Carrie Mae Weems in "Compassion" - Season 5 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

Carrie Mae Weems: You know, it's like–
I open up this box;

it’s like opening up
a can of worms.

You know what I mean?

It’s just like the most amazing–
it was the most amazing project.

There were a group
of photographs

that I knew that I
absolutely had to use.

I had been thinking about them
for years and years and years.

I had lectured on them in
any number of contexts

in my classrooms
for a really long time.

And there were a
group of them that

came out of the
Harvard archives.

This was one of them,
a very early daguerreotype

that had been done in
North Carolina,

South Carolina,
of a family of slaves.

But it was the kind of project
that allowed me to think again

about the history of black
subjects in photography as well,

how the black body had been
used photographically.

The final pieces are with texts,
and the text is etched into glass.

They look very different once
they're behind glass

because the glass and the text
becomes really, really important

to how the audience is being
asked to engage with the photographs.

And so there were these
beginning images that seemed

to me to really crystallize and
compress in four images

the history of African-Americans
in the history of photography.

There are 30 photographs
within the series.

All of the photographs for
the Getty series are–

are appropriated images
from other historical sources.

Harvard threatened to sue me
for the use of the first photographs

that I showed you.

So I thought,
Harvard is going to sue me

for using these images of
black people in their collection,

the richest university
in the world.

I think that I don't have
really a legal case,

but maybe I have a
moral case that could be made

that might be really useful
to carry out in public.

And so after worrying about it
and thinking about it,

I called them up,
and I said,

"I think actually your suing me
would be a really good thing.

You should, and we should have
this conversation in court.

I think it would be
really instructive for

any number of reasons
and certainly for artists

that are really engaged in the
act of appropriation

who think that there
is a larger story to tell."

Harvard then finally thought,
"No, I guess we won't sue her.”

And then they asked me to,
every time a sell was made,

that I would have to pay them
for the use of the photographs.

And then they bought the
photographs for their collection.

So it was like,
"Okay, well, you bought 'em.

Do I have to pay you?
Do I have to pay you too?"

I mean– I mean,
I’m a little confused.

I come from this big,
wonderful, crazy family of,

I don't know,
300 or so of us.

So I started thinking about this
relationship of me to my family

and how to sort of
tease that out.

It was important for me
because I really needed

to understand something
about the nature of

my own being and
my own voice and

really where I come from.

My father was a really great,
great, great storyteller, and,

you know, narrative and
storytelling was in the blood.

I just came from
a family reunion.

My aunt Nellie, who's sort of
the chronicler of our family,

put together this really
beautiful scrapbook.

And I love this photograph.

I grew up with this picture.

This is sort of like the anchor,
the bedrock of my family.

This is my beautiful mother
and all of her sisters,

and I’m crazy about them all.

This is a photograph
of my grandfather.

My grandfather was Jewish
and Native American,

and he married my grandmother
who was this–

you know, this black woman,
and they had 11 children together.

Papa was this sort of
amazing guy,

who, because he basically
passed for white,

was able to employ his
entire family in Portland, Oregon.

And there were times when
he would take Osie, my grandmother,

with him for a job,
and they would fire him

because they realized that
he was married to a black woman.

Or sometimes when my grandfather
had all of the kids in the car,

white people would
pass by and say,

"What are you doing with
all them niggers in your car?"

They were just sort of
extraordinary people,

and what they put in motion
is still there.

And my mother and her sisters have
carried on that amazing tradition.

I moved away from home
when I was 16.

I went to my father and said,

"Dad, I think I’m ready to
move out on my own.”

He said, "you think that you could,
like, move out and pay your rent

and buy your food
and all that by yourself

and not come back home,
like, every other day for food

or rent or a safe haven?"

and I said, "Yeah, I think I can do that."

And he said, "Well, if you think you
can do that, then go do that.

If you think that you need to
come back home after you've tried it,

you are always, of course,
welcome to come back home,

but if you think you can
take care of yourself,

then go take care of yourself."

And I left home, and
I haven’t been back since.

And so I went to San Francisco
with my girlfriend.

I had been interested in dance
and theater to a certain extent.

I mean, I just knew how to
dance really well.

And I started dancing with
the famous and extraordinary Ann Halprin.

Ann was already really
interested in ideas about peace

and using dance as a way
to bridge different cultures together.

I didn't know what one
could really do with dance.

I knew that it was really the
visual arts that somehow

would be more my calling.

And then I had a boyfriend
who was a photographer,

and he would film all of our parties
and happenings and rallies

and demonstrations.

We were all radicals,
living in San Francisco.

And he introduced me to photography.

I was daydreaming about
the Birmingham Riots in the 1960s.

And the image started moving.

I was thinking about one particular
photograph made by Charles Moore,

a photograph that I love,

and Charles Moore didn’t really want
me to use his photograph.

And so I thought,

"Okay, then I’m gonna bring
that photograph to life.

I’ll construct that moment."

And so I went to Birmingham,
and I pulled out some students,

and we did a whole series of actions,

and out of that came this idea
to do an entire series of

re-creations around the idea of 1968.

I realized that we were
at this incredible moment,

that 40 years had elapsed,

that Martin Luther King had
died 40 years ago,

and that it would be important to
look at some things that happened

just before that and
just after that

so that you would have to
look at the assassination of Martin.

You would have to look at the
assassination of Malcolm.

You would have to look at the
assassination of Medgar Evers,

of Robert F. Kennedy,
John F. Kennedy,

this idea of how then we
arrived at this incredible moment.

And then I realized that Barack Obama,
of course, was running for

the presidency of the United States.

This incredible, tumultuous,
brutal history is absolutely what

makes him possible,
that he could not be in that position

without the death of
all those people,

and so that he is literally
standing on the ashes

and the spirit of all those
things that have come before.

And I just thought if
I didn’t look at those things now,

if I didn't look at all of
that kind of trauma

and the mourning,
you know,

and the sadness of the history
of the last 40 years, then,

you know, I really wasn't
worth my salt.

I don't know if this work
will be important,

but I know that it's
important for me,

that it was important for me
to look at this history,

to really think about where
we are now, contemporarily.

And it was important for me
to consider deeply in my heart

how we had arrived
at this moment.

And so then the idea that
I would ask a number of students

to assume the roles for themselves

and thereby come to
know something about that history–

all those things were really
very important for me to make.

Student Gyun Hur:
This is the assassination

of Robert Kennedy.

I think it's, I believe, like 1968.

I acted in a part of being a busboy,
and I think his name is Juan Romero.

At that time,
when he got shot,

the busboy,
who met him previously,

he ran up to him and
asked if he was okay

and gave him a rosary,
so that was the part that I reenacted.

As an immigrant daughter,

as somebody who never
experienced it before–

my parents don't know
really much about this whole thing,

and so for me to just come
into that place of understanding

what exactly happened,
I think that was the hardest.

Student Ashley Vieira:
This is Kent State,

and I’m the girl in the photograph.

It was an extremely emotional situation.

Carrie has this ability to
evoke emotion in people,

just from her voice,
and it was so soothing.

But when I got up there,
at first I was really nervous,

and I wasn't sure how
I should become sad

and become in that moment.

And then once she started talking to me,
just all these emotions fled,

and I–
and I cried really hard.

Gallery Viewer 1:
Veronica, the one with

the Kent State, I remember that.

Gallery viewer 2:
Oh, do you?

Gallery Viewer 1:
You know–

yeah, I remember that.

I remember that actual photograph.

I mean, I remember
watching it on television, you know.

Yeah, some of these are just–
I mean, just–

so these things have another
kind of pitch to it, you know?

Carrie Mae Weems:
What came out of

these photographs,
which is, you know,

what I really, really love,

is indeed another way of working,
this idea of constructing history.

Not only did I want the students
to be doing all the research and

studying the reenactment:
when did the students at Kent State die?

Who was there?
What was her name?

Who were the other students
that were killed?

They had to do all that work,
but then I thought,

let’s construct them in a
very sort of high, artificial way,

and let’s put everybody on a podium,
let’s put everything in there,

and then let's show all the tracks.

Let’s show all the lights.
Let’s just show everything.

Let’s just sort of show that all of
the stuff is being constructed.

Film voice over:
In this constructed place,

our classroom.

We revisit the past.

The students examine the facts
and will participate

in the construction of history,

a history that has been
told to them by others.

But now, with their own bodies,
they engage their own dark terrain,

their own winter.

Carrie Mae Weems:
The video that goes along

with these photographs begins

and ends with Hillary Clinton
and Barack Obama.

So then I thought,
"Oh...oh, oh, oh.

Well– well, that's the other–
that's part two, isn't it?

That’s part two.”

So that's what we're actually doing today.

-Okay, ladies, let's go.

Very much in sort of a similar style,
John McCain, Barack Obama,

Sarah Palin as a beauty queen.

I’ve got all these little bombshells
coming to sort of dress up

in high heels and fishnets,
and they'll all walk around.

And now I think that Obama is
indeed the president of the United States.

For me, it gives the work just
that much more credibility,

right, you know, that it has
actually a success at the end of it.

-Each of you in turn,
you’re going to, like,

come walking towards
the camera. Okay?

That's one of the things
that we’re going to do.

So we have to set for that.

You're going to start
walking in this direction.

We may have to--

The other day,
I came home from Chicago,

and I immediately plugged in
my tape recorder,

and I made a series of
phone calls to a number of people,

all kinds of people,
that I’ve been in touch with

over the last many, many years,
to ask them about

what they were thinking
at that moment that it seemed

that maybe Barack was
actually going to be president.

I spoke to people who,
for the first time ever, said,

"My country, my country, my country."

Time...

Because I think, really,
it’s sort of, like,

really claiming yourself,
and it's a certain confidence.

And you're all involved in theater,
so you're all going to be working

in front of other people.

But I think it's even bigger.

I think it's really about connecting
with a story that is larger than you.

It’s not about you.
It’s not about you.

We’re using these bodies to
talk about something else

that's much bigger
than we are. Okay?

And so find confidence in the
historical story that we're gonna

use your body to
express this story through.

In one moment,
there was an enormous shift

in the American imagination–
in one moment.

People who had never considered–
African-Americans who had

never considered this to be home,
this to be a place that represented them,

suddenly said, “my country" and
"my president” and

"my, my, my, my, ours."