Krzysztof Wodiczko in "Power" - Season 3 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

ANNOUNCER: Live in downtown St. Louis with more on  

our first story at six.
NEWSCASTER: Washington  

University is sponsoring the event
called The St. Louis Projection.

In this case, the movie shows crime victims
and inmates sharing their stories,

showing only their hands.

The building representing 
the other parts of the body.

KRZYSZTOF WODICZKO:
In St. Louis I turn to the  

very beautifully designed building
of the central public library.

SPEAKER: Check, check, check.

SPEAKER: Yeah, that’s very nice.

WODICZKO: Inside the building, 
participants were sitting 

with cameras pointed on the person’s hands.

SPEAKER: Hi, my name is Diana.

SPEAKER: Hi Diana.

WODICZKO: Outside, it’s a kind of open mike.

Anybody can come forward to 
speak back to the building

trying to prevent perpetuation of the murders,

killing, and gun violence in St. Louis.

This type of projection brings more opportunities
for more people to join each other

in an attempt to speak up and open up.

Open up and share in public space,

something that is usually 
relegated to private domain.

SPEAKER: We never expect 
to bury our grandchildren,

and when we do, it’s the most 
horrible feeling in the world.

SPEAKER: And when I see 
Riley’s two little children, 

growing up, without their daddy,

it just breaks my heart.

SPEAKER: Yes.

When it’s your loved one, it’s not an easy thing.

You don’t forget.

SPEAKER: Now that it’s been a couple years,

how are you and your family handling birthdays,

holidays, family get-togethers?

SPEAKER: You always have that empty space,

but it never goes away

because there’s a hole in your 
heart that nothing can ever fill it.

People don’t have a clue of how we feel,

because on the outside it looks like we’re okay,

but on the inside we’re 
slowly in little bit every day

like we feel like we’re dying.

SPEAKER: This eternal flame burns 
in memory of Christopher King,

age 20, murdered on August 26, 1986.

It burns in memory of J.A. King,

murdered on April 7, 1991, age 27.

It burns in memory of Adam Enis....

WODICZKO: The Revolutionary battle on Bunker Hill

somehow connected with the daily struggle of

Charlestown residents who are living 
in the shadow of this monument.

Overlooking the area in which 
on weekly or monthly basis

someone was murdered, killed.

So the battle perhaps continues 
not that it should of course,

but unfortunately it does for life, 
liberty and pursuit of happiness.

SPEAKER: When I was 17 my brother Kevin was found

hanging in a prison cell, Bridgewater.

The gangsters knew that he knew too much,

and I believe that they killed him.

It was made to look like a suicide.

And it was never investigated.

But everyone in the streets has 
always told me that he was killed.

We no a lot more in the streets than we 
tell the outside world or the police.

And everyone knows the truth 
about things that go on.

But we just keep quiet.

WODICZKO: They eventually develop some 
trust to break the code of silence.

To open up and speak about what’s unspeakable.

SPEAKER: I think a lot of you people wonder why…

why am I up here.

I’m no special person.

Just an ordinary person, just like you.

But all I can say is just 
take a look at your family.

The ones that you love.

And what would you do if one 
of them was taken from you?

How would you fight back?

Still try to have a heart that can still love,

and be a person that can care.

It’s not very easy.

My son, Adam, all I can say is that 
I love you, and I will do my best.

And some day I’ll see you.

WODICZKO: I need to make sketches.

I need to make sure the body of 
the speaker fits well the outline,

the character of the body of the monument.

So they both are integrated.

But I realize with time that 
there must be another reason why

I’m preoccupying myself so 
much with those drawings.

I need to keep certain 
distance from what people say.

Somehow, the process of 
making sketches keeps me sane.

Because I can not relive each time what I hear.

In case of anybody my position,

it will trigger my own experiences 
or perhaps even trauma.

So I need to have something in between.

Something in between for them 
is the camera and the monument,

and what it is for me, perhaps, the sketchbook.

I receive Hiroshima Art Prize,

the condition was that I will organize
retrospective exhibition of my work.

This gave me motivation to 
do a large public project 

in Hiroshima I propose a projection.

Which was to take place the night 
after the anniversary of bombing.

My mother being a Jew whose entire family
was killed during ghetto uprising in Poland

gave birth to me in the midst of all of this,

my childhood was on the ruins of war.

Physical, political, and perhaps moral,

definitely psychological,

so I started working on my 
projection with this assumption.

That we’re going to re-actualize one of 
the few structures that survive bombing,

that is just underneath of 
the epicenter of explosion.

To re-animate it with the voices and gestures of

present day inhabitants of 
Hiroshima from various generations.

I started to talk to associations 
of survivors of bombing.

I need to quickly develop some trust,

so they can really open up towards me.

Without developing of trust,

there is no possibility for my work.

The participants could not speak very long,

interrupted by their own tears.

SPEAKER (in Japanese): I saw many dead 
or dying children. It was horrible.

WODICZKO: I seem to be working with people
who managed to survive,

and heal themselves to the point towards
reconnecting with society, with others.

Helping others to understand 
at least a little bit,

a small part of what they went through.

To open up and share with 
the world what is so painful.

The memorial should be a vehicle through which

the past and the future converge.

The river became a graveyard for both 
people and buildings in Hiroshima.

As both a tragic witness but also 
as a hope, because it’s moving.

There is new water coming.

Tijuana, it’s a border for many people

who came from poor provinces

who tried to advance their life moving north.

This building is a very important 
symbolic structure in Tijuana.

It’s almost like a symbol of the city.

Landmark.

So here we have the kind of 
variable television studio

with camera and lights and microphone,

to project the face with 
precision onto the façade.

So the camera would be always in the same position

in relation to human head no matter 
where this person is looking.

So the boundary between architecture 
and projected body would be blurred.

The skin of the building 
and the skin of the person

will be background and 
foreground at the same time.

Will be shifting focus.

In Tijuana, ninety percent of 
labor are young women, girls.

They work in ways that we don’t 
even imagine some of them.

The issues that were brought were taboo,

were issues of incest, rape.

SPANISH SPEAKER: He closed the 
door and then came into the room.

He grabbed me by force. He threw me on the bed.

He covered my mouth. I could not scream.

He abused me and he told me 
that if I were to say anything,

he would hurt my family, my 
grandmother, my mother, my uncles.

WODICZKO:  I think that people were there to 
support what they were hearing,

even if what they were hearing 
and seeing was unbearable.

SPANISH SPEAKER: Sometimes I have nightmares.

That I am always there.

That I can’t do anything. That no one can help me.

WODICZKO:   Sometimes it’s easier to be honest

speaking to thousands of people through monument

than to tell the truth at home,

to the closest person.

SPANISH   SPEAKER: He hit us with the butt of his gun.

We saw Hector lying there 
on the ground, all bloody.

We spoke to him but he didn’t answer.

Then we told Wendy’s mother 
that they had taken her away.

She was found half-naked. The 
doctor us she had been raped.

She lasted two months in a coma.

He had become a vegetable from 
the blows he had received.