Edgar Arceneaux in "Los Angeles" - Season 8 | Art21

[energetic electronic music]

[overlapping chatter]

— Ok.

— All right.

Edgar Arceneaux: Today we're going to
focus on the end of Scene 3,

when he's on the floor, the green present
shows up.

So we'll just start off with the green light.

"Until, Until, Until" is a performance, which
I'm calling a play,

that is based on an actual performance
that Ben Vereen did in 1981

where he decided to do a tribute to vaudevillian performer
Bert Williams

at the 1981 Republican gala, which was a celebration of
Ronald Reagan's election.

Man as Vereen: See them shuffle along

Watch them shuffle along and take your...

[Edgar Arceneaux] The first act was
like a straight-up minstrel show

so when he came out on stage,
he was dressed in blackface,

which is surreal in and of itself,
and did this really moving tribute.

And then the second part is
where the critique was...

— He's trying to assert his manhood
— OK.

[Edgar Arceneaux] But ABC edited out that second part

and only showed him doing a
minstrel show for Ronald Reagan

and, like, you know, 25,000 white Republicans.

[Man as Vereen] Well, these here, these, my
friends...

Line?

[Edgar Arceneaux] And two days later,
Ben was surprised to learn

that all the people who were
part of his circle

of friends and supporters,
they all abandoned him.

[Man as Vereen] That's quite all right.

I, uh...I just forgets my place… sometimes.

[Edgar Arceneaux] Now this is the thing.

Even if America had seen it, I am not convinced

that most people would have
thought that it was a good idea.

Heh! That's the reason why I wanted to do
it,

because of that uncertainty...

[Man as Vereen] You're marvelous!

[Edgar Arceneaux] And the power of what art is,

which is distinctive from other fields,
is its unruliness,

which ultimately means that...
art is not inherently good.

It's not inherently bad,
but it is inherently

contradictory.

[Man as Vereen] All right, I'll sing it...

[Edgar Arceneaux] Its nature is to ask new questions.

[Man as Vereen hums a show tune]

Arceneaux: You know, L.A. is a complicated
place,

and it's so big.

There are still parts of it I've never seen.

But this route will give you a sense of the
different L.A.s,

and...how it's broken up

into these invisible barriers
of class and race, you know?

It's a very different
experience when you get to see

the other part of L.A. Where, you know,
where regular people live,

working-class folks live,

you know, so where I came from.

It's just always been... home to me, um,
but, you know, all of my family's here,

and I'm a third-generation Angeleno.

My mother's, like, a really
good storyteller, so, you know,

she would really bring the past to life.

On Sundays, like, after
church, she would be in her room,

you know, like, lying on the
bed, and one of us would go

in there and lie down and then the other one.

The next thing you know, like,
all 6 of us would be in there

on the bed like, "Mom, tell us
some stories about Grandpa,"

like, "tell us some stories
about your childhood," so...

I'm named after my grandfather.
Yeah, he was a painter and an inventor,

and part of the story of my name is that,

you know, I look like him, I
walk like him, I talk like him,

but he died a couple months before I was born.

So I could accredit, probably,
my interest into philosophy

and religion and science to that anomaly
because I started asking myself early on,

like, "How could I be him and be myself
at the same time," you know?

Drawing, for me,
is both a technique, but it's

also a methodology.

It's a way of thinking about how
we make connections between things.

This is a...a big-rig truck
that's crashed into the side of a church.

This is like a collision of belief systems,
right?

And when I was in my undergraduate studies
at Art Center, I remember, you know, encountering,

like, all these car accidents, and it seemed
to bethere

there was some kind of pattern that existed
to it.

And then I started to think about it more
philosophically,

which was, like, you know, "Why is it that
we

consider car accidents and car crashes to
be random?"

because randomness is defined by a sense that
we live

within the logical, reasoned universe.

I'm constantly trying to figure out how you
could talk about

big ideas, but through images that are somewhat
familiar.

So, within the space of making aa body of
work,

the thing that I'm trying to talk about is
not necessarily in the picture.

[electric saw whirs]

— You know, this is just like
making a drawing, you know?

— Yep.

— It's all little, tiny detail stuff.

— No comment.

[laughs]

— Maybe we should just make a drawing instead.
— I know. I know, I know.

[laugs]

[drilling]

[Edgar Arceneaux] So "The Library of Black Lies"
is both a library and a labyrinth.

'cause, you know, like, the difference between
a labyrinth and a maze is that in a maze,

you're supposed to get lost,

but in a labyrinth, you find yourself
in the middle.

And I still don't know what's in the center
of this one.

This is one of my early experiments,
thinking about the limitations of what we

can know,

that even though the book has
been destroyed in some way,

like, you can't open it and read it any longer,
it's taken on a new form.

So I don't know if this is
going to make it in the library or not,

this particular one, but I am
going to be crystallizing some books,

and this may be what's in the middle.

[electric saw whirring]

But, you know, the other thing
about uncertainty is that it's

something that you can't ever get rid of.

Um, as a matter of fact, it's a necessary
product of exploration.

[saw whirring]

Ideally, that's where innovation comes from.

That's where something new comes into the
equation,

is when you allow for that that uncomfortableness,

that sense that you don't know.

[Indistinct chatter]

In a lot of ways, you know,the "Black Lies"
project is a way

of examining the library as a means by which
to transform oneself...

'cause we live in an information age,
so, like, there's information everywhere.

I mean, that doesn't hasn't radically transformed
society

in any greater way.

[Distant, overlapping chatter]

I wanted to produce some troublesome
juxtapositions

between knowledge of something that has power

in itself and knowledge as something
that can be harnessed for political purposes,

either to suppress or to
transform one's position.

[Overlapping chatter]

This idea of the American dream is

the thing that we're all working towards...

but at the same time, a lot of people are
recognizing

that they haven't gone anywhere.

[Chatter continues]

[Distant traffic noise]

The reason why I use mirror is
because I try to use materials

that have certain properties
that trouble things and...

this one, it troubles the gaze, you know,
like, you

there's no neutral place to stand.

It forces you to contend with the fact
that you are reflected in it somewhere.

This is a project that's
called "A Book and a Medal."

By coincidence, I come across these two letters.

The first one, um, what's known now as the
suicide letter,

was sent to Martin Luther King in
December of 1964.

And essentially, the letter said,
"We know your secrets,

and if you don't stop, we're
going to expose you."

And then, at the end, it said, "You know,
and you should just kill yourself."

It turns out that the letter was sent to him
by

J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI.

[Martin Luther King Jr.] A time comes
when silence is betrayal.

[Edgar Arceneaux] In the show, what I
was trying to do was

to explore the vulnerabilities

of a person who's in a position of leadership.

[Martin Luther King Jr.] ...beyond doubt, but the mission to
which they call us...

[Edgar Arceneaux] Martin Luther King
as a historical subject

has been monumentalized.

He's been turned into a kind of a superhero.

[Martin Luther King Jr.] I cannot be silent in the face of such
cruel manipulation of the poor.

My third reason moves to an even deeper level
of awareness, for it grows...

[Edgar Arceneaux] In a lot of ways, I mean, the project
of democracy

as a true possibility is really predicated
on how the United States deals

with its legacy of genocide and slavery.

So I didn't want to produce a situation in
the show where

you felt like this was done…

because this
is still ongoing.

Um, as a matter of fact, it could be unresolvable,

and I think, to some degree, some people may
be thinking

that this might be as good as it gets,

so, like, the "I Have a Dream" speech,
where "I may not get to

the mountaintop with you" is a metaphor,

I wanted to put that on a table
and say, "Let's let's analyze this."

Will we get any better than this?

And for me, I'm not sure.

30 years ago, a man did a performance
that was meant to challenge the status quo,

and it irreparably damaged his life in the
process.

He was willing to go on this journey with
us to bring this piece back into the public

in the way it was meant to be seen.

Let's make a great show.

[clapping]

[Patriotic music playing]

Arceneaux: I have to be quite honest.

I never imagined that I would ever do anything
with blackface.

[Chuckles]

It's not a subject I have any interest in,

but yet here I am.

[Vaudeville music playing]

[Recorded applause and
cheering]

If you've seen the video of Ben Vereen
at Ronald Reagan's presidential gala,

it's one of the most surreal things that I've
seen,

and it's haunted me for 20 years.

[Vaudeville music playing]

We were on the phone yesterday.

And it was actually it was really, really moving.

I was sort of brought to tears during the call.

Ben said, "Listen, you know,
"you have to do this piece your way,

"and so take this material and run with it.
You know, it's yours now."

[Actor as Ben Vereen] I just forgets my place… sometimes.

[Edgar Arceneaux] So I'm even getting choked up
right now just thinking about it,

but, you know, it's...
if that happened to me,

that kind of betrayal and humiliation,
you would hope

that there would be somebody out there
who would want to kind of pick up that mantle.

[Singing indistinctly]

And I could sense from him that,
independent

of if the piece is great or not, he knows
that there's

people out there that care now, you know,
that what he tried

to do 30 years ago, this may be that time.

Maybe now is that time.

[Applause]

[Vaudeville music playing]

[music fades out]

[soft electronic music]