Speaker 1: Push it. Hey, So, a couple of weeks ago, a
Speaker 1: friend sent me a text that included a new art
Speaker 1: project that's going up in the South Side of Chicago.
Speaker 1: It's bye, I remember, it's by an artist named Tanika Johnson.
Speaker 1: It's called Inequity for Sale and right, I immediately forward
Speaker 1: it to you. Yeah. Yeah, it's basically calling out how
Speaker 1: black people had their homes stolen from them legally through
Speaker 1: these predatory lending schemes back in the day. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: These landmarks are going to go in front of ten
Speaker 1: or fifteen houses on the South Side that have been
Speaker 1: legally stolen as the sign says, yeah, And it just
Speaker 1: felt it felt so perfect for us. It's it's art,
Speaker 1: but it's art that exposes injustice. It's art that's political.
Speaker 1: It's art that's demanding change. You know, I immediately wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about this. Let's do it. I'm Khalil Gibran
Speaker 1: Muhammad and I'm Ben Austin. We're two best friends, one black,
Speaker 1: one white. I'm a historian and I'm a journalist. This
Speaker 1: is some of my best friends are in this show.
Speaker 1: We wrestle with the challenges and the absurdities in a
Speaker 1: deeply divided and unequal country. And in this episode, we're
Speaker 1: going to learn from two amazing artists who challenge us
Speaker 1: to see the world as it is. Yeah. Their art
Speaker 1: is both in museums and also in the streets of Chicago. Yep,
Speaker 1: we're going to art school, folks. Let's go get your
Speaker 1: palette only. Yeah. So you met up with Tanica, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: to learn more about her work, to learn more about
Speaker 1: Inequity for Sale. I went to her home a couple
Speaker 1: of weekends ago and we drove around the neighborhood. Yeah.
Speaker 1: She lives in Englewood, right, Yeah, she lives in Englewood
Speaker 1: on the South side of Chicago, which is where these signs,
Speaker 1: these these placards are going to go as well. Follow
Speaker 1: me so you can listen in my car. Tunika is amazing.
Speaker 1: She's so generous to do this. She has this humility
Speaker 1: that I think actually disguises just sort of how bad
Speaker 1: ass she is and the amazingness of her work. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because she's been she's been actually doing a lot of
Speaker 1: other activities, including organizing in that same community exactly. She's
Speaker 1: a community organizer, she's a photographer. She's done other our
Speaker 1: projects that have really captured my attention. And you know,
Speaker 1: this neighborhood of Englewood, where she lives and works is
Speaker 1: a really important one as well. I mean it's been
Speaker 1: kind of at the center of how Chicago is described
Speaker 1: as a violent city, precisely because of the level of
Speaker 1: community violence in Inglewood in particular. Yeah. Yeah, in an
Speaker 1: earlier episode, you and I talked about Cabrini Green, this
Speaker 1: public housing development being sort of like this mythological place,
Speaker 1: and Englewood has sort of filled that void in Chicago.
Speaker 1: It sort of exists in this realm of like horror stories. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's also not that far from from where we grew up.
Speaker 1: I mean it's just a little bit west west where
Speaker 1: we grew up, a little west, a little bit south.
Speaker 1: There was a ten minute drive from my place, but
Speaker 1: it might as well be light years away because it's
Speaker 1: a community that's been devastated by loss, by divestment. We
Speaker 1: stop on one of these streets and it's a block
Speaker 1: that has three of these homes that were sold on
Speaker 1: land sale contracts. And listen, man, there's like an empty lot,
Speaker 1: there's a boarded up home. There's a really nice home
Speaker 1: that has a fence and being taken care of. Next
Speaker 1: to it as a vacant lot, there's a boarded up
Speaker 1: home and so you see crazy. It's crazy in terms
Speaker 1: of like lot by lot, what's going. Yeah, you see
Speaker 1: the devastation, you see the abandonment, you see really the
Speaker 1: absence of people too, because you know, the population in
Speaker 1: Englewood has dropped from something like ninety seven thousand in
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties to twenty four thousand today. So there's
Speaker 1: been black flight from this community. And you see it
Speaker 1: there too. This home right here, he's burnt up one
Speaker 1: that's some land sale contract home. This is actually one
Speaker 1: that's going to be in the project as well. So
Speaker 1: the project that she's referring to there, she's putting up
Speaker 1: these landmarks in the community, in the neighborhood. She's going
Speaker 1: to start with about ten of them or fifteen of them.
Speaker 1: And you know there are these signs. They're they're yellow
Speaker 1: in this bright yellow and she said, she said, it's
Speaker 1: supposed to be a caution sign. It's like the yellow
Speaker 1: of a caution sign. And they say this home at
Speaker 1: sixty eight twenty three South Aberdeen was legally stolen from
Speaker 1: black couple mister and missus James and Lula Malone on
Speaker 1: October thirtieth, nineteen sixty three, in a widespread land sale
Speaker 1: contracts scam. Yeah, that's just so powerful. And you know,
Speaker 1: these land sale contract scams were a predatory markets set
Speaker 1: up to target black people by speculators who basically sold
Speaker 1: them homes on a layaway plan, literally like they were
Speaker 1: set up to make payments. They never earned equity in
Speaker 1: the home until the final payment was made. And often
Speaker 1: these land speculators who were involved in this scheme would
Speaker 1: deliberately sabotage black people by making payments disappear or pretending
Speaker 1: as if they didn't receive them. And so lots of
Speaker 1: people lost their homes this way, and yet the speculators
Speaker 1: made thousands and thousands of dollars on black people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what makes an equity for sales so amazing is that
Speaker 1: Tanika researches these homes. She finds who lived there and
Speaker 1: when their homes were stolen from them. So I was
Speaker 1: just looking at that data set and I was like,
Speaker 1: they are all around me. That's crazy. And so now
Speaker 1: that you see the block that I was living on,
Speaker 1: it was so many vacant homes. This is the data
Speaker 1: that she's talking about that. You know, there was a
Speaker 1: Duke study originally I think it was, it was in
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen. It was the plunder of Black wealth in Chicago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember. I remember that. I because one of the
Speaker 1: major guys is a reparations scholar named Sandy Daretty a Duke. Yes,
Speaker 1: I did remember that, you know. And so they started
Speaker 1: looking into the effects of these land sale contracts, and
Speaker 1: you know, Tanika got interested in this, and she asked
Speaker 1: whether she could actually see the homes, the specific data
Speaker 1: to track it right down to the street level, and
Speaker 1: they were like yeah, And so she is working with
Speaker 1: researchers and others to find these and now they've put
Speaker 1: together this list, a map that shows each of the homes,
Speaker 1: and so we're just driving around and she's like, there's
Speaker 1: five on this block, there's three on this block, a
Speaker 1: couple blocks over, and it seems like they're in clusters,
Speaker 1: but they're also all over the place. Okay. So, so
Speaker 1: in the in the nineteen fifties, in the nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: in particular, you know, black people could not get mortgages.
Speaker 1: They couldn't get federally back mortgages. Yeah, exactly. And you
Speaker 1: know why because in the nineteen thirties, when the federal
Speaker 1: government decided to support homeownership, because of the Great Depression,
Speaker 1: homes weren't being built. There was a massive housing shortage.
Speaker 1: The government basically took the discrimination the private market that
Speaker 1: had already existed and enshrined it in new federal policy.
Speaker 1: White people got to buy homes because the federal government
Speaker 1: said black people were too much of a risk in
Speaker 1: most places, and therefore they use this color coded scheme
Speaker 1: where red was used as the designation for black people
Speaker 1: in the areas of the city where they live, like
Speaker 1: the whole South Side of segregated Chicago. Like if you
Speaker 1: look at a historical map, it's redlined. Yeah. So the
Speaker 1: federal government and then banks lenders are justifying this by
Speaker 1: saying this is a risky loan and it's essentially entire
Speaker 1: black communities that you're you pointed out. You know, people
Speaker 1: often think about this era of redlining or now land
Speaker 1: sale contracts as a predatory lending moment in a little
Speaker 1: bit of abstraction, right, But one of the things that
Speaker 1: the Duke's study pointed out is that four billion dollars
Speaker 1: was pluillion. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I said four billion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was just I wanted other people to hear that,
Speaker 1: like crazy, right, So four billion dollars is taken out
Speaker 1: of the black community, talk about theft over a twenty
Speaker 1: year period, two decades in the fifties and sixties, and
Speaker 1: and so you know, the estimates are that upwards of
Speaker 1: seventy five percent of all homes purchased by black people
Speaker 1: in Chicago were on land sale contracts, purchased in quotes,
Speaker 1: because you're not really purchasing it. The reason that I
Speaker 1: picked this specific block is so people can see how
Speaker 1: it changes, how it changed this block today, like literally
Speaker 1: an abandoned home and two vacant lots are on this
Speaker 1: block because of that period, and having vacant lots and
Speaker 1: abandoned homes on your block depreciates the value of the
Speaker 1: people who live here. And now these communities where there's
Speaker 1: so much abandonment and vacant lots are often you know,
Speaker 1: understood by the outside world as the evidence of black
Speaker 1: pathology and dysfunction. And black people don't care about their neighborhoods.
Speaker 1: And that's what's so powerful, not only about the data set,
Speaker 1: but also Tanka bringing the story to life in this
Speaker 1: art project. Yeah, and driving around with her, it was unmistakable.
Speaker 1: What makes crime even like profitable is when you have
Speaker 1: an environment where you don't have traffic, where you don't
Speaker 1: have people watching you, Like that's a key to a
Speaker 1: successful crime business. If you don't have any eyes on you,
Speaker 1: then that means you could do whatever it is you're doing.
Speaker 1: In these blocks that don't have homes lived in and
Speaker 1: have vacant lots, that's the perfect scene for anybody who's
Speaker 1: crime involved. Yeah, So this art project, Inequity for Sale
Speaker 1: is fascinating, and it's just it's just I wish I
Speaker 1: were there with you in Tanka. But looking at one
Speaker 1: of the signs and seeing up close, I mean, she's
Speaker 1: calling out one that it's legal, this predatory land sale scam,
Speaker 1: like like like people could do this legally, but she
Speaker 1: calls it a crime and she wants people to know
Speaker 1: that a crime happened here and no one has been
Speaker 1: punished for it. And and she said that they're they're
Speaker 1: painted bright yellow, which isn't a typical color for a landmark.
Speaker 1: She said, it's it alerts you to danger, that's what
Speaker 1: it typically does. And there's an image at the top
Speaker 1: of these of essentially like a man running off with
Speaker 1: a bag of money, you know, a representation of theft, right,
Speaker 1: and then also a piece of me, not even a piece,
Speaker 1: a huge chunk of me was just getting pissed off,
Speaker 1: like like I was just imagining being my family. Like, man,
Speaker 1: if I found out my family was stolen from, I'd
Speaker 1: want someone to pay, like, you know, because I just
Speaker 1: thought about the fact that it's literally because my grandmother
Speaker 1: purchased the house that I grew up in that I
Speaker 1: was able to even like have that kind of stability,
Speaker 1: you know. I'll just point out that that Tanika is
Speaker 1: working with a large group of people. There's a designer
Speaker 1: for the plaque ards and historians and researchers, and on
Speaker 1: the back of the plaque ards, on the back of
Speaker 1: the sign, there's a map of the neighborhood where you
Speaker 1: can see the hundred homes in Englewood that were land
Speaker 1: sale contracts, so you can understand this history, the scale,
Speaker 1: the scale and enormity. There's a QR code where you
Speaker 1: can sort of, you know, see all this information and
Speaker 1: a link to a website which tells it's fast history.
Speaker 1: So it exists within a larger context. It's like the
Speaker 1: anti citizen app, right, because you know, those are apps
Speaker 1: that basically warn people to stay out of neighborhoods like Inglewood,
Speaker 1: you know, And here it is saying like you need
Speaker 1: to be warned by this system of oppression and the
Speaker 1: air that we all breathe because of it. So there's
Speaker 1: one other thing that's on these landmarks that is really
Speaker 1: important to point out, and it's both explaining it as
Speaker 1: art and I think as activism. At the bottom of
Speaker 1: the landmarks that says, this crime was never brought to justice.
Speaker 1: Reparations are due, I know, right, reparations that I do
Speaker 1: that is so powerful. Yeah, And Tanika, when I asked her, like, well,
Speaker 1: what reparations, she said, listen, I'm the artist. There are
Speaker 1: other people who are going to help figure this out.
Speaker 1: She didn't necessarily have prescriptive ideas. She did say that
Speaker 1: she hoped that maybe the community would own one of
Speaker 1: these homes and turn it into a community center and
Speaker 1: art center, but she talked about this more. My goal
Speaker 1: and hope is that this project will encourage or challenge
Speaker 1: people to think about reparations differently or maybe just different
Speaker 1: than what they have been told it can and should be.
Speaker 1: But just a way to repair the damage that has
Speaker 1: been done and bring to justice something for these families,
Speaker 1: but specifically the larger community because this this crime impacted
Speaker 1: those families as well as their neighbors, the entire neighborhood.
Speaker 1: And that's the ripple effect of systemic injustice. It doesn't
Speaker 1: just harm the individual it was perpetrated on, it harms
Speaker 1: everyone around them. Yeah, it's just so fascinating as an
Speaker 1: our project because you know, I can imagine some people
Speaker 1: listening like is this really art? I mean, did she
Speaker 1: just design these activist signs and put them in this
Speaker 1: neighborhood to call attention to the need for reparations. I
Speaker 1: think that's a fair question. So art that exposes a
Speaker 1: history of justice that makes people see it in a
Speaker 1: new fresh way, and then also calls for change in
Speaker 1: the world, tries to catalyze something, tries to bring something
Speaker 1: else about and we could and we, you know, to
Speaker 1: be fair to her. The signs are material object like
Speaker 1: a photograph, like a painting, like a sculpture, and so
Speaker 1: you know, she's engaging in a form of art practice
Speaker 1: and expression that carries this weight and an intervention in
Speaker 1: a community. I mean, it's in the neighborhood. It's not
Speaker 1: in a gallery, it's not in a museum. They're in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood where the scam happened and where she wants
Speaker 1: to bring about change. In fact, with all of that,
Speaker 1: you might even ask the question, I mean, where's the line.
Speaker 1: Where do you draw the line? Yeah? Where is the
Speaker 1: line between art and activism? And and you know, we
Speaker 1: talked about this and immediately we thought of another artist
Speaker 1: to bring into this conversation. Amanda Williams. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: can't wait to talk to her. She's awesome. Amanda also
Speaker 1: does art on the South Side of Chicago. She's put
Speaker 1: up art in those very same neighborhoods in Englewood. Yeah, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: is great. I'm so happy that we're going to be
Speaker 1: talking to her. She's going to have a lot to
Speaker 1: say to help us think about this question of the
Speaker 1: line between art and activism. I couldn't think of anyone
Speaker 1: smarter about this topic, about about thinking about what can
Speaker 1: art do as far as correcting injustices. Amanda Williams, Hey, Hey, Austin,
Speaker 1: how are you? Thank you for being my friends? Are yes, yes,
Speaker 1: we are so excited. This is a huge honor. So
Speaker 1: your art project. Colored Theory took abandoned homes in Englewood,
Speaker 1: the same neighborhood that Tanika lives in, and you painted them.
Speaker 1: You you, you gave them love, You made them stand
Speaker 1: out in these dramatic ways. And the color as you
Speaker 1: chose where you could say culturally relevant colors. Um, it
Speaker 1: was stunning. How light have you been? She she painted
Speaker 1: the home Carold Chicken Chicken Shay Crown Royal. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: that's right, I mean culturally relevant. Come, I love it? Like,
Speaker 1: what is the color? It's like, Sian, is that what
Speaker 1: it is? No, it's ultrachine. You've been hanging out with
Speaker 1: me too much, all right, if you want, if you
Speaker 1: want to technically, it's it's a turquoiscious green side of science.
Speaker 1: You know. I was just trying to give a little
Speaker 1: bit of context to our listener who may not know
Speaker 1: what ultracine is. And Harold's Chicken Shack is read right
Speaker 1: for the listening audience, brilliant color of red. Yes, so
Speaker 1: we grew up on Harold's Chicken in Chicago. It's a franchise.
Speaker 1: It's known or it's mild sauce, which is red. Khalil
Speaker 1: and I have both seen pieces of that work and
Speaker 1: museums here in Chicago and at the moment in New York.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, you're that our project was picked
Speaker 1: as like one of the twenty five most significant works
Speaker 1: of architecture posts in the post war era. I mean
Speaker 1: that's incredible. That's a huge post war You've been commissioned
Speaker 1: with another artist to make the Shirley Chisholm sculpture in
Speaker 1: Prospect Park. Correct, And you did this Ted talk about
Speaker 1: color theory, and my daughter listened to it in our
Speaker 1: our classes and that's something all the students did. That's black.
Speaker 1: You're touching lives. So, Amanda, we've been talking about Tanika
Speaker 1: Johnson's work and specifically Inequity for Sales, and you know,
Speaker 1: we want to hear you talk about art as activism
Speaker 1: and what that means. And you know that we've been
Speaker 1: wrestling with this question in terms of Tanika's work of like,
Speaker 1: you know, what what role can art play and bringing
Speaker 1: about social change. I'm so glad that you guys are
Speaker 1: having this conversation because is actually one I've been having
Speaker 1: by myself but had then started to have with Tanika.
Speaker 1: I think her prior project folded map is one of
Speaker 1: the most brilliant things I've ever seen, and really, I
Speaker 1: would say is the closest thing I've seen is something
Speaker 1: that really emerges art and whatever way you want to
Speaker 1: define it, high art, community art, low art, you know,
Speaker 1: whatever metric you want to use, and an idea about
Speaker 1: activism and maybe even policy and social change. Even more so,
Speaker 1: I would say than color theory. So I did color
Speaker 1: theory from twenty fourteen to I think about twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: The totality of the work, the conception of it, the
Speaker 1: production of the painting of the houses, and then the
Speaker 1: photographing of that and then presenting that documentation. And so
Speaker 1: something like colored theory starts to help you see the
Speaker 1: residue of redlining. So it helps you understand that these
Speaker 1: things that were done to maps in the nineteen thirties
Speaker 1: and forties to decide who could get a loan and
Speaker 1: who couldn't, and who could live where and who couldn't.
Speaker 1: Though you can feel it if you're from an area
Speaker 1: like this, you can literally see it, because the vacancy
Speaker 1: is so strange and odd, but we've normalized it. So
Speaker 1: then when they became the very saturated, it looks like Arkansas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people don't know how rural that that parts of the
Speaker 1: south Side look because there's so much abandonment, abandonment that
Speaker 1: that homes have been clear that the isolation. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so it really was this kind of oddity where you're like,
Speaker 1: is that where is that? It's like that is sixteenth
Speaker 1: in state? Is where that is? That is right in
Speaker 1: the heart of the city. This is not the outliers
Speaker 1: or you know, this is this is a demonstration of
Speaker 1: what it looks like when entities benefit from systemic ways
Speaker 1: in which people have been isolated and segregated. And so
Speaker 1: the saturation that kind of the out of context use
Speaker 1: of those colors. On the one hand, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's a pink house, right, it's a flame in hots
Speaker 1: orange house. You know, like the starkness of that compared
Speaker 1: to that empty landscape was something that got people's attention,
Speaker 1: even living in those areas of neighborhoods. And so I
Speaker 1: think for me, I thought it was just going to
Speaker 1: kind of highlight literally the oddity of this geography. One
Speaker 1: we would cut the lawn and cut down that kind
Speaker 1: of overgrown brush, me being my husband, and so people
Speaker 1: were like, you guys, did you guys buy the house.
Speaker 1: It was like no, It's like do you own the house?
Speaker 1: It's like no, did your cousin live there? No, So
Speaker 1: just the showing of some kind of love to a
Speaker 1: structure that everybody had kind of cast off for dead
Speaker 1: also was very striking to people. And I didn't expect
Speaker 1: that because they had not used to anybody caring for
Speaker 1: anything for no reason, and so these are the things
Speaker 1: people connected with, and so it gave value to something
Speaker 1: that had been deemed valueless. And people felt that and
Speaker 1: they felt a kind of appreciation that I didn't seem
Speaker 1: to have some alternate agenda. Khalil and I have been
Speaker 1: trying to figure out this relationship between art and activism,
Speaker 1: and really this question on the art side of like
Speaker 1: what can art actually do to bring about change? So
Speaker 1: I like to always kind of dispel some romanticized myth
Speaker 1: that this work like change the community or I came
Speaker 1: in and I transformed what the possibilities of Inglewood are
Speaker 1: is asking what can this do right now with what
Speaker 1: we have instead of trying to change everything? So is
Speaker 1: it equally impactful that like one person came and did
Speaker 1: something they'd never done before and they felt empowered. Is
Speaker 1: that more or less empowering than if I get the
Speaker 1: aldermen to I don't know, change some street sign law
Speaker 1: or something I don't know, right, So, in terms of
Speaker 1: scales of participation and activism, where does it fall on
Speaker 1: that it's a catalyst. That's where I operate a catalysts.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to just spark something that somebody else will do.
Speaker 1: I love what you just said about art as a catalyst,
Speaker 1: and so you know, I want to circle back to
Speaker 1: Tanika's work and this project Inequity for Sale. I mean,
Speaker 1: it seems to me this is so perfectly in conversation
Speaker 1: with the work you've already done. Yeah, and I think
Speaker 1: this newest work then literally pinpointing, she's like taking a
Speaker 1: Yahoo map with those points as she's brought it to
Speaker 1: physical life, with these stanchions that sit so that you
Speaker 1: can visually see the kind of ubiquity of how many
Speaker 1: people were victims of this situation, but also physically then
Speaker 1: understanding why a landscape looks a certain way. This is
Speaker 1: stuff that reparations can come about for. This is official apologies,
Speaker 1: This is accountability. This is bringing people that don't believe
Speaker 1: this is a problem to the physical space. So for me,
Speaker 1: the ability for this as a visual kind of creative
Speaker 1: art form to then have clear potential impact in an
Speaker 1: activist sense is super clear in a way that I
Speaker 1: think most artists operating today that would call themselves social
Speaker 1: practice or social artists. It is a little fluff, you know,
Speaker 1: a little bit. There's no you can't you know, if
Speaker 1: it's a science experiment, you couldn't recreate it. This you
Speaker 1: can recreate is an accountability. I mean, I know a
Speaker 1: great deal of what draws me to your work or
Speaker 1: Tanika's work is that it is actually on the streets.
Speaker 1: It's in the neighborhood, and it's not in a museum,
Speaker 1: and literally there that's where the practice is happening. And
Speaker 1: what does it mean to be in those spaces? What
Speaker 1: does it mean in terms of the audience that you reach,
Speaker 1: in terms of the goals and the effect. Yeah, when
Speaker 1: I'm making art that's engaged in an area where people
Speaker 1: maybe don't really even care about art, then what am
Speaker 1: I doing it for? And how do I make sure
Speaker 1: that it is having the same residence? And so part
Speaker 1: of that also is an equality or an understanding of like,
Speaker 1: I'm not coming to like impart some knowledge or some wisdom,
Speaker 1: or I'm not coming from on high to enlighten. It's like, no,
Speaker 1: I have a question, and I can have a different
Speaker 1: conversation and get different kinds of answers when I can
Speaker 1: have that question with people from the neighborhood I grew
Speaker 1: up in, or I can have with my classmates at
Speaker 1: Cornell or lab or where you know, wherever these other
Speaker 1: moment or wherever these other spaces that I exist in.
Speaker 1: And so for me, the challenge is always making sure
Speaker 1: the work is true to whatever that audience is and
Speaker 1: also expansive enough so that I'm not assuming what the
Speaker 1: audience might or might not be able to receive. So
Speaker 1: that's pretty complicated in addition everything we've talked about. But
Speaker 1: you know, you've been part of this exhibition of other
Speaker 1: architects and designers, and you know the title of that
Speaker 1: show was Reconstructions, Architecture and Blackness, and and you know,
Speaker 1: your particular contribution not only is very much about this
Speaker 1: history of redlining, but it's also about how black people
Speaker 1: defied the boundaries that were prescribed for them. And you know,
Speaker 1: you have this amazing poem where you describe blackness in
Speaker 1: so many configurations and contradictions. I mean, it's just it's
Speaker 1: basically like black doesn't follow the rules period, right, because
Speaker 1: the rules weren't met for us correct to begin with.
Speaker 1: That is correct, So why are you worried about following
Speaker 1: them or not following them? So Mama published a book
Speaker 1: of this show that Stephanie and I saw last year,
Speaker 1: right when the museum reopened. They're ten artists featured in
Speaker 1: this show. Every artist was given a commission to create
Speaker 1: a work of an object of futurity, of a vision
Speaker 1: of blackness that could be both historically rooted and future oriented,
Speaker 1: or could be all about the future. But it's just
Speaker 1: an incredible show. And in the catalog for the show,
Speaker 1: which I am holding right now in my hand, in
Speaker 1: your essay, the middle of your essay, there is a
Speaker 1: page in the book that is literally upside down, like
Speaker 1: you cannot read the left side and go to the
Speaker 1: right side. You have to turn the book right side
Speaker 1: up in order to finish the page. What's up with that?
Speaker 1: Because because why do you need to read the book
Speaker 1: the right way? This was another fight I was the
Speaker 1: problem sild with the designers. It's like I want you
Speaker 1: to be able to turn the book upside down and
Speaker 1: read it backwards. So everybody go get a copy and
Speaker 1: then turn the book upside down, and my essay reads
Speaker 1: perfectly backwards and forwards and thinking of Tannika's work, which
Speaker 1: is very much future thinking. So you do this show,
Speaker 1: you help to coordinate, you're like the lead artist that
Speaker 1: helps to bring all of this together to MoMA, and
Speaker 1: you issue a manifesto. I wanted you to talk about
Speaker 1: the manifesto because I think that's in direct conversation with
Speaker 1: Tannika and thinking about the future and what is old. Well,
Speaker 1: I want to take full credit. Sean Anderson and Mabel
Speaker 1: Wilson were the curators that really have the vision. But
Speaker 1: this is the first show at Moment, one of the
Speaker 1: first shows ever that directly contends with an idea about
Speaker 1: architecture and blackness. So we developed this group called the
Speaker 1: Black Reconstruction Collective, made of the original ten of us
Speaker 1: that were an exhibition, and so this group was basically
Speaker 1: going to say, we refuse this idea that we have
Speaker 1: to make the work in this way that we can't
Speaker 1: advocate for ourselves, and we send it back to Moment,
Speaker 1: and this starts a storm of a legal department and
Speaker 1: the someone's department to developed department, And so then we
Speaker 1: understood a kind of power and collectivity that we knew intuitively,
Speaker 1: but we didn't really understand how big of a deal
Speaker 1: this was going to be. And so then we had
Speaker 1: to stand firm on this idea that we need to
Speaker 1: formulate an entity that doesn't allow this to happen again
Speaker 1: to anybody else that looks like us. And we want
Speaker 1: to be a steward of making sure that other people
Speaker 1: that want to have ideas about black people in space
Speaker 1: don't have to deal with this part of it. I
Speaker 1: want to read just two sentences from the manifesting statement,
Speaker 1: because I remember seeing it on the wall and I
Speaker 1: thought to myself, this may be one of the most
Speaker 1: radical things I've read anywhere, let alone entering a gallery
Speaker 1: of an elite art museum. And so here's here's just
Speaker 1: two sentences from the second paragraph. You guys write, the
Speaker 1: Black Reconstruction Collective commits itself to continuing this work of
Speaker 1: reconstruction in Black America and these United States. We take
Speaker 1: up the question of what architecture can be not a
Speaker 1: tool for imperialism and subjugation, not a means for aggrandizing
Speaker 1: the self, but a vehicle for liberation and joy, and
Speaker 1: that it's just so so much encapsulates Tanka's work and
Speaker 1: your work of liberation and joy enjoy and so many
Speaker 1: of the other artists who appeared in that show. We
Speaker 1: are we are just blown away by you, your work,
Speaker 1: all that you have done and will do. Thank you.
Speaker 1: This has been a huge honor. I'm so excited for
Speaker 1: Tanika's work. It actually it actually launches this month, November
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one. So some of my best friends are
Speaker 1: is breaking news here for these landmarks to be all
Speaker 1: over the place in Englewood, and you know, to point
Speaker 1: out this this injustice that has happened, to bring attention
Speaker 1: to this theft of property, and you know, to help
Speaker 1: us think about what might come next. What do you
Speaker 1: do with this information? Well, I mean again, what Amanda
Speaker 1: so graciously embraced is that there's all kinds of ways
Speaker 1: to express things. And it can be abstract in the
Speaker 1: kind of painting something in colors that evoke redlining, which
Speaker 1: was all about different colors of which homes deserved support
Speaker 1: and financing which homes didn't. And in Tanika's work there
Speaker 1: is this you know, invitation to passers by to come
Speaker 1: and learn something about what they're actually seeing through this
Speaker 1: art expression, through these landmarks, through these signs. It's just
Speaker 1: it's just I learned so much and also so inspired
Speaker 1: by how how much artists play a role in teaching
Speaker 1: us and telling the truth about the society we live in. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that their work is in conversation with our hometown,
Speaker 1: with our city of Chicago, with journalism, with history. You know,
Speaker 1: it's fabulous. So yeah, yeah, I'm glad we got to
Speaker 1: talk about this and look at it. That's right, and
Speaker 1: I think we should. We should definitely nominate them to
Speaker 1: be some of our best friends. Oh man, they're they're
Speaker 1: already in right, all right, man, love you, love you too.
Speaker 1: Some of My Best Friends Are is a production of
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. The show is written and hosted by me
Speaker 1: Khalildebrod Muhammad and my best friend Ben Austin. It's produced
Speaker 1: by Sheriff Vincent and edited by Karen Shakerji. Our engineer
Speaker 1: is Martin Gonzalez, our associate editor is Keishell Williams. Our
Speaker 1: associate producer is Lucy Sullivan, and our showrunner is Sasha Matthias.
Speaker 1: Our executive producers are Leta Molad and Mia La Belle.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Tanka Lewis Johnson and Amanda Williams Man.
Speaker 1: They are both fantastic artists from the South Side of Chicago.
Speaker 1: We are so happy to have learned from them and
Speaker 1: to be in conversation with them, and also special thanks
Speaker 1: to the National Public Housing Museum, where Tanka is an
Speaker 1: artist as instigator. We're ready for our next class at
Speaker 1: Pushkin thanks to Heather Faine, Carly Migliori, John Schnars, and
Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberg. Our theme song, Little Lily is by Fellow
Speaker 1: Chicago and AVERYR. Young from his amazing album Tubman. You
Speaker 1: will definitely want to check out more of his music
Speaker 1: at his website averyar Young dot com. You can find
Speaker 1: Pushkin on all social platforms at Pushkin Pods, and you
Speaker 1: can sign up for our newsletter at pushkin dot fm.
Speaker 1: To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. If you
Speaker 1: love Some of My Best Friends Are and any of
Speaker 1: the other shows from Pushkin Industries, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus.
Speaker 1: Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content
Speaker 1: and uninterrupted listening for four dollars and ninety nine cents
Speaker 1: a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions.
Speaker 1: And so next time I'm home, Harold's Chicken on me?
Speaker 1: Which which one? You have to say the number? But
Speaker 1: you know what, that's funny because I don't actually remember.
Speaker 1: I don't remember the one on fifty third? What's what's
Speaker 1: the number? One? Fifty third and kimbark. Then it doesn't
Speaker 1: have a number. Actually, I don't think. Yeah, is it
Speaker 1: still there? It is still there. I don't think it
Speaker 1: has a number.