors open to her acceptance of what she calls her weirdness. Zinzi also explores her rearing in both the Pan Africanist and Black Radical traditions, and credits her belief in abolition with helping her hold space for those she encounters among her archival work and artistic practice. As she makes clear, the generations who came before us may not have had the attitudes or the language to hold who we have become in the world, but no one is to be discarded.

About Zinzi Minott

Zinzi Minott’s work focuses on the relationship between dance, bodies and politics. Zinzi explores how dance is perceived through the prisms of race, queer culture, gender and class. As a dancer and filmmaker, she seeks to complicate the boundaries of dance, and sees her live performance, filmic explorations and made-objects as different but connected manifestations of dance and body-based outcomes and inquiry.

​​BLOODSOUND is Zinzi’s latest work and features newly commissioned prints, moving image, sound and sculpture and expands on her durational film work(s) FI DEM, released annually on 22 June to commemorate the Windrush Generation.

About Busy Being Black

Busy Being Black is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. Thank you to our partners: UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK, The Tenth, Schools Out and to you the listeners. Remember this, your support doesn’t cost any money: retweets, ratings, reviews and shares all help so please keep the support coming.

Thank you to our funding partner, myGwork – the LGBT+ business community.

Thank you to Lazarus Lynch – a queer Black musician and culinary extraordinaire based in New York City – for the triumphant and ancestral Busy Being Black theme music. The Busy Being Black theme music was mixed and mastered by Joshua Pleeter.

Busy Being Black’s artwork was photographed by queer Black photographer and filmmaker Dwayne Black.

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