WEBVTT 00:00:00.480 --> 00:00:03.700 ["New York Close Up"] 00:00:08.660 --> 00:00:13.240 There’s something that, if you’re quiet enough and you listen, 00:00:13.240 --> 00:00:19.820 you’re being guided or directed to uncover specific bits of information. 00:00:21.420 --> 00:00:23.900 There’s always this act of digging, 00:00:23.900 --> 00:00:28.560 kind of like resuscitating life back into those lost fragments. 00:00:29.700 --> 00:00:33.480 ["Abigail DeVille Listens to History"] 00:00:36.300 --> 00:00:39.880 [The Contemporary at the Peale Museum, Baltimore] 00:00:39.940 --> 00:00:44.720 The materials that I choose are already speaking-- 00:00:45.440 --> 00:00:51.440 speaking to the past through internal intuition. 00:00:56.900 --> 00:00:59.640 History is deep. It’s dark. 00:00:59.860 --> 00:01:04.320 It affects everything that’s happening, even at this very moment. 00:01:04.320 --> 00:01:05.860 It’s like a rock. 00:01:06.420 --> 00:01:11.460 You can try to tease out little bits in trying to make your way through material 00:01:11.460 --> 00:01:14.100 or make a way through space. 00:01:18.080 --> 00:01:21.740 [Abigail DeVille, artist] History is the tale of the victor, right? 00:01:21.740 --> 00:01:22.820 It’s garbage. 00:01:23.160 --> 00:01:24.920 It's garbage. 00:01:30.200 --> 00:01:37.320 Like George Washington's "wooden teeth" were actually teeth from slaves. 00:01:37.320 --> 00:01:39.060 God! 00:01:39.060 --> 00:01:40.690 It's nauseating. 00:01:40.690 --> 00:01:43.520 It's like the more you don't want to know, you know? 00:01:43.520 --> 00:01:44.560 [National Great Blacks in Wax Museum, Baltimore] 00:01:44.570 --> 00:01:49.310 Well I think the first thing to go in history is the atrocities. 00:01:49.310 --> 00:01:50.479 Nobody wants to remember that. 00:01:50.480 --> 00:01:53.520 That’s the stuff that has to get swept away. 00:01:56.180 --> 00:02:05.320 Cover up--whitewash--is all attributed to the inability to get over slavery. 00:02:05.320 --> 00:02:08.620 It's the hangover that is not going away. 00:02:15.260 --> 00:02:18.300 There’s merit in the attempt to make something 00:02:18.300 --> 00:02:21.160 that could talk about something larger than yourself. 00:02:21.160 --> 00:02:24.620 People are messy, history is messy. 00:02:24.620 --> 00:02:27.080 The work needs to… [LAUGHS] reflect that. 00:02:29.560 --> 00:02:33.540 Thinking about bureaucracy and things just piling up. 00:02:39.460 --> 00:02:42.760 Thinking about all the voices that were lost. 00:02:44.380 --> 00:02:47.180 When things are painful, people don’t want to talk about them. 00:02:47.190 --> 00:02:51.650 But we can’t forget about the class of invisible people 00:02:51.650 --> 00:02:55.970 that were present at every single juncture and every single moment 00:02:55.970 --> 00:02:59.800 in the formation of this country and its myths. 00:03:16.040 --> 00:03:20.320 One of the incredible beauties and strengths of African Americans 00:03:20.320 --> 00:03:25.420 is this propensity for joy and endurance-- 00:03:26.260 --> 00:03:27.940 despite all. 00:03:32.600 --> 00:03:40.800 There’s joy to occupy space in direct opposition or contrast of the dominant narrative. 00:03:44.100 --> 00:03:47.560 ["The New Migration," Harlem, New York] 00:03:47.560 --> 00:03:49.200 [SINGING AND PERCUSSION] 00:03:50.340 --> 00:03:54.000 "The New Migration" processionals have been more human-scale. 00:03:54.900 --> 00:03:58.879 They’re usually guerilla performances that happen. 00:03:58.879 --> 00:04:00.420 They’re unannounced. 00:04:00.420 --> 00:04:03.040 You encounter them or you don’t. 00:04:03.040 --> 00:04:05.600 [SINGING CONTINUES] 00:04:22.960 --> 00:04:24.880 [DEVILLE] --What inspired me to do that? 00:04:24.880 --> 00:04:27.180 [DEVILLE] --It’s based on migration of people. 00:04:27.680 --> 00:04:31.940 [MAN] --I get your concept, but where do I fit into that? 00:04:31.940 --> 00:04:33.700 [DEVILLE] --Oh, where do you fit into it? 00:04:33.700 --> 00:04:35.140 --Where do you want to fit into it? 00:04:35.140 --> 00:04:36.680 [MAN] --I don't want you to answer that... 00:04:36.680 --> 00:04:38.180 [DEVILLE] --That’s for you to figure out! Yes... 00:04:38.180 --> 00:04:39.340 [MAN] -- ...but it’s what I ask of myself all the time. 00:04:39.340 --> 00:04:40.620 [DEVILLE] --Oh, all right! [LAUGHS] 00:04:51.060 --> 00:04:54.780 From 1914 to 1970, the Great Migration happened 00:04:54.790 --> 00:04:58.150 and six million African Americans came up North 00:04:58.150 --> 00:05:00.260 looking for better opportunities. 00:05:00.880 --> 00:05:04.360 What’s happening now is this kind of reversal-- 00:05:04.370 --> 00:05:08.120 of people being pushed out of places that they moved to. 00:05:08.120 --> 00:05:11.840 Just because it was north didn't mean that the racial tensions had gone anywhere. 00:05:11.840 --> 00:05:16.880 Well yeah, because white supremacy is what's for dinner, you know? 00:05:22.760 --> 00:05:25.200 [SINGING & MUSIC] 00:05:28.500 --> 00:05:30.840 ["The New Migration," Anacostia, Washington, D.C.] 00:05:33.080 --> 00:05:33.920 Dragging. 00:05:35.060 --> 00:05:36.400 Walking barefoot. 00:05:36.680 --> 00:05:40.600 It’s the invisible weights that people are walking around with. 00:05:43.700 --> 00:05:45.600 The weight of history holds you down. 00:05:50.240 --> 00:05:53.500 I thought it was important to insert people where 00:05:53.500 --> 00:06:00.000 nobody knows about what Black people have contributed to the history of society. 00:06:00.400 --> 00:06:03.000 [SINGING & MUSIC] 00:06:11.500 --> 00:06:13.420 [SINGING & MUSIC CONTINUES] 00:06:37.800 --> 00:06:42.370 In Martin Luther King’s last speech-- the "Mountaintop Speech"-- 00:06:42.370 --> 00:06:46.640 he says, "Somehow, only when it’s dark enough can you see the stars." 00:06:51.560 --> 00:06:55.600 I was immediately drawn to the fearless optimism. 00:07:09.920 --> 00:07:12.460 Love feels like this powerful force 00:07:12.460 --> 00:07:18.060 that actually could enact change more than hate ever could. 00:07:18.660 --> 00:07:22.000 I think hate causes a kind of exhaustion. 00:07:29.020 --> 00:07:31.900 It's something for me never to lose sight of-- 00:07:31.900 --> 00:07:34.820 or to constantly be reminded of-- 00:07:34.820 --> 00:07:37.140 that we, as a people, we're going to get there.