I ‘ll tell you that she is an activist involved in several collectives, namely, NoBorders London and a radical queer collective, QueerBeograd. However, she’s also a performer, a writer, a femme, a faggot, a director, someone, who along with the others from QueerBeograd collective is responsible for  another, incredible, fourth QueerBeograd festival, held from October 5 – 7, 2007, on different locations in the city. (That’s right, in Serbia, Belgrade, where there is not a single social space for the expression of different, more radical views and ways of seeing, especially if you are queer or trans…)
In her creative idiom she combines genderfuck politics and direct action. Her performance  ‘Gsl roses’ is a striptease about the conditions in immigration camps, but also an S/M show on her fetish for black bloc; it also deals with the interconnectedness between  S/M sexual practices and more general political issues, such as the system of state borders, as well as the control and surveillance  of gender identities. In a highly-styled (note: she adds a whole new tridimensional moment to this phrase) political performance‘Femme-inism’, being a female top drag queen, she lucidly deconstructs the gender binary and gender role matrix, questioning the very construct of femininity and sex/gender roles related to high femme.
In the end, what hit my spot completely about Jet Moon, is her EmmmaGoldmanesque quality, her stress on play, saying: “If you’re going to do politics, you may as well make it funny, take your clothes off and include as much sex as possible...at least that’s my take on it ... “

•    What are your impressions of the fourth QueerBeograd festival?

Well, on the one hand, I still haven’t got that kind of a clear impression, it’s like a blur, things still haven’t really settled down, so there are moments when I ’m not very certain about what has actually happened (the interview was done a few days after the festival had been closed). Additionally, one should bear in mind that we in QueerBeograd collective are really a small crew, a crew that has been working non-stop, trying to organise million things, so I feel I can freely say that my impression at the moment is the feeling that I have run through the whole festival, not having time to talk a little with everyone and slow down a bit. On the other hand, what I have noticed and what is quite surprising in a positive way is the fact that so many people from the west, people I know have come to the festival: people from Berlin, Munich, a friend from Amsterdam, people from London, and all of them have been continuously repeating what a great time they are having at the festival in Beograd, and how delighted with its political dimension they are, and how they generally miss that. Or for example, people from London have been fascinated with the fact of what and how completely and genuinely underground the whole thing is here, adding that a life in an ultra developed liberal society they live in, can sometimes spoil one in terms of choices. For example, in the west, they have so many things going on all the time, and usually these things are taken for granted; and here they have gained so much good experience in terms of political debates, political cabaret and performances  or the antifa protest they took part in. The festival itself was also an opportunity for them to get to know people from Belgrade and the area better, learn about their politics and realise how important political awareness is here. One thing I have also noticed is how a lot of people were inspired by the very energy of the festival.

•    To what extent do you find this thing of networking, creating a network of friends, and first and foremost recognising similar experience and politics, essential to activism nowadays?

Oh yes, very much! One thing I have noticed coming here for the fourth time, and meeting people, seeing them at the festival every year, talking to them, is actually this thing of how similar our stories are. For example, while I was talking to a guy about S/M here, I actually realised how similar his story and his attitude and politics are to what I think about the subject, all the while bearing in mind that we come from very different places, but have the same attitudes. The point is that places can be different, but our stories are the same.

•    Certainly. What radical initiatives and collectives are active in London at the moment?

I live in London, an area called Hackney, and it is I suppose quite a poor north-east part of the city, mostly Afro-Caribbean neighbourhood, but also with quite large Vietnamese population, actually there are a lot of different ethnic groups, so yes, Hackney is undergoing the process of gentrification at the moment, that is, there are a lot of people buying investment property there, so gradually the people of Hackney are being pushed out of the area. At the same time, there is a real battle going on at the moment between the investors and the people of Hackney; the squatters’ movement is also very strong. For example, last year we had a situation with a market place, where people have had their businesses for their whole lives, selling goods and making ends meet in this way. And then the investors came and there was chaos – people who had worked there occupied the market, that is the whole building, held it for some time, and then the council knocked it down, demolished it, but the people who were doing the occupation came and rebuilt it, and held it again. There have been many similar actions, like, a huge theatre was also squatted for a long time and it had a very strong local support.
So, yes, progress and development in this part of London is something happening at the moment, but only to the rich, people with money. On the other hand, it is very important that people living there, the community, have the awareness that it is their neighbourhood, too and that there should be choice, even when it comes to progress.

•    Could you please tell me something about Queer Mutiny and NoBorders London collectives? What do they do, are they active at the moment, and are they characterised by this pluralistic, inclusive quality, in other words, are their initiatives interrelated through different issues, such as awareness of the gentrification process, queer issues, the problem of borders and other forms of oppression as well?

Ok, maybe first to talk about NoBorders London, since it is one of those collectives I have been working with for three years now, possibly more. The week before I came to Beograd, I was at an eight day no borders camp, which was organised throughout the UK. It was mostly against the building of the new detention centre at the Gatwick airport. It was kind of in the countryside near where the airport’s being built, the local area of the town called Crawley (west Sussex). By the way, Crawley has a quite high voting, like 12% of the people there vote for the British National Party.

•    Oh, you mean those fascists?

Yeah, so we were making visibility demonstrations with the people from that town, talking with people, doing workshops, and there were a lot of people from all around, and I think it was really useful for the building of the no borders movement. Because it is often the case that people working on these issues, the activists, are talking all the time about engaging with the people, but the real issue is how to really make these people’s concerns  our concerns, how to link with more migrant struggles. This is essential. To really connect with the immigrants and build strategies, try to solve some things, like, how to organise a national day against the dawn raids or contact the companies that are building these detention centres and try talking them out of it somehow, etc. I was working so hard all the time, but I was completely happy because of all the people who were there, and everyone was so politically focused, and it really felt like we were somehow building that movement.  And it is always very important to mention here the work on informing people about the immigration detention centres, the fact that these places are our reality and also make people aware that each person has the right to the freedom of movement and the right to choose where they want to live and be protected and accepted by the new community. On the other hand, it is important to work on smashing all these mythologies of the immigrants as „the Other“, those taking our jobs etc.  A lot of the people today in England don’t see anything problematic in identifying as racist or speaking affirmatively about war and one’s responsibility to take part in it, instead of emigrating and escaping war in this way. It indeed is shocking, but these people are all around us. I find it important to show the people who are in the process of seeking asylum or wanting to migrate for whatever reasons that there are people who are fighting alongside. Moreover, it is important to show the authorities and institutions that there is a resistance.
 
With the Queer Mutiny in London, I feel that this group is not so active at the moment. Certainly, they are queer activists, queer environmental activists, not exclusively working on LGBT or queer issues, but they are queer and they are activists and dealing with really different range of topics.
Probably the most radical queer activist stuff happening at the moment in London is on the trans issues, like transgender and the festival Transfabulous, which is creating a social space. TransLondon is a group, a collective of trans activists doing educational programmes in schools.

•    Are you talking about state primary schools here? (asking in amazement)

Yes brilliant, isn’t it? That’s quite new and these programmes are aiming to familiarise the kids in schools with trans issues; trans activists talk about being trans and combating transphobia, and also there are a lot of young kids, teenagers, questioning their gender or being confused, so it is great when they can see and meet, know the person and feel that there’s some safety, people they can talk to, or turn for help.

•    To what extent do you think that anarchist/activist/feminist, that is, radical activist scene in general, can be quite critical and judgemental in terms of prejudice towards different kinds of activisms not necessarily in step with their concepts of „the only true, authentic struggle“? I’m mentioning this as we are frequently witnessing the scene’s self-righteousness, exclusiveness, even intolerance and bigotry here and I guess my question is how do you being queer, using the vehicle of high femme as a critical observation of identity, face and handle this kind of basic misunderstanding of your politics, and how do you deal with the problem in an activist world structured in this manner?

Oh, it’s not just here (a reassuring smile).

•    Ok, great, because that’s actually my next question – what is your personal experience and could it possibly be a cultural/political topography of a genuine Balkan frame of mind, or...

No, I don’t really think so, because I’ve come across this sexism and all kinds of different phobia everywhere, and people putting their stereotypes on what they think about me simply because of my appearance. They have had this urge to stereotype me because of my sexuality or gender, and my initial reaction is always anger, and I am one of those people who believe in anger as a really powerful thing, something that can inspire you to turn this into something really positive. That is how the piece I was performing here at the festival this year, a piece about femme came into being. And also in Zagreb in 2005, I was performing „Miss World“, which is really about this caricature of femininity and this whole stereotype of how a woman behaves, and all these things are a creative way to put across quite an aggressive message.  And I was really trying while I was creating it, to make it such, so that people can listen and really hear it. But I have noticed that in many places there is this fragmenting of politics, people fighting for some kind of equality, but then that becomes a capsule, an isolated space, where they are not looking beyond it at all any more. And for me, I find it quite hard to understand, because I don’t see the separation between kinds of politics, how can I say, „oh racism, that’s your problem, and then somehow homophobia, that’s just my problem“. I find this extremely stupid because those forms of prejudice, which of course impact upon individuals more strongly than others, are actually everyone’s concern, since they really oppress everyone! They separate us all, and are of course just systems of controlling.

•    One situation has already become a common place, and it’s the situation where second wave feminists, although we have also had examples here of post feminists who like to think of themselves as radical, systematically try to undermine everything a high femme identity stands for, as well as the person playing with it, and they do it in a very mean, sexist way, labelling such person as passive and unintelligent. Do you know what I am aiming here at?

Yes, well, I do remember one time when I was in Zagreb, at... oh, no it was actually Macedonia, at an anarchofeminist festival, and I was standing there, putting on my lipstick, reapplying it you know, yeah? (both burst out laughing...)

•    Yeah, when was this?

Well, it was I think, it must have been maybe 2005, yes, and I just noticed across the festival room a girl looking at me like, a look full of pity and disapproval, and that’s it – this thing of reading people at face value, purely because of the appearance. But for me, femme is actually a genderfuck. It’s like I’ve gone through all this conditioning, this thing of being brought up to be the Perfectly Behaved Woman, and I am aware of that. However, I’ve completely rejected all these things, and now it is like a drag, a costume for me, and I’m wearing all these things in a very subversive way. It somehow fits how I see my identity, and I feel very comfortable with those things, and so I’m playing this role and I play, but not in any passive or submissive way. And just to make something else clear, I have to say that I also think if someone knows themselves, and they are empowered in themselves, so they choose themselves to take the so-called passive role, receptive role, then who is someone else to say that that is down, an inferior position? And if we go on to follow this analogy, then in terms of heterosexuality, for example, would you be saying that every single heterosexual woman who has a receptive relationship with a man is oppressed? That to me is a very disrespectful way of looking at women, because people can be self-conscious and have power, know themselves and the choices they make, and sometimes people undergo the process of cruel conditioning within the upbringing process, but when it is over, it turns out that the same people have become something else, they have twisted that process around and used it for themselves, made it into their own thing. Anyways, just to go back to the beginning of your question,  I don’t want this to sound like the constant criticism of the second wave feminism, it often happens that I ask these women how to really connect and have cooperation, instead of the endless fragmentation, separation and distancing from one another.

•    How about Serbia? What does it look like to you?

It’s funny, you know, definitely when I first came here, I noticed very much some kind of a very gendered-like performance, for example in the streets, one can see these very masculine-looking men and very feminine-looking women, it was a little bit different and made me wonder, cause I come from a very gay town, Sydney, so I do find that the society here is very patriarchal, and again I live in a particular world in London, you know, I have my queer circles, but on the other hand,  I also have a job where I am working with ordinary people so to speak,  and there I do encounter a lot of stereotyping.

•    What is genderfuck to you? Is it additionally a way of connecting various kinds of struggles and does your politics come out of your bedroom?

For me... I think that my politics is always looking and has always looked for something where I feel I can express myself, or I have the freedom or some agency to create my own self.  And where I grew up, there wasn’t anything, the only perspective in life was to get married, have children, to work in some factory, and I really couldn’t understand that that was all there was, so I was always looking for something else. As I was gradually discovering myself through contacts with different people and always being interested in politics, it looked like a light went on for me when I came into contact with radical political people; I was like, wow, ok, there is something else.

•    How much do you think it has to do with the fact that you yourself were dislocated, displaced, uprooted, since at one moment you were no longer in Sidney, but in London, a whole new socio-cultural environment, where you had to make room for yourself.

Maybe, because I was born in the UK, and my parents were economic migrants to New Zealand, so we moved from a culture I was familiar with, to somewhere where it was completely y different, a kind of suburban isolation, you know like Ken and Barbie kind of nightmare! (laughter) So, I am very lucky that I didn’t accept that horror, and I am always incredibly amazed at and interested in seeing people who are finding their own selves or just becoming these most amazing creatures - when you meet such people you think, wow, how did she/he have the strength to do that?

•    Do people still want you to identify as either gay or straight? Is the traditional gender binary system finally history?

Oh yes, I think that there are people you know, who would want that from me for sure. But you know, when you’ ve just asked me what I think of queer, for me it is of course not just about sexuality or gender and having some fluid notion of that, that it is not just the one thing or the other, it is this annulling of the gender binary like you’ve said... The thing is that you make it up as you go along and also that people change over time. For me it is always connecting my own politics about my gender, about my sexuality, to other politics, so I don’t always just work on queer issues; for me that again is stepping back into that box of identity politics. It is too simple, too one-sided a solution, unconstructive, so I don’t understand this whole thing about equality, when people speak about it in this way, because I don’t want to have equality, I want to change the world.  I was very amazed the other day, when I was looking up a word in a dictionary, and for feminism it said, „equality for women“, and I was like „wow, look at that“, shocked!  I believe in a radical sense, that you are looking at the underpinnings of the society and thinking in terms of how how do I change this for everyone! I don’t want equality in the capitalist system, to have the equal power to be some corporate lady boss. What I want is total redistribution of power.

•     S/M is very frequently defined as the western intellectual construct, originating from the idea of dichotomy. What do you think about this?

For me, the longer I do S/M, the less I see it as part of that dichotomy, and the more I look at how people choose their roles, and how ambiguous and complex those things are. Like, I was trying to explain to someone the other day about how someone who chooses to be in this top position, perhaps, is a very fragile and vulnerable person, a person  who needs to maintain a very strong boundary around his/her emotional being, and in that sense he/she needs to have a very regulated situation in order to be intimate with other people.  And people are always like „oh, that person must be so dominating! “. I think that there is some really subtle undercutting going on there, a subversive kind of undermining; so when I see someone who is submissive in their power, who can open themselves emotionally, and allow another person into their physical space completely, and they choose it, because it’s their desire, that person is incredibly strong for me... A paradox that people looking from the outside see but don’t understand is the fact that it is a balancing act between people, based on consent. It’s really such a subtle balancing of energies between people, and both people are in control, both are choosing... yeah, I mean you always have this dynamics of power, even in exchanges and relationships  that are not about S/M at all; there is always some kind of power dynamic, but what is important here is whether people choose it, whether they are aware, or whether it is something going on completely without any awareness, which to me is always a bit scary when it’s like that.

•    When questioning the power dynamics in S/M, which other manifestations of power and domination do you examine?

Well yes, there is this performance that I made at the last festival; it’s an S/M performance where I am talking about the immigration detention system, these camps for immigrants. So once I was visiting one family who were on a hunger strike in one of these detention centres and while I was entering the building I saw one of the guards doing a search of this 5 year old little girl! And it was so wrong, you know, so unjust, I really felt quite sick, and that was the system which is supposedly about protecting people, protecting us from them, the dangerous migrants, also all the while supposedly keeping those people in a safe space.  The thing here is that this is so much about the very horrible, malign, non-consensual violence system, but hey, this is supposed to be fine. Afterwards, I went home and I was completely enraged, so I wrote this performance about this officer who I met there, who was all the time part of this system of control and being really aggressive and horrible with people around her. And so I turned this experience into a funny S/M show, stressing this manifestation of power that no one gave permission or consent. And such things are happening all the time, even as we speak here.

•    What do you think of what Edmund White said once, let me paraphrase it, that S/M  had always appeared in times when the structures of power had been seriously shaken, the fall of Roman Empire, French revolution and the present. I think he had the end of 70s in mind. So, are we in for another great crash, a breakdown? :)

(excitedly) Hey, I’ve read that too, somewhere, I read that and I thought: „I’d like to think so, the fall of capitalism is coming! “ You know, like, imagine, that would be great! Oh, yeah, I don’t know if it means that really - what crossed our minds! I mean, of course the world is completely in chaos, there’s all sorts of crazy things going on, but then I don’t know if the thing that people start having a lot of consensual kind of kinky great sex, means the end of capitalism. I think that we will need to take it a bit further than that...

•    Of course, what I’ ve had in mind is actually a kind of cause and effect kind of a flow – to comprehend S/M as a sort of indication, a hint, a symptom of the capacity for change, a different mind-set and people’s awareness of structures of power, which would of course be just the the beginning...

I think, for sure that if people have an awareness of the structures of power, and even if it is only in their own interpersonal dynamics, yes, it is a start, not just to be accepting and believing that that’s the way the world works, but always to be unpicking it and really questioning and rethinking it, imagining it anew, over and over again.

•    In the publication of works from the Transgressing Gender conference, held in Zagreb a few years ago, I’ ve noticed Slavoj Zizek cited in a part about your performance. Was that an integral segment of your performance or an intervention of the publication’s editors? I’ d like to know simply because Zizek for me is quite an ambiguous figure, so I am interested in finding out where you stand on this?

Yeah, I came across his work when I was in Sydney, and he was a bit of a star on the lecture circuit at the time. Everyone was so amazed at the way he talked and presented, amazed at his passion while lecturing, the sweating while speaking. I also think that there was a kind of exoticism attached to him, because he is from the Balkans. I too like some of the things that he writes, but I also think that there have been some really weird things, like when he said things about lesbians... On the other hand, it’s all that high, high theory as well, and that’s great, but, unless it is put into a concrete practice, I feel I could just use such a book to hold a door open, you know, and it would be that much of a use. I don’t like the academic isolation; I really think it is a huge problem, those people who function only on a theoretical level. I have had some pretty disturbing moments with academic elitism, this idea that masses are just putting their theory into practice, this top-down thinking, which I can perceive only as something completely bizarre. There is really some good theoretical stuff around the Balkans, like Baudrillard’s Millennium , where he is talking about this area and the clash of capitalism and the whole thing of high capitalism being played out in the Balkans. There is a lot of tension related to this place in terms of migration and interaction with the west, privatisation, labour market.  The west is offering this sweetener of human rights, freedom of movement, equality, consumerism. Those were just some of the things that attracted me to come here and see for myself.

•    How did you hook up with Queer Beograd crew?

When I first came to London a few years ago, I had a plan to come to Beograd because there was the PGA (People’s Global Action) conference going to happen here, and I had also heard about the 2001 Pride attempt, and also there was a plan in 2004 to have another Pride, and all these things were a motivation. Some of the people partly invoved in organising a PGA conference, later went on to form Queer Beograd, so that we simply worked on these things here together, and that is actually how we met and became friends. It was extremely hard but also important, because I realised that I cannot simply „cut&paste“ this model of the western activism in just any context. Additionally, I also realised that there was such a small activist infrastructure here, like this thing of lacking a social space where activists could work together, help each other on a number of projects, and indeed there were few people. However, in the last few years, I have a feeling that the area of cooperation has increased, there’s a bit more of that exchange. People are now supporting each other, and whatever problems there are, for example, the antifa protest in Novi Sad recently - there were both women’s groups and peace groups, queer groups and anarchist groups, etc.

•    Yes, thank you very much, and in the end, I have to ask you one more thing: have you ever fallen out with a drag queen?:)

Oooooohhh... (laughter), oooh yeah, now that’s a very dangerous thing to do. My friend Crystal was always saying: „Honey,... whatever you do, don’t ever mess with a drag queen!” And you know, I would be very careful to fall out with a drag queen. I think that those are some of the people where I have really learned what being a tough woman is all about! I really learned something from them, because they have to fight on the streets and really, really fight to be who they are, you know. I really learned a lot from them about how I could be.  

So much of the gender binary, hearing Jet’s last words, hehehe!
And that’s where our interview wraps up, we go into another room, and a friend asks her anxiously: „And? Have you survived? “ and Jet is like: „I’m good, she didn’t poke me...:)“

Note: This interview was originally published in DIY magazine Kontrapunkt Reloaded in February 2008. 

photography
Biljana Rakočević from the performance Femm-inism
Kit Isaac from the performance Stone Femme Shoes