(slow instrumental music)
(foot steps squeaking)
(piano playing)
(piano keys tapping) (metronome clicking)
(instrumental music)
- I don't make paintings, and I don't make sculptures.
What happens is that the things that I make involve paint,
and photography, drawing, and also involve you know,
materials: wood or metal, and so forth.
To propose and develop concepts and ideas
through the materials.
(slow instrumental music)
You can make art with any number of kinds of materials,
and you don't have to learn how to draw,
and learn how to paint in order to be an artist.
(instrumental music)
I was in a painting program
and I discovered that the whole process
of painting didn't hold much meaning for me.
There was an overwhelming sense
that the whole thing is arbitrary.
There was a perceived idea that a work of art was made
from your imagination and from your intuition.
I do believe that there is such a thing as intuition
and there is such thing as as the imagination.
I just think these are concepts
that they're culturally realized.
What we come to understand is knowledge and meaning
are not pure products of our genius,
but are built into the structure where we reside.
So, I wanted to make a type of work whose production
is a consequence of a system, rather than my imagination.
The first piece I did like this is called,
Walnut Tree Orchard.
I photographed a series of walnut trees
and converted the farm into numbers on a grid.
That silhouette was then used to layer the shape
of the trees on top of each other.
(instrumental music)
It also produces evidence of the differences
between those trees where the forms don't align,
and the system that I use allows me to signify
those changes.
In a way, I'm trying to suggest
that the kind of visual difference that happens
in the system operates the same way that other concepts
of difference happens in other domains:
politics, gender difference, race difference,
class difference.
In the drawings, we could see that those differences
are constructed by the system.
And in the social and political domain,
the differences that we see are also constructed
by a system.
(inaudible conversation) (instrumental scales)
(classical music)
- Manifestos is a project I've been working
on for several years.
I select a political manifesto
and I take that text and I convert the letters in the text
to musical notes.
And that conversion is a simple system where the letters A
through G are converted to the notes A through G.
All the other letters in the text
are then converted to a silent beat or a rest.
(classical flute plays)
When you string a whole series of words using the system
then the translated letters into notes then form a melody.
One of the things I discovered in talking
about these pieces, is that people didn't believe
that music was created by a random system.
Because I use the diatonic scale to do the translation
and the scale is designed to be melodic.
(classical music continues)
(audience claps)
This project, it's been 10 years
from its beginning and was a rollercoaster.
Often, we didn't think it was gonna happen,
but somehow, finally, we're here.
When I started the project, the Black Lives Movement,
Ferguson, started hitting the news
and I wanted to explore the core
or the problem that makes these things persevere.
(classical symphony music)
This particular piece Manifestos Four
we chose the Dred Scott decision,
of the famous Supreme Court decision for the text.
Dred and Harriet Scott were born into slavery
and sued for their freedom
and majority of opinion was that, in order to file a suit,
you have to be a citizen.
And he said, it's impossible for Dred and Harriet
to become citizens
because they're not white.
Then there's a text that comes from Fredrick Douglas's
response to the Dred Scott decision.
And so, I took a section of that
and then arranged it for voice.
♪ Loud and exultingly have we been told ♪
♪ That the slavery question is settled forever ♪
- I think that the whole piece correlates
so well with what's going on in the present day.
The same problems continue to exist.
The legal system is based upon a certain logic,
a certain linguistic framing.
(symphony and singing continues)
You see how arbitrary the law is in relationship
to the lived experience of people
who have to live by those laws.
♪ We cannot change the essential nature ♪
(classical symphony music continues)
♪ The essential nature ♪
♪ He cannot make evil good and good evil ♪
(upbeat modern music)
- I wanted to know what vegetation life was
in Times Square before the city was built.
We found that one of the common plants
was the sweet gum tree.
(upbeat modern music continues)
One of the characteristics of capitalism is that
it excavates, it moves and takes things away.
The appropriation of Native American land
is a form of excavation,
but Times Square is kind of the broader trope of capitalism.
So, my thought is that
the upside down tree would be a gesture to remind us
that this site was produced
as a consequence of removing what was there.
(mysterious symphony music)
Moving Chains is one of several projects
that makes up this commission.
The dominant subject is the history of slavery
and the idea of the commodity.
They're doing more before the big sound test.
They're gonna run some of the chains.
(indistinct conversation) (upbeat acoustic music)
(chains rattling)
Moving Chains, is a structure, is a type of barge
and it was intended to be by a river,
a body of water, where commerce occurs.
What you might think of as a roof,
you find 100 foot long lengths of chain.
Chains are designed to move from the two layers.
Their movement is supposed to make a link
with the river current.
When you walk into the barge, underneath the chains,
we want that to be an intimidating experience.
The chains, they're only four feet
above the head of a six foot person.
Since these chains are so big,
we expect that it will make quite a bit of noise.
(chains loudly rattling)
It's an intentionally theatrical strategy
to make it be an intense emotional space
to give you empathy through metaphor of the terror
and a horror of a slave ship.
(chains loudly rattle)
The intimidation is important to clarify
the political critique of the work.
That this structure really was foundational
to the American economy.
(fast-paced symphony music)
As I'm standing here,
I cannot escape the consequences of that history.
How do we improve the world?
How do we improve life for everybody?
And I don't know if it's possible,
but when the bad things happen,
we should complain about 'em in order to reduce them.
We should not forget how things are put together.
(fast-paced symphony music continues)