Legacy Russell & Rene Matić: Black Meme

In Black Meme (Verso) Legacy Russell, award-winning author of the groundbreaking Glitch Feminism, explores the “meme” as mapped to Black visual culture from 1900 to the present, mining both archival and contemporary media. Through imagery, memory, and technology, Black Meme shows us how images of Blackness have always been central to our understanding of the modern world.

Russell was in conversation with artist and writer Rene Matić.

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Legacy Russell is a curator and writer. Born and raised in New York City, she is the Executive Director & Chief Curator at The Kitchen. Her first book Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto (2020) is published by Verso Books.

Rene Matić is a London-based artist and writer whose practice spans across photography, film, and sculpture, converging in a meeting place they describe as "rude(ness)" - an evidencing and honouring of the in-between. Matić draws inspiration from dance and music movements such as Northern soul, Ska, and 2-Tone as a tool to delve into the complex relationship between West Indian and white working-class culture in Britain, whilst privileging queer/ing intimacies, partnerships and pleasure as modes of survival.