After two years as a volunteer at the Schwules Museum, Jessica Walter looks back on an intensive time: she researched, archived, organized, gave workshops and created spaces for creative self-documentation. In this interview, she talks about what she takes away, what remains – and why queer BIPoC need their own archiving strategies. A conversation about traces, gaps and the power of collective memory.
Yasmin: Jessica, I’m delighted that you’re sitting in front of me and beaming at me so charmingly! Is the end of your research traineeship a reason to beam? How is it for you?
Jessica: Very exciting! I’m just realizing how much I’ve learned during my time at the Schwules Museum and what I’ll take with me. I’m also realizing that I still have a lot I want to share with you and that I’m running out of time to do so… Nevertheless, I’m also looking forward to embarking on a new path.
Do you already know where it will take you?
No. (Both laugh)
Too bad! Then tell me what else you’re trying to get rid of in the last few weeks before you leave…
I have the feeling that I’ve accumulated a lot of knowledge in my Volo that I’ve acquired myself. I did my own research in the archive or talked to people from workshops and guided tours. I’d like to consolidate this pooling of ideas. I’m thinking of writing something down, or even a small event to discuss everything that has happened here in terms of education, the archive, BIPoC…
More on that in a moment, but first I want to ask you: after two years full-time at SMU, do you feel empowered to share your tops and flops with us?
A big flop is of course the budget cuts that have affected us. I would have liked to have had the opportunity to consolidate my work with other employees. At the moment, it doesn’t look like that’s a financial possibility. And of course now, at the end of my Volo, it’s a complete flop for my future prospects in the cultural sector! Well… My tops are definitely the wonderful people I’ve met! The exchange of knowledge here has really enriched me; with everyone from the team, but also the people I was creative with and got to know in my workshops. The Creating Our Own Pasts workshop was such a special space. I was always amazed at how generous people were with their emotions and knowledge.
What was the workshop about?
The title came to me when I asked myself what happens when a person cannot find their own past – collectively, because our stories have not been properly documented, but also individually: what do we do when our personal history remains closed to us? And my answer to this is to invent, to create my own past. Accordingly, it was very important to me in this workshop that the participants develop their own archive practice of creative self-documentation. I have held the workshop several times and it has always resulted in wonderful rounds with incredibly creative output.
Do you have any plans to stay involved with the Schwules Museum after your traineeship?
As a person who has worked a lot with the archive, I will always remain connected to the Schwules Museum in some way: I leave materialities here and hopefully immortalize them. In this way, my traces remain in the archive… There are also other traces in the archive; if people want to look, they will find them. (laughs)
Is there now a keyword “Walter”? Or how do we find you in the archive?
It would be nice, no! Those who know me will feel it when they see the material, even if it doesn’t directly bear my name. I’ve archived a lot and have dealt with the fact that material is missing in certain places. For example, under the keyword “poems” I’ve put in a few poems that I haven’t written, but which I think should go into eternity.
All right, then we can go on a treasure hunt… What themes have emerged from your work here in recent years?
I reflect a lot on what it’s like to be a person of color in Germany, in a country that still sees itself as white. How do we connect with each other as people of color? And what does it mean to come together here at SMU, a white institution? This was not meant to be activist at all! I’m just interested in how we can archive our personal histories. Movement history is important, but I also wonder if and how we as individuals are remembered. Do we even want to be remembered? This idea came to me once when I was looking through an estate and found, among other things, drawings from a person’s childhood. I had to ask myself what it would be like if people from the diaspora still had such drawings – many no longer have them because they had to move, be it from another country or because of precarious living situations. The other thing is that many of us have been socialized to not take ourselves seriously enough to keep and store such papers. Well, instead of feeling resentment towards this person I came across in the archive, that they had a different lifestyle, that they still have their childhood drawings, I decided to think about it ex negativo: why don’t we just do the same? And that’s something I like to convey in my workshops.
Who is the “we” you are talking about?
When I talk about “we”, I don’t just mean people I know or people I will get to know, but also people who, because of their positioning as a BIPoC or diasporic subject in this world, always feel like they are fighting against all these problems I just mentioned. I like to keep the term a bit vague so that not only people who already feel like they belong, but also new people who share these experiences are invited to join.
The zine “Writing the Archive #2”, which you produced together with Wassan Ali and the Spinnboden Lesbenarchiv and which was recently published, also deals with BIPoC and access to the archive. Can you talk about how that came about?
The zine is the result of two workshops that took place here in the SMU archive and in the Spinnboden Lesbenarchiv. These were precisely about these questions, but also about looking at what kind of materials we have in the archives that speak to BIPoC. The result of these thought processes clearly shows that we need a creative practice in order to engage with the archive. This means that we can and should always archive our flyers and stickers, but we also need to comment on what is going on in these archives. Even if they are queer archives, they often reproduce the structures of wider society when it comes to multiple marginalization. The wonderful thing about this zine is that the participants in the workshops wrote contributions for it. Different things came out of it, such as essays, poems and collages, but they are all forms of reflection. These contributions work in two ways: on the one hand, they capture the feeling we have when we enter the archive and discover these empty spaces. The other way concerns the traces left behind. It also expands the concept of archive; the zine itself is of course archive material, it’s with us and with other archives, people can take it for free and put it in their own archives. But the zine itself is also an archive, as it collects contributions from different people with different positionalities. We have collected and compiled. Of course the whole thing is under the QTBIPoC banner, but the content is very diverse.
That’s right, that was also evident in the event you held at the Amerika-Gedenkbibliothek.
Yes, it was important to us not only to keep our knowledge and our thoughts on the archive within the framework of closed workshops, but also to make them accessible to the public. Of course there are aspects of it that will always remain in these closed rooms, we didn’t create them for no reason. But at the end of the day, it concerns us all, it’s not a niche topic. That’s why we wanted to talk about it publicly and did so in the beautiful Pop-Up Hall of the ZLB, with a reading of three contributions and moderated discussions with Jin Haritaworn.
Were you able to gain any insights into the respective archives from the cooperation with the Spinnboden Lesbenarchiv?
Yes, I think so. Although both institutions today see themselves as ‘queer’, the names have specific identities: lesbian and gay. In my perception, there is much more material in the archive of the Schwules Museum that fetishizes the non-white body. It is particularly evident in the porn and magazine collection that the non-white, male body is depicted for the white gaze. In other words, in a way there is a representation here that doesn’t exist in the spinning floor (laughs). At least not to my knowledge. What I found interesting about the material in the Spinnboden is that lesbian history is documented and clearly includes the movements of Afro-German women. Also from a global perspective, I had the feeling that there is more material in the Spinnboden in which FLINTA people talk about themselves – but I wouldn’t put my hand in the fire for that. (both laugh)
I admire how warmly you deal with archives. In the zine Writing the Archive #2 there is also an article by you in which you approach the SMU archive in a strategically affective way. How did that develop?
This definitely has something to do with my archive origin story: when I first researched the archive for myself, I wanted to find something about my birthplace in a back-to-the-roots way: India. Somehow I had the expectation that I would find material that would speak to me. That describes something that I understand or that represents something about the reality of my life. What I actually encountered was the wealth of material that I also describe in my text: it is material that casts a white, German gaze on the subcontinent. It looks at the communities there, condemns and pathologizes them, sometimes even criminalizes them. That’s why my first feeling was pain. I felt pain seeing this material. So I asked myself what is actually archived here and came to the conclusion that people who would watch this material because they are interested in queerness in India would all feel the same pain. I know this is utopian, but at that moment I asked myself whether this pain is not also archived. In my text I write about tenderness, joy, fun and sadness, and I wonder how we archive these feelings; aren’t they part of the archive if the material evokes these feelings in others?
You also write: “I selected the words and pieced together the sentences intuitively from various articles I didn’t really read, just skimmed for phrases that spoke to me.” You are referring to the process you go through when you work with archive material on your collages.
Exactly, this fragmentary work is definitely also a strategy that I have developed as a BIPoC in white archives. For me, the art lies in going through the sea of material, which is basically the consequence of oppression, and finding little things that can bring me hope and joy. Overall, that’s a life strategy for queer BIPoC in this world: we have to find moments that bring us joy, even if we take them out of context a bit or try to forget everything around them.
I like the fact that it’s a kind of repositioning in which you can center yourself and make yourself the starting point. In this performance, for this moment, you are not marginalized! At another point, you reflect on how other people perceive you and slip in a subordinate clause: “if they have the pleasure of being in my company” – don’t you think evil tongues could claim that arrogance is showing at this point?
Now that we’ve read that out loud, I remember that a similar sentence was spoken by Zora Neale Hurston… As the author of the “Harlem Renaissance”, she grew up in black communities and only experienced racism as an adult when she moved to New York. In any case, she once said that she doesn’t understand why people are racist towards her, as this would take away “the pleasure of her company”; this self-confidence definitely resonates with me. With this subordinate clause, however, I also wanted to suggest that we as BIPoC are constantly in danger of being lost through the perspectives of others – through how others perceive and describe us. Therefore, we need to become more selective about who is allowed to be in our presence and receive our full presence. I’ve spent a lot of time in my life being unsettled by the way others perceive me; I deal with people trying to unsettle me my whole life. At this point, I wanted to say that there are times and spaces where I don’t have to do that. And that’s where I am my best self.
Thank you for sharing this with us! Other contributors have also written about creating their own references, that seems to be a common insight….
Yes, that runs through a few posts. Every word we write and every piece of art is in some way a way of representing ourselves – and in a world that doesn’t want to represent us, every opportunity to represent ourselves holds the potential to be a radical act.
Wise words, Jessica. So we need more of that?
Yes, the project has shown me how beautiful it can be when we are among ourselves. In this politically chaotic and terrible world, it is up to us to create spaces in which we not only feel comfortable, but in which we also thrive. The opportunity has presented itself within the framework of the project because I have virtually agreed to organize it. I hope that there will always be these opportunities for me and many other people.
Interview & photos: Yasmin Künze