WEBVTT

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[film reel]

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[percussion and horn music]

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Excuse me.

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It's fun to be in the street, 
like, pushing something

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and making people get out of your way.

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[laughing]

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I think pushing things 
in carts is just city living.

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Like, there's no car culture
here in New York.

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And I think it's already 
inherently understood,

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she's working slash she's an artist.

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What are ya'll doin?

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Oh, you're doing an art documentary?

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Good luck to you.

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[rattling]

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Alright, alright.

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I'm interesting in telling
invisible histories,

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about groups of people that occupied 
a space that no longer exists.

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Like the 400 year old history 
here in Harlem

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is just the original natives 
being displaced up to this very moment.

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But, they helped shaped 
the place into what it is now.

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Nobody would know 
that 123 West 131st Street

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was a boarding house and that 
my grandfather was born and raised in.

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And now it's the ugliest building 
on the block.

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This salmon colored thing 
that was selling for $500,000.

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For one apartment in the building.

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It's like, gimme a break.

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I'm not 100% sure on background 
information on my grandfather,

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and I don't know how much 
clarity he had himself.

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I know that he was raised
by an elder couple.

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and their names were 
Mari and Count DeVille,

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so you know, good luck finding that
on Ancestry.com.

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I think maybe that's what placing 
those heads in the street was about,

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kind of reclaiming of a space,
or of a territory.

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[rattling]

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My grandmother lived across the street.

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And so that's how she met my grandfather,
and, um, made my daddy.

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So, I just chose a space 
that could potentially have been

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the brownstone that she lived in.

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My grandmother's family came 
from Richmond, Virginia

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in the '30s and '40s, 
so they were part of the Great Migration.

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Just like the wave of 6 million 
African Americans moving from the South

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to Northern cities and west, 
looking for better opportunities.

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And, here we are hundred years later,
and now there's holes all over Harlem,

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like building sites of new things.

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It sort of feels like the Earth
is shifting and moving

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and things are being razed and leveled 
and new things are being built

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and old things are being done away with.

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New groups of people are moving in


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and old groups of people 
are being pushed out,

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so, it's almost like migratory patterns 
of birds or something.

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You're witnessing history.

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[cart rattling]

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[unintelligible speaking]

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There is an African burial ground 
somewhere near 126th Street

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and the base of the Willis Avenue bridge.

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It seems to be some strange staging ground


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for emergency vehicles 
and police presence, continuously.

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[crash]

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It's just and odd in between place, 
that hasn't found meaning yet.

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That they haven't been able 
to turn into something depressing,

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like a Whole Foods, or a, uh, a condo.

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A condo sliver.

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[tape ripping]

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I've been thinking 
about that site for a long time.

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So this is my first pass at it.

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It's just an exercise in acknowledgment.

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[rustling]

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All I kept thinking about was these bodies
with no names and no faces.

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These bodies that weren't cared about 
while they were here,

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and still aren't cared about.

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I was trying to invoke 
a human kind of presence.

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[background street sounds]

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I think of trash as a record of existence.

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That these things were used by people.

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They're the archaeological evidence
of the present moment.

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History is permeating everything.

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Whether you know it or not.

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I think trash is the absolute perfect 
response for talking about that space

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because that's how 
those people were treated.

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That's how that site is being treated.

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[child laughing]

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I think it's important to acknowledge
the people that went behind you.

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Even if they lived the most mundane life, 
decisions they made

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is the reason you exist.

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'Cause my gran'ma thought 
my grandad was cute.

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She got knocked up with my dad, you know?

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Like, if she didn't think the dude 
across the street

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was cute with his straight hair, 
you know, I wouldn't be here.

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I don't think things are just...random, 
they're not.

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[street sounds]
[music]