0:00:00.501,0:00:08.762 New York Close Up 0:00:08.762,0:00:16.125 "Rashid Johnson Makes Things To Put Things On" 0:00:16.125,0:00:22.473 Rashid Johnson--Artist 0:00:22.473,0:00:32.306 When I was making the pieces that...that resemble shelves I had just come across this book by Lawrence Wiener called Something to Put Something On. 0:00:32.306,0:00:37.611 And one character says to another character, I have something for you. 0:00:37.611,0:00:38.621 And the other character says what is it? 0:00:38.621,0:00:40.735 The other character says it’s on the table. 0:00:40.735,0:00:44.210 And then the first character says, what’s a table? 0:00:44.210,0:00:49.173 And he says a table is something to put something on. 0:00:49.173,0:01:00.998 And I was really, really interested in this idea of something to put something on, kind of the semiotic of how something exists and why it exists and what we call it. 0:01:00.998,0:01:06.211 So I started kind of making something to put something on. 0:01:06.211,0:01:14.235 And then the second question for me was, well what do I put on the thing that I made to put something on? 0:01:14.235,0:01:20.159 Uh, and then I think from there you start seeing me kind of using the things that were really around me. 0:01:20.159,0:01:27.224 Whether they were the books I was reading, the records I was listening to, the things I was applying to my body... 0:01:27.224,0:01:34.286 And all those materials began to kind of gel together to...to form what I thought was a, you know my conversation. 0:01:39.389,0:01:43.278 I think there’s always been this thing in my work that I’ve always been interested in around the domestic. 0:01:43.278,0:01:50.343 And around kind of hijacking things that we’re familiar with and you know essentially kind of occupying them. 0:01:55.066,0:02:00.138 And I grew up enveloped in this kind of Afro-centric conversation. 0:02:00.138,0:02:05.329 We celebrated Kwanza and my mother wore dashikis and had an afro. 0:02:05.329,0:02:22.494 But the thing that I think is most interesting for me is that one day they just weren’t wearing dashikis anymore and there were no more afros, and we weren't celebrating Kwanza anymore. 0:02:22.494,0:02:32.983 You know so that...that transition from Afro-centrism and from this kind of interest in kind of applying in African-ness... 0:02:32.983,0:02:41.106 Our acquiring an African-ness, to your parents becoming essentially just like middle-class soccer moms and what have you... 0:02:41.106,0:02:50.605 Like so that transition and that dichotomy I think is why humor has become so interesting for me around that conversation. 0:02:50.605,0:02:53.065 And around those kind of signifying materials. 0:02:58.327,0:03:06.189 A lot of the work that I grew up seeing by...by black artists very much depicted a problem. 0:03:06.189,0:03:13.578 I wanted to make something that didn’t necessarily speak to a problem. 0:03:13.578,0:03:19.592 So I developed a group that I called the New Negro Escapist Social and Athletic Club. 0:03:19.592,0:03:25.491 I think some of the photographs were inspired by like the photographs of James Van Der Zee and Harlem Renaissance. 0:03:25.491,0:03:36.536 And so it became this kind of den for this secret society and I started imagining these meetings and this discourse that would be happening... 0:03:36.536,0:03:40.247 With these characters in this fictional environment. 0:03:40.247,0:03:48.286 I think it’s very much kind of invested in the, like the history of escapism. 0:03:48.286,0:03:59.843 I always say black Americans tried to go from the south to the north, then you have say Marcus Garvey and he says let’s go back to Africa. 0:03:59.843,0:04:05.102 Then you have say Sun Ra and he says don’t worry about it, we’re going to go to Saturn. 0:04:05.102,0:04:13.730 And then you know I think I always talk about a book by Paul Beatty called The White Boy Shuffle where the protagonist suggests that all black people should just kill themselves. 0:04:13.730,0:04:21.428 So it's this kind of evolution, of this kind of escapist practice, I think is, for me, very funny..[br] 0:04:31.042,0:04:33.702 Aaron McGruder writes a comic strip called Boondocks. 0:04:33.702,0:04:40.592 He had this quote where he says: "Why does every black person thinks that they were chased by dogs and sprayed by hoses?" 0:04:40.592,0:04:48.260 And I think what he’s trying to get to is that it’s important for you to in a lot of ways live your own history... 0:04:48.260,0:05:00.401 And if you are consistently burdened by a bigger history that may have affected your existence but is not your specific story... 0:05:00.401,0:05:02.199 Then you’re doing yourself a disservice. 0:05:06.522,0:05:09.361 It’s not fully about the predicament of history. 0:05:09.361,0:05:20.215 It’s about what you’re able to author yourself and how you’re able to form the future rather than living purely kind of in the past.