How to build a world (one kiki at a time)

How do we build the kind of world we want to live in? How do we gather together, plan together, work together, and create together? We know it takes sustained effort and trust, we know it is difficult and not without conflict, but what do we know about the pleasure of collaboration, the excitement of experimentation, and the fun that can be found within failure? Do we know how and where to begin? Or have we already started? What might this community teach all of us (who desire to make space for joy and pleasure within a world that isn’t centered around our flourishing) about failure, beauty, and improvisation?

This conversation between scholar Emily R. Bock and photographer SHAN Wallace explored the multiple registers through which a community of predominantly Black and queer artists, dancers, performers, and activists have come to build and sustain a world for and by themselves. Known alternatively as the ballroom scene or ball culture, this is a community decidedly organized around desire, support, and love.

Importantly, this conversation doesn’t ask what the ballroom scene can do for us. Rather, we look to this incompossible community as guides for and theorists of collaboration and community building.