1 00:00:00,501 --> 00:00:08,762 New York Close Up 2 00:00:08,762 --> 00:00:16,125 "Rashid Johnson Makes Things To Put Things On" 3 00:00:16,125 --> 00:00:22,473 Rashid Johnson--Artist 4 00:00:22,473 --> 00:00:32,306 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. 5 00:00:32,306 --> 00:00:37,611 And one character says to another character, I have something for you. 6 00:00:37,611 --> 00:00:38,621 And the other character says what is it? 7 00:00:38,621 --> 00:00:40,735 The other character says it’s on the table. 8 00:00:40,735 --> 00:00:44,210 And then the first character says, what’s a table? 9 00:00:44,210 --> 00:00:49,173 And he says a table is something to put something on. 10 00:00:49,173 --> 00:01:00,998 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. 11 00:01:00,998 --> 00:01:06,211 So I started kind of making something to put something on. 12 00:01:06,211 --> 00:01:14,235 And then the second question for me was, well what do I put on the thing that I made to put something on? 13 00:01:14,235 --> 00:01:20,159 Uh, and then I think from there you start seeing me kind of using the things that were really around me. 14 00:01:20,159 --> 00:01:27,224 Whether they were the books I was reading, the records I was listening to, the things I was applying to my body... 15 00:01:27,224 --> 00:01:34,286 And all those materials began to kind of gel together to...to form what I thought was a, you know my conversation. 16 00:01:39,389 --> 00:01:43,278 I think there’s always been this thing in my work that I’ve always been interested in around the domestic. 17 00:01:43,278 --> 00:01:50,343 And around kind of hijacking things that we’re familiar with and you know essentially kind of occupying them. 18 00:01:55,066 --> 00:02:00,138 And I grew up enveloped in this kind of Afro-centric conversation. 19 00:02:00,138 --> 00:02:05,329 We celebrated Kwanza and my mother wore dashikis and had an afro. 20 00:02:05,329 --> 00:02:22,494 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. 21 00:02:22,494 --> 00:02:32,983 You know so that...that transition from Afro-centrism and from this kind of interest in kind of applying in African-ness... 22 00:02:32,983 --> 00:02:41,106 Our acquiring an African-ness, to your parents becoming essentially just like middle-class soccer moms and what have you... 23 00:02:41,106 --> 00:02:50,605 Like so that transition and that dichotomy I think is why humor has become so interesting for me around that conversation. 24 00:02:50,605 --> 00:02:53,065 And around those kind of signifying materials. 25 00:02:58,327 --> 00:03:06,189 A lot of the work that I grew up seeing by...by black artists very much depicted a problem. 26 00:03:06,189 --> 00:03:13,578 I wanted to make something that didn’t necessarily speak to a problem. 27 00:03:13,578 --> 00:03:19,592 So I developed a group that I called the New Negro Escapist Social and Athletic Club. 28 00:03:19,592 --> 00:03:25,491 I think some of the photographs were inspired by like the photographs of James Van Der Zee and Harlem Renaissance. 29 00:03:25,491 --> 00:03:36,536 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... 30 00:03:36,536 --> 00:03:40,247 With these characters in this fictional environment. 31 00:03:40,247 --> 00:03:48,286 I think it’s very much kind of invested in the, like the history of escapism. 32 00:03:48,286 --> 00:03:59,843 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. 33 00:03:59,843 --> 00:04:05,102 Then you have say Sun Ra and he says don’t worry about it, we’re going to go to Saturn. 34 00:04:05,102 --> 00:04:13,730 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. 35 00:04:13,730 --> 00:04:21,428 So it's this kind of evolution, of this kind of escapist practice, I think is, for me, very funny.. 36 00:04:31,042 --> 00:04:33,702 Aaron McGruder writes a comic strip called Boondocks. 37 00:04:33,702 --> 00:04:40,592 He had this quote where he says: "Why does every black person thinks that they were chased by dogs and sprayed by hoses?" 38 00:04:40,592 --> 00:04:48,260 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... 39 00:04:48,260 --> 00:05:00,401 And if you are consistently burdened by a bigger history that may have affected your existence but is not your specific story... 40 00:05:00,401 --> 00:05:02,199 Then you’re doing yourself a disservice. 41 00:05:06,522 --> 00:05:09,361 It’s not fully about the predicament of history. 42 00:05:09,361 --> 00:05:20,215 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.