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Kara Walker & Jason Moran: Sending Out A Signal | Art21 "Extended Play"

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    [Kara Walker & Jason Moran:
    Sending Out A Signal]
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    [Steam calliope plays in the distance]
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    [Kara Walker]
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    [Walker, reading] "Enslaved Africans."
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    "In the 1720s,
    at a spot of land now eroded by the river,"
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    "stood the barracks where enslaved Africans
    from the Senegal-Gambia region"
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    "were held before being ferried
    across the river"
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    "to the slave auctions."
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    "Early Algiers Point was also the home
    of the slaughterhouse and the powder magazine"
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    "for New Orleans."
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    It made me think about
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    the under representation of memorials
    about the institution of slavery in America.
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    [Steam calliope continues]
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    [Jason Moran]
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    --[Moran] That one there is sharp.
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    --[Man] Okay, let me grab my gloves.
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    [Walker] I had been to New Orleans,
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    and we went to Algiers Point.
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    [Algiers Point, New Orleans]
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    There was this crazy music playing
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    and I thought it was coming from a church
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    or something.
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    And I was sort of, like, doing this...
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    "What is that!?"
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    It was just kind of, like, in the air,
    and I couldn't place...
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    It was kind of carnival-esque,
    but I couldn't place it.
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    So then I researched it.
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    [Moran] Right.
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    [Walker] And I found out it was a steam calliope
    on the riverboat Natchez.
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    My calliope and its container are the
    "Katastwóf Karavan".
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    [Moran] Listening from Algiers Point,
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    listening to the calliope on the Natchez,
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    what were you hearing in those songs
    that they chose?
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    [Walker] It was kind of happy songs.
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    When I heard it,
    I couldn't quite place the tunes,
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    but I think they were kind of like
    old-timey, good-time songs.
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    [Moran] Right.
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    They have a code in them that always
    makes people feel a certain way.
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    Like a password for something else.
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    [Walker] That kind of wistfulness that
    some White Southerners would regard slavery--
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    or those bygone days.
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    It's a wistfulness not just for the control
    or the power,
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    but for the intimacy.
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    [Moran] Wow.
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    [Walker] The intimacy of what those
    enslaved people's bodies meant to theirs.
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    Mind, body, soul.
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    And that something like that--
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    that it's so unsavory,
    you can't even quite speak it.
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    That's what those songs do for me, in a way.
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    [Moran] In thinking about the way
    that you are also
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    touching the industrial with how slavery works--
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    it's an industry, that they're making a machine
    despite that they are bodies.
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    [Walker] Yeah.
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    [Workshop Art Fabrication, Kingston, NY]
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    [Walker] I wanted to really create this
    paradoxical space
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    where the ingenuity of American manufacturing--
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    the same genius that brought us chattel slavery--
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    could then become the mechanics through which
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    those voices that were suppressed
    reemerge for all time.
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    --It is really a moment of truth, isn't it?
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    --Oh my God!
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    Everything was outside of my comfort zone.
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    Every single element of it except, in a way,
    the framing of the calliope,
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    because it was just the visual hook,
    in a way.
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    --It's pretty substantial.
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    --It has to be an active, vital thing,
    not just a stationary monster,
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    --because that would defeat the purpose
    of a moving monument.
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    --Let me see if I have...
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    [Sound of steam calliope playing from phone]
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    --[Man] Is that Jason playing?
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    --[Walker] That's Jason abusing it, yeah.
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    --Jason was really freaked out
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    --because of course he hits a note
    and it comes out like...
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    [Walker makes a high-pitched yelp]
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    --And he's just used to hitting the keys
    and something reasonable happens.
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    [All laugh]
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    --So that was the first time we saw the calliope.
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    --This is first time we're seeing the calliope
    in its wagon.
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    [Moran] I just was anxious to meet this instrument
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    that I'd only heard once in my life.
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    So I never forgot what that sound makes
    the body feel.
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    Because it's unsettling, even though
    it's trying to play the most settling music.
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    The calliope also sounds like someone whistling.
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    [Walker] Yeah.
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    [Moran] So it seems like,
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    [Moran whistles a melody]
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    [Walker] So good!
    [Laughs]
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    [Moran] Like, that someone whistles this
    as a way...
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    Because that's also the way music is used
    for people who are captive--
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    that summoning,
    that sending out of a signal.
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    It's that it sends out a signal
    whether it's a distress signal,
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    or a signal to come,
    like, "Let's celebrate together."
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    [Prospect.4 triennial, closing weekend]
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    [Steam calliope plays]
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    So here would be a moment where you would
    bring something to honor the millions of ancestors
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    in a way that we aren't sure
    what we're about to touch.
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    [Walker] Exactly.
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    That was my feeling going
    into Algiers with it.
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    [Steam calliope plays]
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    As a stationary object,
    it always needs to be activated.
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    When you have monuments or
    commemorative things that just exist,
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    they sit there and they disappear.
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    The Confederate monuments--
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    these monuments that have been around for
    a hundred years
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    commemorating, like, Robert E. Lee--
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    there's something strange that happens
    where it just sits there
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    and it becomes an unacknowledged presence.
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    And there's something about that, too,
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    where I feel like the calliope
    has to be in a place,
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    but not be forgotten.
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    I don't feel like it's destined
    for a specific home.
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    What is unique to Algiers was that
    it was the point
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    for Africans arriving to be sold into slavery.
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    There are many places like that in the Americas,
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    and I think that it's worthwhile to explore
    those places.
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    The object of the calliope was quite small
    until you played it,
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    but I was wondering what it was like for you
    to play it on the Mississippi.
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    [Moran] I don't think I'd ever felt so much
    pressure--
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    and also that I was responsible
    for releasing pressure
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    at every key that I would play.
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    [Steam calliope continues playing]
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    [Walker] But when you played it,
    all of that anxiety--
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    and the fear,
    and the pain--
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    that feeling went away,
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    because there's something voice-like
    about those pipes.
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    And you made it cry out.
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    [Moran] Right.
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    [Walker] And it's like,
    ah, you feel it going right across you.
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    [Steam calliope continues playing]
Title:
Kara Walker & Jason Moran: Sending Out A Signal | Art21 "Extended Play"
Description:

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Video Language:
English
Team:
Art21
Project:
"Extended Play" series
Duration:
09:23

English subtitles

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