Kara Walker & Jason Moran: Sending Out A Signal | Art21 "Extended Play"

[Kara Walker & Jason Moran:
Sending Out A Signal]

[Steam calliope plays in the distance]

[Kara Walker]

[Walker, reading] "Enslaved Africans."

"In the 1720s,
at a spot of land now eroded by the river,"

"stood the barracks where enslaved Africans
from the Senegal-Gambia region"

"were held before being ferried
across the river"

"to the slave auctions."

"Early Algiers Point was also the home
of the slaughterhouse and the powder magazine"

"for New Orleans."

It made me think about

the under representation of memorials
about the institution of slavery in America.

[Steam calliope continues]

[Jason Moran]

--[Moran] That one there is sharp.

--[Man] Okay, let me grab my gloves.

[Walker] I had been to New Orleans,

and we went to Algiers Point.

[Algiers Point, New Orleans]

There was this crazy music playing

and I thought it was coming from a church

or something.

And I was sort of, like, doing this...

"What is that!?"

It was just kind of, like, in the air,
and I couldn't place...

It was kind of carnival-esque,
but I couldn't place it.

So then I researched it.

[Moran] Right.

[Walker] And I found out it was a steam calliope
on the riverboat Natchez.

My calliope and its container are the
"Katastwóf Karavan".

[Moran] Listening from Algiers Point,

listening to the calliope on the Natchez,

what were you hearing in those songs
that they chose?

[Walker] It was kind of happy songs.

When I heard it,
I couldn't quite place the tunes,

but I think they were kind of like
old-timey, good-time songs.

[Moran] Right.

They have a code in them that always
makes people feel a certain way.

Like a password for something else.

[Walker] That kind of wistfulness that
some White Southerners would regard slavery--

or those bygone days.

It's a wistfulness not just for the control
or the power,

but for the intimacy.

[Moran] Wow.

[Walker] The intimacy of what those
enslaved people's bodies meant to theirs.

Mind, body, soul.

And that something like that--

that it's so unsavory,
you can't even quite speak it.

That's what those songs do for me, in a way.

[Moran] In thinking about the way
that you are also

touching the industrial with how slavery works--

it's an industry, that they're making a machine
despite that they are bodies.

[Walker] Yeah.

[Workshop Art Fabrication, Kingston, NY]

[Walker] I wanted to really create this
paradoxical space

where the ingenuity of American manufacturing--

the same genius that brought us chattel slavery--

could then become the mechanics through which

those voices that were suppressed
reemerge for all time.

--It is really a moment of truth, isn't it?

--Oh my God!

Everything was outside of my comfort zone.

Every single element of it except, in a way,
the framing of the calliope,

because it was just the visual hook,
in a way.

--It's pretty substantial.

--It has to be an active, vital thing,
not just a stationary monster,

--because that would defeat the purpose
of a moving monument.

--Let me see if I have...

[Sound of steam calliope playing from phone]

--[Man] Is that Jason playing?

--[Walker] That's Jason abusing it, yeah.

--Jason was really freaked out

--because of course he hits a note
and it comes out like...

[Walker makes a high-pitched yelp]

--And he's just used to hitting the keys
and something reasonable happens.

[All laugh]

--So that was the first time we saw the calliope.

--This is first time we're seeing the calliope
in its wagon.

[Moran] I just was anxious to meet this instrument

that I'd only heard once in my life.

So I never forgot what that sound makes
the body feel.

Because it's unsettling, even though
it's trying to play the most settling music.

The calliope also sounds like someone whistling.

[Walker] Yeah.

[Moran] So it seems like,

[Moran whistles a melody]

[Walker] So good!
[Laughs]

[Moran] Like, that someone whistles this
as a way...

Because that's also the way music is used
for people who are captive--

that summoning,
that sending out of a signal.

It's that it sends out a signal
whether it's a distress signal,

or a signal to come,
like, "Let's celebrate together."

[Prospect.4 triennial, closing weekend]

[Steam calliope plays]

So here would be a moment where you would
bring something to honor the millions of ancestors

in a way that we aren't sure
what we're about to touch.

[Walker] Exactly.

That was my feeling going
into Algiers with it.

[Steam calliope plays]

As a stationary object,
it always needs to be activated.

When you have monuments or
commemorative things that just exist,

they sit there and they disappear.

The Confederate monuments--

these monuments that have been around for
a hundred years

commemorating, like, Robert E. Lee--

there's something strange that happens
where it just sits there

and it becomes an unacknowledged presence.

And there's something about that, too,

where I feel like the calliope
has to be in a place,

but not be forgotten.

I don't feel like it's destined
for a specific home.

What is unique to Algiers was that
it was the point

for Africans arriving to be sold into slavery.

There are many places like that in the Americas,

and I think that it's worthwhile to explore
those places.

The object of the calliope was quite small
until you played it,

but I was wondering what it was like for you
to play it on the Mississippi.

[Moran] I don't think I'd ever felt so much
pressure--

and also that I was responsible
for releasing pressure

at every key that I would play.

[Steam calliope continues playing]

[Walker] But when you played it,
all of that anxiety--

and the fear,
and the pain--

that feeling went away,

because there's something voice-like
about those pipes.

And you made it cry out.

[Moran] Right.

[Walker] And it's like,
ah, you feel it going right across you.

[Steam calliope continues playing]