How has resistance shaped Britain? With Steve McQueen (Part Two)
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Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm Head of Programming, Conor Boyle. This is part two of our conversation with Sir Steve McQueen and Gary Young, recorded live in April 2025. If you missed part one, just jump back an episode and get up to speed with this conversation about resistance, photography and British history. Let's rejoin the conversation with our host, Gary Young, now.

I want to stop there because there's hunger, there's 12 years a slave, there is a sense... Shame, that's a sex addict. Shame. Yeah. Sorry. Don't forget the sex. Addiction. There is a sense of resistance being at the centre of your work. Not all of it, but enough of it. Is that fair? With those, again, the Chicago, your town, I don't know, I resist. I'm just curious. I just want to push it.

What does it mean? What does it feel like? What is it? What can you explore? Where would you come out? Again, I think the risk is, if there's a risk or resistance, is a subject matter. And then investigate it thoroughly. I mean, I got down the road to Gelatine and Kodak first making cameras. And as I went all the way, the cattle, they're massive cattle ranches. And I thought, okay, let's wheel back from there. But...

That's interesting, again, and who knows, that might plant somewhere else. But I think it's just the risk to sort of, to research and push and to find out everything you can. And then possibly something will come out of it. I don't know about resistance. I don't know about that. But curious. And again, wanting to sort of, wanting to look at us of how we are rather than how we like to think of ourselves, if anything. If we take...

For a moment, the body of your work over the last few years, Year 3, The Blitz, Small Axe. You live in the Netherlands, and it feels like you've been working through something about Britain. I'm wondering if that's true, and if it is true, is this book part of your working through? Oh, absolutely, yeah. I didn't know it at the time, but, you know, again, I suppose it was... I didn't know at the time. I think...

The sort of beginning as such maybe was hunger in a way. Absolutely, you could say that. There's no two ways about it. And it was just a journey. Again, I think Blitz is the bookend of that. I think it's come to an ending in a way. I'm sort of talking in circles because I don't, I can just say yes and then the next question. But yes, it was an investigation in order to look at history.

And I'm not interested in retelling history, I'm interested in, you know, re-evaluating history, because there's a huge chunk that has been missing from the narrative and the dialogue that can actually help to, you know, actually have an idea of the history that has been written. And because the large part, some people have been left out of that narrative, and they had a huge part in shaping it. I mean, given how much you travel, I'm wondering if...

if you think Britain is particularly bad at metabolising its history. I mean, compared to, say, the Netherlands or the States. My experience has been that Britain has the capacity to forget what it's doing even while it's doing it. In 1948, there was an interesting survey that the Colonial Office did where they asked people to name a colony and half people couldn't name a colony. That was when...

Britain still was running a lot of stuff. And it was the year when Windrush docked. So, of course, you know, Sivanandan's thinking, well, we're here because you were there. But if you don't know that you were there and you don't know that you are there, then how do you make sense of these people? So I'm wondering in this hundred years, if there is...

Are we particularly in need of a history lesson here? Well, that's why art is so important. That's why art and, you know, art is so powerful. Be it film, be it art, be it an exhibition, photography. That's because art...

and it actually reunites or re-engages, it actually makes it real. You know, again with film, I remember when Hunger came out, we did Hunger and it was being shown in Belfast and bodyguards and all this and people hiding behind seers' sofas and under tables

and what not, and the premiere, obviously Cannes, and then we went to Belfast, it was dangerous. And then the thing, you know what the thing, we found out, you know what happened after that, after that premiere? Nothing happened. Because the film acted as a physical thing to, it became, the film was like a barometer to test the temperature of the climate in Northern Ireland Island.

And it was saying, yes, we could talk about this now. I remember, I mean, hunger in Ireland, that was huge. It was huge for a lot of generations of people to talk about that. And again, even the immediate situation of people working on that film who were Protestant or Catholic, I didn't even know who was who. But the fact that their ears had been bled open

from people talking about it to them, but actually finally they could physically do something about it, actually work on a movie, and it was amazing. And again, that changed a certain kind of history because what happened was then people started to engage in it because it was art, they could see it, they'd go to the cinema, it's weird art. It's almost like if you show it, then it happened. Again, same like 12 Years a Slave, before that, there wasn't, in the States,

You could be engaged and they could see it and they could talk about it and have these conversations about it. Oh, it was crazy. It was crazy. And I know we were only able to make that film because Obama was a president at that time. Because I knew I had an in. So I jumped quickly to do it. Oh, sure, because that door was locked up. Quick, quick, quick, quick, quick, quick.

So there was a possibility and then we had the conversation. So when you talk about telling it, it's the art and the power of art, the power of film, the power of art can actually do that. I mean, it's like artefacts now. How do we engage with history? Through artefacts. So it's what we leave behind, you know, literature, poetry. That's what's important to me. And then seeing these photographers and what they did

to frame a moment, to frame a moment, to correctly frame a moment, to engineer a moment and then frame a moment within the context of the time and environment. You know, that helps to speak and to teach the dialogue of what happened that time. A-R-T, art. That's the power of it. So art can intervene in moments where... Go beyond and above. Right. Trust me.

I mean like small acts, I mean who, excuse me, who fucking you? I know that's that again I've been to Cannes, I've been to Venice, Academy Awards, because of Covid and that it being in people's homes, I mean it was it was a explosion because people were talking you know generations of people were talking to their grandparents or their parents about did that really happen, was that really like that,

And even like Lover's Rock was an explosion because people were sort of, you know, confined to their houses and couldn't go out. But the whole idea that there was a party that they could see, reflect, see themselves within the context of that was huge. In Cannes, two films were there and in New York Film Festival, the opening of New York Film Festival. It was...

That's what art can do. It could actually put the context of the narrative. People didn't know what was going on in the 80s with black people, 70s at that time in the broader, wider world. Even in their own country. So the fact that people were talking about it, asking questions about it, and even Red, White and Blue was projected in the... That was the first film ever projected in Scotland Yard, would you believe? I don't know who went, but four people. That's the truth. And

And is that the aim of your art or a delightful by-product? You could never... The aim, no, but at the same time I'm happy. I just want to make the best thing I can fucking make. I'm so into what I do that I just want to make the best crafted, surprising, experimental thing I could possibly make. And if it hits, if it registers, then brilliant.

That's a blessing, yeah. That's an add-on. I want to talk about the challenges that there were in selecting the things for the exhibition. A kind of...

trying to be panoramic without being encyclopedic, without tick-boxing. You know, that through the span of the exhibition and the book, there is people campaigning about gender, about sexual orientation, around racism, around the environment, around disability. But it doesn't feel like, right, we've done the disabled tick, right, OK, oh, let's go for the... We need to get the black people now. And so I'm...

I'm intrigued at how, and also a mix of regions that, you know, the women in Hull, the Pan-Africanist Congress in '45 in Manchester, the Jarrow marches and so on. I'm just, I'm wondering whether the selection was painful, was it hard, was there a lot left on the cutting room floor?

Well, that was Clary and the team over years of sort of debate and selection and discovering photographs, finding photographs. That, again, it takes time. It just takes time. It's not something one could sort of... Yeah, and you don't want a didactic nonsense of, you know, that's not the game. You know, that's not the aim. There's a fluidity, there's a certain kind of...

And I think over a period of time, things just fell into place. It's like a big jigsaw puzzle. And finally you get those pieces. And there's all sorts of feeling. Again, it's interesting how as great writers of history are the best poets. The best lyricists are the best storytellers. So as curators, as selectors,

And can you guys stand up please? I mean, the people, you're standing up, you're standing up and you're standing up. I don't give a fuck. Stand up. You've got to stand up now. Yeah, please, please. There you go. Amazing, amazing. They're going to kill me for doing that, but I don't care. But no, that's it. Again, you have to find the rhythm or not even the rhythm or the reason. And sometimes you're surprised on what comes forward and what gets pushed out.

and how one image could say a lot more than two or three or add on to something else. Again, it's finding it. And that's the joy. That's the joy of curating. That's the joy of making. Making is very important to make because you don't know what's going to come out.

So to make something, you know, you sometimes, oh, I want to do that. But you have to experiment. You have to fail. You have to make. And making is failing. Making is finding. Making is discovering. That's exciting. And then it brings you to a place where you'll never, ever, it would never, ever, ever, ever occur through not making. So whatever you're doing,

It's about making. And so make making one of the central things of your life because you will discover things that you were not aware of. If you don't open your mouth, you don't hear nothing. If you don't put one foot in after the other, you don't go places. So to make, to find your path, you know? So that sounds like there's an element of peril in there because you may make something and then think, actually, that's not that good. Fail, was it? Beckett said, fail, fail better. Yeah. And? Fail.

It's one of those things where, yeah, a so-called mistake is a discovery. I don't know what that is. Again, I'm never... Again, you... There's a certain sort of excitement when something happens in that way. Even if it's a failure, it's a discovery because that will lead on to that. You know, going from gelatine to this book. You know, cattle ranches in the Midwest.

But you have it. I mean, I'm intrigued. You talked about Adam Hochschild's book, King Leopold's Ghost, which is about the Belgian atrocities in Congo. With Blitz, you talked about being inspired by a picture of a young black boy during the war and thinking, that's my in. Does that happen often, that your inspirations are kind of come from

these moments that are prompted by other pieces of art or other photographs? No, no. Often, no. Because, not really, no. It just, that just happened because I was, again, I think sometimes you become a magnet and you want something so badly it comes to you. The image of the child was by Yenby just because of innocence. And maybe because of year three, again, beforehand, children.

So, again, it's about... For me, it's about real life. I'm not interested necessarily in art about art. I think that's the most boring thing in the world. Art about art. Shoot me. Shoot me in the face twice. Or a film about a film. I mean, it's more real life. Life is more... Life is way more fascinating. And having a camera and having a boom to record something in real life or discover something which you don't know how it's going to develop, that's exciting because it's life.

But again, it goes to Occupy City too. We can talk about that later as well. The film, I did a documentary about the occupation of the Netherlands, Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. Oh, yes. Yes. And I mean, I was interested in talking to you about that in terms of the degree to which

kind of historical things may be becoming more and more interesting for you. The Occupied City, if I'm right, is about the occupation of the Netherlands by the Nazis. Yes. Are we going off record here? Because we're talking about the book. I apologise. Well, no, because there is a connection there in terms of history. Yeah, so you're good. But there was something you wanted to say about Occupied City. I forgot. Okay. Okay. Well, that's...

there's nothing like honesty. All of the pictures are black and white. That has to be deliberate, and I'm wondering if you could talk us through why that would be. Obviously the earlier ones would have been, but the later ones might not have been. Well, I think it was about context and the whole idea of, again, I think there's this kind of focus. I wanted to focus on the form

and the immediacy. Again, I think that's what we wanted to do really. It was about form and immediacy and I think sometimes the colour, again, now we're all used to these sort of things on our phones and we're doing this and everyone's a photographer and yeah, yeah, yeah. But it just wanted that kind of broadsheet, that kind of news, journalistic kind of quality of information. I think that's what we wanted to focus on. The information.

And through information, there's a certain kind of what you do with it. And I think the color, for me, it was just a bit too, it was too defocused, it was a bit confetti, I don't know, because in the context of this, it had been jarring. And again, that is another, you know, obviously there was a cultural choice of how you present something and how do you get the viewer to focus in what one is looking at. That's all. I just wanted information.

and form and weight. Again, sometimes the colour takes away, it makes things more lighter than they actually are. Hence, that's why black and white was so... People stuck with black and white for a number of years. I mean, like, can you imagine someone like it hot in colour? That'd be too busy. Too busy, too busy. So, we have some questions and I'm going to flip between these questions and my questions for the rest of the evening. We have a question from Helen.

who asks, "How do you know when a story demands to be told as film rather than fine art or prose? What does cinema give you access to that other forms do not?" Well, the subject demands, for me, the subject demands the form. The subject has always demanded what it wants or needs to be. And a good example, I suppose, is Hunger, the first film I made. And it just told me it needed to be a feature film.

it needed to be a feature film. And I remember I was doing some research on it and I was... Pauline Kael, Pauline Kael had this interview with Goddard. Was it '72 or something? In the Museum of Modern Art, they did an interview. And then things just turned me on in a way. There was an interview with Goddard and Pauline Kael

Goddard said that, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

I don't know what, maybe I took that out of context, but I just remembered as a child, the only power I ever had as a child, you know, what time you go to bed, what clothes you wear, et cetera, is controlled by your parents. But the only time you could resist is refraining from eating. And everyone has similar experiences.

knowledge and memories of that. You refrain from, it's the only power you ever had, to refrain from eating and then you're sent upstairs to bed without any food. And somehow that was my in to Bobby Sands and to being a film. It needed to be a film. I don't know why that was it. So each subject has its form. Yes, yes, yes. But are there, certainly there are some subjects that you can do in a range of forms, right? I'm just wondering,

Why did it say to you, "This has to be a feature film"? What was it about it that made you think, "Nothing else will do for me"? I think it because it had to be said. It had to be said. And I think these things were like swept... The hunger, don't forget, at that time, it was swept beneath the carpet. You know, these men who died, 11 men died through starvation in a British prison cell. And it was swept beneath the carpet.

And for me, it needed to be revealed, it needed to be exposed. And the biggest way of exposing it was on film. 35mm, that was it.

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that film giving license for conversations that hadn't or couldn't have taken place before. I remember very well when we did 12 Years a Slave and it was Trayvon Martin had just been murdered and we couldn't shoot, we were the Black Journalist Association conference. Where was it? Were we in Atlanta? And I remember we showed the trailer because we couldn't see the film

And in this audience, and this woman stood up and she talked about her father, who she said she's never said this before, but just by seeing the trailer, gave her license to talk about it. She would just sat there in silence, but somehow she was allowed. I remember sitting there with Lupita for the first time, not knowing what would happen to her. This woman stood up and said that her father...

taught children how to read secretly, you know, and then they found out and that he was poisoned, the father. And she had never said that before in public and that helped her to see the trailer and what we were going to do. No one knew what 12 Years a Slave was like that. That was a black press association in Atlanta. That was just after Trevor Martin was murdered. So anything that could stir the pot, that can allow people to sort of

feel themselves or be themselves or recognise themselves, I think is important. Wayne asks, "Can you recall the first image, whether captured or simply witnessed, that shaped you? What made that moment so powerful?" Image? What's the question? First image, whether captured or simply witnessed. The first thing that you remember seeing either as a picture or as an event that really shaped you.

Well, I don't know if it really shaped me, but I like the singing detective. I like that. I was told I was a singing detective. When did that come out? Was that 84, 85?

I think it must have been 87. 87? 87? Singing Detective? Who's got a phone? I think 87? The Singing Detective. I was 17, but a lot of other things did before that, but I never figured out the Singing Detective. I thought, wow, what the hell? It was a bit raunchy as well. My mother, she worked at the maternity hospital, and she would go out, and my father would go out and put a telly on 930.

9.30, you're seeing a detective. People were humping and stuff and weird stuff with skin and flesh and all kind of crazy shit. Yeah, so that was good. But also things like play for the day and I remember going to the tape for the first time on the buses and the coaches and they'd go to school and you'd get off and you'd go... I thought, oh shit, art. I thought, oh, so...

art could be important, as in they put it in a frame and they put it behind glass and not plinth and that was exciting. So those kind of things, seeing weird things that I didn't understand was really cool. Dennis Potter. Out of interest, given that we are approximately the same age, do you remember Roots?

I do. Do you remember when it came out? I do. Because I felt that was a signature moment for me as a 10-year-old watching this mini-series that follows a family story through slavery. Did that have an impact on you? Well, I remember that was the biggest TV show ever. The streets were cleared. It was a bit traumatic for me as a child, I think. It was really kind of... I watched everything. It was just a bit heavy.

Yeah, I mean, it was heavy. I remember experiencing it mostly as telly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I remember going to school and then people doing Chicken George. Oh, yeah. I mean, to get through a day, to get through any kind of situation, of traumatic situations, laughter was, oh, my God, school was so funny, but it didn't work. But, I mean, how we got through was just laughing.

I mean, the amount of nonsense that went on at school, the amount of horrid racism and ridiculous, but somehow we just made, I mean, you know, laughter. I mean, it's like, you know, even when, you know, again, our parents, what they had to go through on a daily basis, going to work and being constantly humiliated and coming back and

I remember, you know, there was a lot of black children were beaten. You know, I was beaten with a belt. I was beaten. Everyone was beaten. But the next day we used to laugh about it. There's nothing to laugh about. We got physically abused with a belt and bamboo and shit. It was some heavy shit, man. It was some heavy shit. I'm laughing now, but, you know, it's a very, you know, yeah, we're fucked up. LAUGHTER

We're fucked up. Yes, we are. I'm still standing. True survivor. There is an element of kind of surviving Caribbean parenting from the 70s, which is... We were running from the belt, we were running from the police. Yeah.

Oh my God. I know. There's an element of me thinking, why don't you use the belt on the police? Why are you using it on me? Anyway, from Jules. Jules asks, what was the most surprising form of resistance that you discovered? I'm assuming in the process of doing the exhibition. Surprising? I just think the early environmental stuff was pretty amazing. It was pretty surprising. The early environmental stuff was pretty...

I was really kind of touching. I was like, wow, when the people sort of put in those bottles in front of buildings and knowing how we had to recycle, that was very impressive. I think also what the environment is, how that relates to what's going on now in our environment. People were talking about that very, very, very early. So I think that was one of the most surprising things for me. One of the interesting images for me is of...

is of a group of people, I want to get this right, but it appears to me they are people born as men and dressed as women. Oh God, yeah, fantastic. Who are demonstrating against Miss World or Miss Universe. And it just complicates the notion of, there are about three or four of them with placards, this notion of a cleavage between the trans community

and the feminist community, because here are these people who are there protesting against the degradation of women. And that picture really struck me, because I thought, well, how times have changed. I never forgot, something I never forgot, when I was a kid, I think I was, how old was I then? I was, well, young, slammed. And...

And there was a Paul Gilroy told me something like, I remember him saying to me, well, you know, I should be able, not even I should be able, we as a...

as a collective should be with any group to support them because that's what it's about, marching with disabled people, marching with whoever group you're with. It was very early, I think it was 22, 23, and for some reason that was a spark in my head. Well, I should be able to talk about them as much as they should talk about me. I was very powerful.

That was very powerful. I was 21. It was obvious, but the fact that we should be linked together with any kind of resistance, I thought that was very powerful. It's a singular group, but at 21 years old to hear that was very important for me. That's when, of course, your woes are opening up when you're in university and you're listening to all kinds of...

and opinions and views. And it's about that camaraderie and us, you know, us and all we. I think in the slides we have pictures of some of the suffragettes, if you could pull those up. Because one of the things...

I found interesting in looking at the pictures is that we know how... There they are. And it was particularly that they're in... It's a surveillance photograph. They're just badasses, aren't they? They really are. They really... Don't fuck with me. And... So cool. And this is... This is true of all resistance in a sense that they don't know how it's going to turn out. Right? They're in the middle of it. They don't know. And as far as...

All of the common sense says that they are crazy women. That's what common sense is saying at the time. And then they are taking a stroll in the prison yard. And these pictures are of people making demands. They don't know that they're going to be met. They're fighting for a world they can't see, which I think is an incredibly kind of powerful...

But these pictures of the suffragettes, they kind of quite, they move me. Also the one of them, the police pictures of them. I think that's beautiful what you just said, fighting for a world they can't see. And it's easy to not get out your bed. It's easy and everything's holding us back, gravity is holding us back, you know, literally. But it's that situation where you just make that

And it's beautiful what you said, beautiful, not knowing what will come out of it. But, you know, you're doing it for the right reasons. And you, you know, one has to imagine that Martin Luther King gets to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and says, I have a 10-point plan, you know, which would have, you know, people would have said, oh, 10-point plan, we can work with that. Yes, we can negotiate 0.1, 0.7. But he doesn't, he has a dream. And the dream is a crazy dream.

It's a dream that, I mean, just a few weeks later, four little girls are murdered at Sunday school in Birmingham. And he's dreaming of little kids holding hands and so on. And just that utopian power of not being confined to your moment. Well, that's it. It's to imagine. It's to make.

It's possible to find and to discover and not to be afraid of making mistakes or not being popular or not being liked. Don't get me wrong, it's not easy. Don't get me wrong, but I just thought, again, when I think of myself in that school...

And, you know, this kid right in front of the fucking blackboard with a fucking patch over his eye, the NHS glasses and being dyslexic. And I think, you know, obviously I was out of my fucking mind to think, "Oh, I want to be an artist or I want to do this." But, you know, again, one has to fucking dream. Sorry, my mother wouldn't like me swearing, but yeah, you have to. Otherwise, you know, you stay exactly where you are. And hey, I might not have done it, but again, I would have gone somewhere.

And is there something about art in that, in that art gives you the possibility to imagine things in a way that... Well, it's language, isn't it? It's language. It's language and creating language or inventing language and visual language or, you know, again, and the people responding to that language. I imagine it's like music and hearing a note or putting...

you know, 12 notes and putting one note, elongating one and shortening the other and manipulating something else could actually break through someone's armor and enter intellectually, physically, emotionally and have them in a state of

Transition, wherever that is. I mean, I think that's, that's, that's, that, and that could get you on your feet and that could get you marching. It's what, the power of what things can do. Again, and you recognize it and you smell it and you hear it and you taste it. These other things which are going on, I'm going on a bit, but it is what...

Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by Mia Sorrenti and edited by Mark Roberts.