WEBVTT 00:00:01.080 --> 00:00:02.480 [DRUMMING] 00:00:09.560 --> 00:00:11.040 [KEVIN BEASLEY] --There's not going to be a beginning... 00:00:11.040 --> 00:00:12.440 [DRUMMING] 00:00:32.260 --> 00:00:35.820 --I think that's enough to start. 00:00:36.340 --> 00:00:37.480 [DRUMMING] 00:00:42.880 --> 00:00:43.400 [CLAP] 00:00:43.500 --> 00:00:44.579 So right now, 00:00:44.579 --> 00:00:50.170 I've been putting a lot of energy into an exhibition at the Whitney, 00:00:50.170 --> 00:00:54.300 which is my first major solo exhibition here in the city. 00:00:57.680 --> 00:01:00.360 The project is multiple parts. 00:01:01.760 --> 00:01:04.860 There is a sound installation, 00:01:04.860 --> 00:01:08.780 that is rooted around a cotton gin motor, 00:01:09.340 --> 00:01:13.860 and three large sculptural works. 00:01:15.420 --> 00:01:19.450 The work really comes out of an experience I had at a family reunion 00:01:19.450 --> 00:01:24.040 in Valentines, Virginia, in the summer of 2011. 00:01:25.520 --> 00:01:27.600 I drove down from New Haven. 00:01:27.600 --> 00:01:34.680 The property has a meandering road that leads to the house. 00:01:35.860 --> 00:01:39.160 I look up, and I see the fields are planted. 00:01:40.460 --> 00:01:42.220 I stopped the car and I looked, 00:01:43.390 --> 00:01:46.280 and I was like, "Whoa, what is that?" 00:01:46.280 --> 00:01:51.040 And I rolled the window down, and I saw that it was cotton. 00:01:52.980 --> 00:01:57.520 It struck me in a way that I couldn't quite wrap my head around. 00:01:57.520 --> 00:01:59.220 Emotionally, it was too heavy. 00:01:59.220 --> 00:02:00.960 Mentally, it was too heavy. 00:02:01.400 --> 00:02:03.460 I felt like I hadn't reconciled something. 00:02:03.460 --> 00:02:06.320 I was like, "Why am I so mad at this plant?" 00:02:07.120 --> 00:02:13.160 This plant is not doing anything other than growing and being beautiful. 00:02:14.840 --> 00:02:19.520 I felt like, okay, there's a lot of unpacking that has to happen. 00:02:21.260 --> 00:02:26.200 --You know, I want to actually point to this cotton here. 00:02:28.200 --> 00:02:30.860 --This here has all been ginned. 00:02:30.860 --> 00:02:34.240 --This is all cotton from Virginia, 00:02:34.240 --> 00:02:36.520 --Valentines, Virginia. 00:02:36.530 --> 00:02:40.440 Using cotton, raw cotton, as a material is really important, 00:02:40.440 --> 00:02:45.110 because as materially-oriented as I am, 00:02:45.110 --> 00:02:50.200 it's all because there is a context for those materials. 00:02:51.320 --> 00:02:56.040 For the exhibition, there will be three large sculptural works. 00:02:56.040 --> 00:03:01.840 I've been calling them slabs, because of their relationship to architecture. 00:03:01.840 --> 00:03:05.230 They're made from wildly different materials. 00:03:06.120 --> 00:03:07.560 --This is a sweater. 00:03:08.680 --> 00:03:11.260 --It's a Yale cotton, 00:03:13.060 --> 00:03:15.060 --really nice, preppy sweater. 00:03:15.760 --> 00:03:19.340 --And then these are some durags, some blue ones. 00:03:20.120 --> 00:03:23.260 --For this they're going to represent a river, 00:03:23.260 --> 00:03:26.460 --or some sort of flowing water. 00:03:26.840 --> 00:03:31.440 Every material has some sort of history or life that it's lived. 00:03:31.440 --> 00:03:33.640 They become ways of telling stories. 00:03:35.460 --> 00:03:42.280 --This is a collar from my cap and gown, when I graduated from Yale. 00:03:42.280 --> 00:03:45.040 When I think about cotton, it takes me everywhere. 00:03:45.040 --> 00:03:46.300 You think about politics. 00:03:46.300 --> 00:03:48.880 You think about social relationships you have. 00:03:48.880 --> 00:03:51.300 You think about economics. 00:03:51.300 --> 00:03:52.800 Reparations. 00:03:53.740 --> 00:03:57.940 It all just unfolds and is laid out. 00:04:01.140 --> 00:04:06.180 These pages come from an atlas of the Transatlantic slave trade. 00:04:09.880 --> 00:04:13.080 It's remarkable that these records have been kept for so long 00:04:13.090 --> 00:04:14.730 and in such detail. 00:04:14.730 --> 00:04:18.540 But it's also indicative of trade and commerce. 00:04:19.440 --> 00:04:22.810 You keep track of every single thing, every movement, 00:04:22.810 --> 00:04:26.160 because there's money and there's capital involved. 00:04:27.200 --> 00:04:29.080 But these were bodies. 00:04:30.760 --> 00:04:35.300 Being a Black person in this current state, 00:04:35.300 --> 00:04:39.480 that’s what you're encouraged to do-- is to move on. 00:04:39.480 --> 00:04:41.880 Like, "Ok, there's been time." 00:04:41.880 --> 00:04:43.560 "There's been space," right? 00:04:43.560 --> 00:04:44.820 It's a false narrative. 00:04:44.820 --> 00:04:48.260 But it also is one that you feel the pressure from. 00:04:48.660 --> 00:04:52.580 That to me is an essential aspect of making sculpture. 00:04:53.280 --> 00:04:56.080 You have to deal with its materiality. 00:04:56.420 --> 00:04:59.380 These works, I think, they demand that. 00:04:59.660 --> 00:05:02.980 They demand you to confront them, 00:05:04.100 --> 00:05:06.000 because they're confronting you. 00:05:07.300 --> 00:05:10.580 [DRUMMING] 00:05:25.780 --> 00:05:27.400 [DRUMS STOP, SILENCE] 00:05:27.400 --> 00:05:29.410 I was searching for a cotton gin. 00:05:29.410 --> 00:05:31.460 I had cotton, and I was thinking, 00:05:31.460 --> 00:05:34.620 maybe I could make t-shirts, or I can make garments. 00:05:35.240 --> 00:05:37.050 I went on eBay, 00:05:37.050 --> 00:05:40.610 searching for a small hand-held, hand-cranked thing, 00:05:40.610 --> 00:05:46.620 and the first thing I came across was an ad for this large cotton gin motor. 00:05:47.820 --> 00:05:50.420 I felt like it was telling me what I needed to do. 00:05:51.440 --> 00:05:55.480 The cotton gin was invented by Eli Whitney in 1794. 00:05:55.900 --> 00:05:59.740 What it does is it separates the fibers from the seeds, 00:06:00.120 --> 00:06:04.340 which was the most time-consuming part for slaves. 00:06:05.400 --> 00:06:09.120 People thought that it would decrease the number of slaves. 00:06:09.120 --> 00:06:11.270 But it actually had the opposite effect, 00:06:11.270 --> 00:06:14.580 because more land was acquired, plantations got larger. 00:06:14.980 --> 00:06:17.880 It actually increased the number of slaves. 00:06:20.360 --> 00:06:24.840 The cotton gin motor is encased in a sound-proof glass chamber, 00:06:25.060 --> 00:06:29.760 and primarily came out of this decision to be able to experience 00:06:29.760 --> 00:06:32.640 and see the motor running, and not hear it. 00:06:38.260 --> 00:06:42.900 That came out of a conversation with the former owner, 00:06:42.900 --> 00:06:46.550 where, when I asked him about what it sounded like, 00:06:46.550 --> 00:06:47.550 he couldn't articulate. 00:06:47.550 --> 00:06:51.490 He didn't have the words to really describe that sound. 00:06:51.490 --> 00:06:54.700 It was really something that you had to experience for yourself. 00:06:59.400 --> 00:07:00.280 --Okay. 00:07:01.320 --> 00:07:03.720 Sound has always been important to me. 00:07:05.520 --> 00:07:10.560 It has increasingly become a way for me to process the world. 00:07:11.960 --> 00:07:16.080 Sound is just as physical and tactile as any other material. 00:07:16.120 --> 00:07:19.040 [PROCESSED SOUND OF COTTON GIN MOTOR] 00:07:35.920 --> 00:07:37.400 [SILENCE] 00:07:45.000 --> 00:07:50.360 How do you deliver that physicality, or that tactility of something you can't see, 00:07:50.360 --> 00:07:54.100 or something that you don't feel in a traditional way? 00:07:55.340 --> 00:07:57.000 [PROCESSED SOUND OF COTTON GIN MOTOR] 00:08:05.240 --> 00:08:07.280 It shakes your insides. 00:08:07.280 --> 00:08:08.840 You feel the vibrations. 00:08:10.060 --> 00:08:13.371 Do people want to sit and listen to this? 00:08:13.371 --> 00:08:16.650 Do they want to take the time to consider 00:08:16.650 --> 00:08:20.000 what that sound is, and where it is coming from? 00:08:26.560 --> 00:08:31.140 I'm interested in people asking what their relationship is to this material-- 00:08:32.110 --> 00:08:37.340 to see a wall of cotton that comes from a really specific place, 00:08:37.349 --> 00:08:38.869 the American South-- 00:08:38.869 --> 00:08:42.440 just to think about what their relationship is to that, 00:08:42.440 --> 00:08:45.960 and how do they feel implicated, if at all. 00:08:51.300 --> 00:08:55.200 Are we really taking the time to process and understand these things? 00:08:58.200 --> 00:09:04.269 So I think setting up a scenario where people can take the time 00:09:04.269 --> 00:09:07.400 is as much as I can really offer.