[Kara Walker & Jason Moran: Sending Out A Signal]
[Steam calliope plays in the distance]
[Kara Walker]
[Walker, reading] "Enslaved Africans."
"In the 1720s, at a spot of land now eroded by the river,"
"stood the barracks where enslaved Africans from the Senegal-Gambia region"
"were held before being ferried across the river"
"to the slave auctions."
"Early Algiers Point was also the home of the slaughterhouse and the powder magazine"
"for New Orleans."
It made me think about
the under representation of memorials about the institution of slavery in America.
[Steam calliope continues]
[Jason Moran]
--[Moran] That one there is sharp.
--[Man] Okay, let me grab my gloves.
[Walker] I had been to New Orleans,
and we went to Algiers Point.
[Algiers Point, New Orleans]
There was this crazy music playing
and I thought it was coming from a church
or something.
And I was sort of, like, doing this...
"What is that!?"
It was just kind of, like, in the air, and I couldn't place...
It was kind of carnival-esque, but I couldn't place it.
So then I researched it.
[Moran] Right.
[Walker] And I found out it was a steam calliope on the riverboat Natchez.
My calliope and its container are the "Katastwóf Karavan".
[Moran] Listening from Algiers Point,
listening to the calliope on the Natchez,
what were you hearing in those songs that they chose?
[Walker] It was kind of happy songs.
When I heard it, I couldn't quite place the tunes,
but I think they were kind of like old-timey, good-time songs.
[Moran] Right.
They have a code in them that always makes people feel a certain way.
Like a password for something else.
[Walker] That kind of wistfulness that some White Southerners would regard slavery--
or those bygone days.
It's a wistfulness not just for the control or the power,
but for the intimacy.
[Moran] Wow.
[Walker] The intimacy of what those enslaved people's bodies meant to theirs.
Mind, body, soul.
And that something like that--
that it's so unsavory, you can't even quite speak it.
That's what those songs do for me, in a way.
[Moran] In thinking about the way that you are also
touching the industrial with how slavery works--
it's an industry, that they're making a machine despite that they are bodies.
[Walker] Yeah.
[Workshop Art Fabrication, Kingston, NY]
[Walker] I wanted to really create this paradoxical space
where the ingenuity of American manufacturing--
the same genius that brought us chattel slavery--
could then become the mechanics through which
those voices that were suppressed reemerge for all time.
--It is really a moment of truth, isn't it?
--Oh my God!
Everything was outside of my comfort zone.
Every single element of it except, in a way, the framing of the calliope,
because it was just the visual hook, in a way.
--It's pretty substantial.
--It has to be an active, vital thing, not just a stationary monster,
--because that would defeat the purpose of a moving monument.
--Let me see if I have...
[Sound of steam calliope playing from phone]
--[Man] Is that Jason playing?
--[Walker] That's Jason abusing it, yeah.
--Jason was really freaked out
--because of course he hits a note and it comes out like...
[Walker makes a high-pitched yelp]
--And he's just used to hitting the keys and something reasonable happens.
[All laugh]
--So that was the first time we saw the calliope.
--This is first time we're seeing the calliope in its wagon.
[Moran] I just was anxious to meet this instrument
that I'd only heard once in my life.
So I never forgot what that sound makes the body feel.
Because it's unsettling, even though it's trying to play the most settling music.
The calliope also sounds like someone whistling.
[Walker] Yeah.
[Moran] So it seems like,
[Moran whistles a melody]
[Walker] So good! [Laughs]
[Moran] Like, that someone whistles this as a way...
Because that's also the way music is used for people who are captive--
that summoning, that sending out of a signal.
It's that it sends out a signal whether it's a distress signal,
or a signal to come, like, "Let's celebrate together."
[Prospect.4 triennial, closing weekend]
[Steam calliope plays]
So here would be a moment where you would bring something to honor the millions of ancestors
in a way that we aren't sure what we're about to touch.
[Walker] Exactly.
That was my feeling going into Algiers with it.
[Steam calliope plays]
As a stationary object, it always needs to be activated.
When you have monuments or commemorative things that just exist,
they sit there and they disappear.
The Confederate monuments--
these monuments that have been around for a hundred years
commemorating, like, Robert E. Lee--
there's something strange that happens where it just sits there
and it becomes an unacknowledged presence.
And there's something about that, too,
where I feel like the calliope has to be in a place,
but not be forgotten.
I don't feel like it's destined for a specific home.
What is unique to Algiers was that it was the point
for Africans arriving to be sold into slavery.
There are many places like that in the Americas,
and I think that it's worthwhile to explore those places.
The object of the calliope was quite small until you played it,
but I was wondering what it was like for you to play it on the Mississippi.
[Moran] I don't think I'd ever felt so much pressure--
and also that I was responsible for releasing pressure
at every key that I would play.
[Steam calliope continues playing]
[Walker] But when you played it, all of that anxiety--
and the fear, and the pain--
that feeling went away,
because there's something voice-like about those pipes.
And you made it cry out.
[Moran] Right.
[Walker] And it's like, ah, you feel it going right across you.
[Steam calliope continues playing]