Preview: Pedro Reyes in Season 8 of ART21 "Art in the Twenty-First Century" (2016)

[CHIMING SOUNDS]

[REYES, IN SPANISH] Let's try it with revolvers,
but it would be better with pistols.

[REYES] This is one of the many workshops
that I've been doing

where we turn weapons into instruments.

[MAN, IN SPANISH] Look, the problem is that it's bent.

The notion of sculpture is having

the understanding that you can take that material

and give it shape.

Something that was designed to kill--

how will it produce sounds for music?

[CHIMING SOUNDS]

I often find myself knocking at the doors

of different government agencies trying to
persuade them

to embrace this initiative as something

that could happen on a national scale,

because we need to get rid of all the weapons

that are entering our territory from the United States.

Doing these workshops is an attempt to transform

not only the material metal, but also

to try to create a psychological transformation--

and, hopefully, a social transformation.

[Pedro Reyes in "Mexico City"]
[September 16, 2016 on PBS]