Black Men's Minds by Stephen Rudder

About

Black Men's Minds melds moving image, spoken word and found and archival imagery with a soundtrack derived from psychotropic medication frequencies. Collaging images and video footage of Ghana and the Cape Coast, the sea, London Bridge and the streets of Brixton, the work draws out symbolic representations of racial trauma, racism and slavery, underlying presences in Black men’s perceptions of themselves and their experiences of the perceptions of Black men from others.

Black Men’s Minds bears testimony to the psychological tensions present in Black men’s minds, voices that are often missing in conversations around mental health. Created with contributions from fifty Black men, the work was developed in response to statistics showing that Black people are four times more likely to be sectioned under the Mental Health Act than their white counterparts, and seventeen times more likely to be diagnosed with a serious mental health condition. 

Black Men’s Minds (16’35”) originated as a series of workshops with the men led by Rudder and poet Richard Mkoloma. The men created collages and poems – later performed live - through explorations of their lived experiences of mental health and the mental health system, power, masculinity and authority. These and other spoken testimonies form part of the soundtrack to Black Men’s Minds alongside a soundpiece by composer and sound engineer Richard J Edwards derived from tones and scales ‘extracted’ from the chemical equation of a psychotropic drug compound. Rudder completed Black Men’s Minds in 2019, before lockdown, and before the George Floyd tragedy and the mass activism that followed.

Stephen Rudder is an award-winning artist filmmaker and psychotherapist, who over the past 15 years has created video works including Tough Blood, This is your History and Body Beyond Death, installations and digital storytelling projects for UNESCO, Museum of London, National Trust, Wellcome Collections, The British Council and The Arts Council.

During April 2022, the Science Gallery Bengalaru presents an online exhibition of Black Men’s Minds and a related programme of performances and events. Black Men’s Minds first screened at the Black Cultural Archive in Brixton in November 2019.