WEBVTT

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FRED WILSON:
Everything I want to say

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is said by putting
things together.

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In my studio, I was always,
like, arranging things.

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You know, this is
right out of school.

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I was, like, I couldn't sort
of say that this was my art.

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It wasn't art
with a capital A.

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But it was really who I was.

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— Um... why don't we switch
this back for that...

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that figure,
the original figure?

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MAN:
Yeah.

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WILSON:
And when you start doing

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what you really,
really believe in,

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that's when you do
your best work.

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I did all these pieces with, uh...

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these weird tchotchkes, 
these so-called "black collectibles."

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This one actually
was given to me,

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so now I'm trying to make
one big piece

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with as many of them as possible
and get them out of my life.

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It's just sort of bad juju.

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WILSON: I really don't have any desire
to make things with my hands,

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particularly directly.

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I don't know
when I left that behind,

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but I get everything
that satisfies my soul

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from bringing objects
that are in the world

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and manipulating them,

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working with spatial
rela... arrangements.

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And then having things produced
the way I want to see them.

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I love making this stuff.

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I love doing it.

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And it's not easy
in that it's simple,

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but it's easy
in that it just flows out of me.

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— This is... that's
just the worst one.

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WILSON:
I'm totally inspired

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by things around me.

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I look at things and wonder
what they are and why they are.

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Everything interests me.

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You know, a gum wrapper
could interest me

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as much as something,
you know, at The Met.

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As I get older,
I realize that your identity

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is really tied largely
to your experiences

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and that time period
that you grew up.

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I was born in the '50s.

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I grew up in the suburbs.

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When I was
elementary school age,

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I was the only black child
in the entire school

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and I was shunned
because I was different.

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My world was not...
even though it seemed

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like everything was nice,
I didn't have any friends.

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My connection
to the black community

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was tangential
for those formative years.

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So a lot of my project
is trying to understand

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the visual world around me
which really affects me.

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— Hold it--
yeah, that's about right.

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WILSON: For me, that's the basis
for a lot of what I do,

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is really where
that pain comes from.

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My mother married
an African-American man.

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Her sister married a man from,
um... from the West Indies

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and then a man from Belgium.

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And when her other sister
married a man from India

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and her cousin married
a man from China,

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it's difficult for me to not
look at people in the world

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and see everyone as a relative.

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To me, they're familiar--

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familiar in the root
of the word: family, familiar.

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I feel comfortable with people,

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but that comfort is, uh,
tempered by the fact

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that people may not feel
that way about me.

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When I watch glassblowing,

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it's like the creation
of a planet or something.

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You get seduced by the material,
by the process.

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[ hammer banging ]

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And then you almost don't care
what it looks like afterwards.

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— You know what? I'm going to stand right here,
because this way

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I get the same angle
as the slide.

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WILSON:
Glass is always a liquid.

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It never completely solidifies.

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Even though it looks
like it's solid,

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it actually is still moving.

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[ hammer banging ]

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And so making it
into these drip forms

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makes inherent sense
for the material.

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And I wanted to use black glass
because it represents ink.

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It represents oil;
it represents tar.

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Some of them have eyes on them.

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For me, these, uh, cartoon eyes,
because of 1930s cartoons,

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which were recycled
in my childhood in the '60s,

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were representing
African Americans

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in a very derogatory way.

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I sort of view them
as black tears.

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So that to me is ultimately
a sad commentary.

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Working with printmaking is very
similar to working with glass

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in that it's outside
of what I do.

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In printmaking
I realized that if I...

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I could just drop acid...
[ laughs ]

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with this stuff called Spitbite,

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just pour it onto a plate
and it would eat onto the plate

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and it would, you know, kind
of make a spot or a splash

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and filling it with black ink,

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it sort of retains
this spot quality,

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and it also has kind of
a three-dimensional quality

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which doesn't happen

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when you use ink
on a piece of paper.

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[ acid dripping ]

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The directness of that
really thrilled me,

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and the fact that that's
what I'm interested in--

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these drips and drops--
uh, really worked for me.

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— Yeah, that's
doing fine.

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WILSON:
Even before I did the drips,

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uh, in glass,

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I'd been thinking about spots

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and just this, uh,
reduction of blackness

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to this kind
of ridiculous degree.

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You know, I think it's
interesting, I think it's funny,

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I think it's
ultimately really sad.

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All these representations
that I grew up with

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are telling me who I am
whether I realize it or not.

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And so by pulling them all out
and have them talk to each other

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is my sort of
taking control of who I am

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through these voices.

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And also trying to understand
who I am,

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what is me and what is something

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that the rest of the world
has said I am.

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You know, it comes from this
deep sadness that I, you know...

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that, uh... that's
kind of the baseline.

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I'm not a sad person,
but...

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you know, it
it bubbles up inside of me.

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PRINTER:
That's starting to look better.

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WILSON:
Yeah.

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— Ooh, nice.

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WILSON:
There are these, like,

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in cartoons, thought bubbles

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where the spots drop,
talk to each other

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and various conversations emerge

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from the relationship
between these spots.

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To me it made sense

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that the representations
of Africans in books

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would be the voices
for these representations

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of blackness or of black people
in these spots.

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And so they all
talk to each other

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and these different characters,
they're kind of...

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the voices and personalities
come out in...

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from these little blurbs.

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I was thrilled to be chosen
to represent the United States

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for the Venice Biennale.

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The work in Venice had
many different parts.

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And the part that is
the most abstract

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was this room that I created
of black and white tile.

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There was this huge black urn
on its side

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and in it was a small bed,

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uh, cappuccino cup,
some newspapers, magazines,

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um, CD player.

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I did those pieces
right after September 11th,

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wanting the world to go back
to the way it was before.

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It's called "Safe Haven."

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Right around that time,

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my mother was getting
extremely ill

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and was not going to get better.

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So this kind of womb shape
that came out,

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I do think it has a relationship
with thinking about my mom.

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I'm interested in invisible
processes within museums.

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I really start museum projects

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without knowing
what I'm going to do.

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I try to just go in,
uh, tabula rasa

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and try and just
sort of be a sponge.

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— Okay, right there.

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WILSON:
I work site-specifically.

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In Sweden I started
the way I'd normally start:

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I meet everyone,
look at the collection

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and talk to people
about the collection

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and research the collection

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and try to understand
where I am, the city I'm in

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and... and... and make a piece.

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— I need to get a sense

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of what this floor is going
to look like.

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The model is good,
but this really helps.

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WILSON: I'm creating a metanarrative
about museums and display.

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— I would like to put in

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one of the platforms

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so I can see how that looks
from different angles.

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WILSON: I'm just using the museum 
as my palette, basically--

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manipulating objects, light,
color, spatial relationships

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and, uh, critiquing as well
the notion of museum.

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— Can you help me to take out?
— Yes, yes.

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I'll put the gloves
here for a minute.

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[ straining ]:
Oh, boy, oh, boy-- wow.

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Wow, there's certainly stone in here.
— Yeah.

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WILSON: What happens
with a lot of museums

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is that galleries are arranged
by historians

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who are really interested
in the history of the object,

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the object themselves,
and not really so focused

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on the environment
these are placed in,

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the juxtaposition of objects

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and what meaning
are they creating.

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Besides the visual
of the object,

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what is the visual of
the space doing to the object,

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doing to your experience?

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And sort of try to kind
of infuse it into those spaces.

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It's not only the visual; it's
how this aesthetic experience

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affects you emotionally
and physically,

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and, uh, the power of that.

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You know, I'm interested
in all that stuff.

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Stones, which seem to be

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the least movable objects
on the earth,

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are moving everywhere.

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The project really became not
only the movement of stones

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and archaeological material,

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but the movement of people.

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The stones I'm choosing because
I think they're interesting

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and I think they're interesting
in how they look together.

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It's kind of
an archaeological site

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that would never be
and never would be like this.

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But it's just to get
this idea across

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that these things
being everywhere

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and that they travel
around the world,

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people take them
from one place to another.

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And since I found this one stone
from my family's island

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and so I saw this connection

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between how stone can kind
of connect to your identity.

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I'm very interested
in juxtaposition of objects,

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how juxtaposition of very
different objects can bring up

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a new idea, a new thought.

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There's no manipulation
of the objects

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other than their positioning

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and that changes the meaning,
or the relationship,

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or how you think about them.

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And this is everything
that I'm about.

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I would like to think
that objects have memories,

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and we have memories
about certain objects.

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A lot of what I do is soliciting
memory from an object.

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The other piece
that expresses another side

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of what I've been doing
with museums,

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the piece called
"Picasso/Whose Rules"

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using a large photo blowup
of "Demoiselles d'Avignon"--

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the famous painting by Picasso--

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uh, an African mask and a video
also covers

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a lot of other of my interests
about art, uh, modernism,

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um... you know, ethnography
and African culture.

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And when I did that,

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I was feeling very strongly
about how modernism was a part

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of the destruction
of traditional African culture.

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When Picasso found African
things in the shops in France,

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he saw something
far greater in them,

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which, you know, of course
we're all thankful to him for.

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However, neither the
missionaries, the military men

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nor Picasso had a clue

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as to what these things
were really about.

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If you look through
the eyes of the mask,

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there's a video of two
African friends and myself

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speaking about
what makes art great.

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And, um, there are a lot
of convoluted questions

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like "If your modern art is
our traditional art,

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does that make our
contemporary art your cliché?"