The welcome to the Blkroom event is free to open up DJ John’s membership in the Blkroom. It will be a space to kick back, learn about the space, and showcase local Chicago talent. The event will feature a 15-minute live panel, live performances, live DJ sets, and an RNB Kickback at the end. 

Hosted by the best @dbaby902 and Dj sets by howykjordan and myself

Performances by @toriandlex_music, @butterfly_fly_kai, @antmajor_theoracle, @luuveyy

Vendors:@seasonedandsoaps @nia.noteworthy, @dadopamineproject

Who is @djjohn.west - My name is Dj John West and I am a Black queer multidisciplinary artist, educator, and space-maker from Chicago’s South Side. For the past nine years, I have been committed to creating spaces for Black, Brown, Queer, and other marginalized communities to experience joy and love through dance, music, and visual art. My artistic journey begins through the lens of DJing and photography. Through DJing, I highlight the connections between Black diasporic music like hip-hop, dancehall, and reggaeton, and through mixing I preserve Chicago’s stepping, skating, juke, and house music cultures. Djing provides the opportunity for me to connect music history, erotic desire, and collectivism. As a photographer, my work combines portraiture and earthly aesthetics to highlight the connections between Black and Brown creativity, youth, kinship, nature, and personal freedom. As a visual artist, my work attempts to queer time by blurring the lines of temporality and creating timeless pieces that center on Black queer expression. 

As a space maker, I work to provide free spaces so artists can express themselves freely, while also connecting themselves to a larger lineage of Chicago cultural production and political history. As an “academic” and researcher, I work to make connections between Chicago’s many Black renaissances to the nation’s larger histories with spatiality, cultural production, and education, and try to answer the question: What are the conditions of possibility for black pleasure, joy, and resistance in a world that is plagued with systemic anti-blackness?