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Adam Milner Takes Care of the Details | Art21 "New York Close Up"

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    (wind blowing)
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    (birds tweeting)
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    [Adam Milner, artist]
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    (soft ambient music)
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    I think people would think of me
    as a collector.
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    (ambient music continues)
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    I feel more like I'm just a magnet
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    and objects are just
    flying at me all the time
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    and then I have to
    then deal with them.
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    (ambient music continues)
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    [Adam Milner Takes Care of the Details]
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    My artworks are always
    intermingling with personal stuff.
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    So I turned to tidying philosophies
    or home decor TV shows.
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    A lot of these philosophies are
    about getting rid of things,
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    but I'm really interested in
    this idea of vibrant matter
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    or this idea that everything is active--
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    and how when we're done with something,
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    it still exists in the world.
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    Immediately I think of trash,
    and I love trash.
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    (upbeat synth music)
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    I will just walk around the
    neighborhood and look at trash.
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    (upbeat synth music continues)
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    A spilled bag of Cheetos on the sidewalk
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    is a stunning composition
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    that I have to take a photo of.
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    (camera clicking)
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    And then I come home and I start to use
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    something I learned from
    those Cheetos in the work.
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    I find their accidental compositions
    to be really exciting.
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    (clanging)
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    I like the flattening
    that happens in thrift stores
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    where there's functional things
    next to artworks
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    next to things
    that seem worthless.
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    (glass tinkling)
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    I get a lot of ideas
    and a lot of materials
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    and a lot of objects from
    the people in my life.
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    When my friend Jen from high school
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    wanted me to cut off all
    her hair and keep it,
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    it felt like a weird trophy.
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    Now I've lived with that
    hair and protected it
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    and cared for it for longer
    than it was on her head.
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    So is it my hair now?
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    Even as I approach something out of hair
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    or closeness with a person,
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    there's also kind of a
    domination or a control.
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    It's always going to be Jen's hair,
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    but it's now also been
    in the Warhol museum.
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    (piano synth music)
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    I'm realizing that arranging
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    is kind of my primary discipline.
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    I made this sculpture
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    with these little things I had collected,
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    and then I carved these stones
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    that I would find to hold them.
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    I think some of the items
    are safer in the stones
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    than they were before.
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    (ethereal synth music)
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    It needs just a little
    bit of yellow, actually.
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    (water running)
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    (water dripping)
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    The exhibition I'm working on right now
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    is with a museum called Black Cube.
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    (ethereal synth music)
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    We're showing thirteen sculptures
    at a thrift store, a bodega,
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    one sculpture is in my friend's car.
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    This exhibition is about
    letting these objects
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    have these temporary contexts
    that change how you read them
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    and maybe help you access them,
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    and that aren't just this
    white cube environment.
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    (quiet violin music)
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    Sometimes at an art museum,
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    the brackets that are hand
    painted to look like marble,
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    those hand-painted brackets
    are more exciting to me
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    even than the bust.
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    They're trying to disappear,
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    but then they become even more conspicuous
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    through this careful labor.
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    (ambient violin music)
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    A museum has its own rules
    of organization and display
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    just like the store or
    the archive or the hoard.
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    I'm interested in teasing out
    the similarities among them,
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    disrupting that hierarchy a little bit.
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    (drill running)
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    I have a really fraught
    relationship with my things,
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    and I realize that I'm,
    basically, defending the hoarder.
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    With hoarding, you do
    blur with your stuff.
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    Your body becomes part of the hoard.
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    (ethereal synth music)
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    I think everything is porous,
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    and everything is always
    absorbing the thing next to it.
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    (ethereal music continues)
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    If it's confusing
    where things begin and end,
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    it's a lot harder to divide and segment.
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    I'm always trying to resist
    the clean category.
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    I like when things are
    messier and blurrier.
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    (ethereal music continues)
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    (soft guitar music)
Title:
Adam Milner Takes Care of the Details | Art21 "New York Close Up"
Description:

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Video Language:
English
Team:
Art21
Project:
"New York Close Up" series
Duration:
08:30

English subtitles

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