WEBVTT

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[David Brooks, Artist]

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[New York Close Up]

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Well, I grew up in a small town.

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Brazil, Indiana.

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I came to New York in the mid-Nineties

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to go to school at Cooper Union.

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["David Brooks Hits the Pavement"]

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And being a skater, I could just skate all
around town.

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So I would go to all the museums,

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have my skateboard with me,

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and just check it at coat check.

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I was a little backwards.

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In fact, only the year before had I seen

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my first piece of historical artwork in person.

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I do recall, very starkly,

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going to The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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and discovering the ancestral totems
from the New Guinea area.

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At first, they're very exotic looking.

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But each one of those face is an actual person.

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And when I realized what was behind them,

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it definitely shattered a particular
preconceived idea as to what art was.

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There was both the life around the artwork
during it being made.

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There was the life around the artwork

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and how it functioned in the society.

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And there was a life around the artwork

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as to how it got to the United States.

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And so it's the life behind it

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and the truth content within it

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that is actually really quite extraordinary

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and goes far beyond what it appears to be.

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There was a piece I did at PS1

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where I planted about fifty trees.

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It's more of this, like,

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cross section of an Amazonian forest.

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And then we dumped, pumped, and sprayed

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about twenty tons of concrete
on the entire forest.

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[LAUGHS]

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It's more of an action

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than it is a composition

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or an object.

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And it's one that is both horrifying

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and has some beauty to it at the same time.

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The forest then regrew over time,

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as it would break through
elements of the concrete.

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And had a whole life cycle that went on
for a year and a half.

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We're so desensitized to imagery of violence,

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both in terms of a landscape,

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but also in terms of a culture.

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So what the project really is looking at

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is trying to find ways to tether reality
right back to it.

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Just like skating,

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there is no ideology behind hitting the pavement.

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That's just you and your body
hitting the pavement

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in a kind of reality check.

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The skating started...

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I was quite young
and I was really bad at it.

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And my brother, I remember,

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made fun of me at one point.

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He's like, "You've been skating that long
and you still suck?"

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So, there was a turning point
at around the age of thirteen

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that I became extremely disciplined.

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I had this thing where I had to
learn a trick a day.

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I used to sneak out of the house,

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like, at two in the morning,

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and drive up to Chicago or...

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[LAUGHS]

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or drive down to Louisville.

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So skateboarding, for me,
was the most fulfilling

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when you would find a new situation
in an urban context

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and you think of a different way to use it.

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It propels one to want to actually
go out in the world and explore.

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[The Explorers Club]

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The Explorers Club is a private club

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that was founded in 1904

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by a number of people that were embarking
on these different endeavors

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and they kind of needed a center

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where they could come together

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to have what they call a "smoker"--

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where they would meet and discuss
what kind of expeditions they've been doing.

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So it was a place to disseminate information.

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At the time of its founding,

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there were people, of course,
racing to the poles--

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North and South--

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trying to get to the top of the
tallest mountain on earth,

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Mount Everest.

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Eventually, to get to the Moon.

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But as these people were
racing to the great firsts

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they were kind of passing up
all of the rest of life

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along the way.

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And so, I think now we've come to

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a completely different understanding

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as to how to perceive
the definition of exploration.

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Now it's really about those granular,

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infinitesimal minutiae aspects of life

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that really are the things that
make up the world.

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A combine is basically a piece of
farming equipment

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that cuts corn,

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breaks the kernels of the corn off the cob,

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and then sifts and rasps
the cobs and the stalks,

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but also cleans the grain.

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The exhibition breaks apart this
piece of machinery

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into thousands of pieces.

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It takes time and movement going around
and looking at everything.

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Just like an ecosystem, it's not really

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something you can just show up
and stand in front of and experience.

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It's actually a number of processes that,
over time,

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you understand, experience,
and you put it back together.

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Taking the macroscopic hole
into the microscopic details

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that make up this one thing

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that also does many operations all at once.

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There's an infinite number of variations

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of things one can do with a skateboard.

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And it never quite ends,

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so it will always keep going,

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the more you put into it.

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I thought that at one point

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I was going to be a professional skateboarder.

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But a girl broke my heart,

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and I just started making art

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quite intensely.

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And I realized I was just better at
making artwork

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than I was at skateboarding.