[film reel]
[percussion and horn music]
Excuse me.
It's fun to be in the street, like, pushing something
and making people get out of your way.
[laughing]
I think pushing things in carts is just city living.
Like, there's no car culture here in New York.
And I think it's already inherently understood,
she's working slash she's an artist.
What are ya'll doin?
Oh, you're doing an art documentary?
Good luck to you.
[rattling]
Alright, alright.
I'm interesting in telling invisible histories,
about groups of people that occupied a space that no longer exists.
Like the 400 year old history here in Harlem
is just the original natives being displaced up to this very moment.
But, they helped shaped the place into what it is now.
Nobody would know that 123 West 131st Street
was a boarding house and that my grandfather was born and raised in.
And now it's the ugliest building on the block.
This salmon colored thing that was selling for $500,000.
For one apartment in the building.
It's like, gimme a break.
I'm not 100% sure on background information on my grandfather,
and I don't know how much clarity he had himself.
I know that he was raised by an elder couple.
and their names were Mari and Count DeVille,
so you know, good luck finding that on Ancestry.com.
I think maybe that's what placing those heads in the street was about,
kind of reclaiming of a space, or of a territory.
[rattling]
My grandmother lived across the street.
And so that's how she met my grandfather, and, um, made my daddy.
So, I just chose a space that could potentially have been
the brownstone that she lived in.
My grandmother's family came from Richmond, Virginia
in the '30s and '40s, so they were part of the Great Migration.
Just like the wave of 6 million African Americans moving from the South
to Northern cities and west, looking for better opportunities.
And, here we are hundred years later, and now there's holes all over Harlem,
like building sites of new things.
It sort of feels like the Earth is shifting and moving
and things are being razed and leveled and new things are being built
and old things are being done away with.
New groups of people are moving in
and old groups of people are being pushed out,
so, it's almost like migratory patterns of birds or something.
You're witnessing history.
[cart rattling]
[unintelligible speaking]
There is an African burial ground somewhere near 126th Street
and the base of the Willis Avenue bridge.
It seems to be some strange staging ground
for emergency vehicles and police presence, continuously.
[crash]
It's just and odd in between place, that hasn't found meaning yet.
That they haven't been able to turn into something depressing,
like a Whole Foods, or a, uh, a condo.
A condo sliver.
[tape ripping]
I've been thinking about that site for a long time.
So this is my first pass at it.
It's just an exercise in acknowledgment.
[rustling]
All I kept thinking about was these bodies with no names and no faces.
These bodies that weren't cared about while they were here,
and still aren't cared about.
I was trying to invoke a human kind of presence.
[background street sounds]
I think of trash as a record of existence.
That these things were used by people.
They're the archaeological evidence of the present moment.
History is permeating everything.
Whether you know it or not.
I think trash is the absolute perfect response for talking about that space
because that's how those people were treated.
That's how that site is being treated.
[child laughing]
I think it's important to acknowledge the people that went behind you.
Even if they lived the most mundane life, decisions they made
is the reason you exist.
'Cause my gran'ma thought my grandad was cute.
She got knocked up with my dad, you know?
Like, if she didn't think the dude across the street
was cute with his straight hair, you know, I wouldn't be here.
I don't think things are just...random, they're not.
[street sounds] [music]