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Speaker 1: Hi, everyone, Sophia Bush here. Welcome to Work in Progress,

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Speaker 1: where I talked to people who inspire me about how

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Speaker 1: they got to where they are and where they think

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Speaker 1: they're still going today. On Work in Progress, I am

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Speaker 1: really to share a conversation with one of the most

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Speaker 1: compelling creators that I've encountered yet. He's inquisitive, wildly intelligent,

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Speaker 1: and dedicated to taking a deeper look at the world.

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Speaker 1: Mr Tony delas Reus. Tony is an inspiring visual artist

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Speaker 1: who has been creating artwork it explores the complexity of

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Speaker 1: the US Mexico border for several years now. He began

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Speaker 1: by drawing big picture inspiration from Google Earth Imagery, and

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Speaker 1: his work has since evolved into a closer inspection of

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Speaker 1: the border, the walls that have come to define it,

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Speaker 1: and the physical space and communities surrounding it. Tony's work

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Speaker 1: has been featured in many renowned galleries and museums such

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Speaker 1: as Lachma, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Annaberg

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Speaker 1: Space for Photography, where we first met, and the New

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Speaker 1: Britain Museum of American Art. I fell in love with

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Speaker 1: his Paranoid Architecture series at the Annenberg space, and I

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Speaker 1: knew then and there, but I had to have him

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Speaker 1: on the podcast. In my conversation with Tony, we died

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Speaker 1: deep into thoughts on artistic beginnings, how we react to tragedy,

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Speaker 1: power of art, and the importance of examining the lines

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Speaker 1: that divide us. This was such an incredible discussion, Enjoy.

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Speaker 1: I'm so excited to have you on the show today

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Speaker 1: and thank you for taking the time. I I first

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Speaker 1: became aware of your work, as you know, UM at

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Speaker 1: the Annenberg Space for Photography. It's one of my favorite

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Speaker 1: places to visit to see art egs aitions in Los Angeles,

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Speaker 1: and I think I have I also have a little

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Speaker 1: bit of just sort of what's the what's the word?

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Speaker 1: I'm looking for collegiate appreciation for anything Anenburgh, because I

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Speaker 1: went to the Annaburg School of Journalism at USC and

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Speaker 1: your work was a part of four pieces of your

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Speaker 1: work were part of this incredible exhibition called Walls Defend,

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Speaker 1: Divide and the Divine and and the idea behind the

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Speaker 1: exhibition was to explore barriers that were both real and

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Speaker 1: perceived and to look at what these walls have meant

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Speaker 1: to human history through centuries. Um So you know, the

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Speaker 1: examination of sort of castles and forts and up to

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Speaker 1: the Berlin Wall in the US Mexico border. And and

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Speaker 1: it's such an incredible exhibition and the photography that is

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Speaker 1: up there is breathtaking, all of it really, And yet

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Speaker 1: I was coming around a corner and I saw these pieces.

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Speaker 1: There were eight of them, actually in two squares of four,

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Speaker 1: and I just I was speaking to the woman who

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Speaker 1: curates the space, and I was looking kind of over

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Speaker 1: her shoulder, and I finally said, I'm so sorry, I

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Speaker 1: have to go see what those are because she was

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Speaker 1: explaining something to me and I was so distracted. Uh,

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Speaker 1: they look like almost like Joseph Albert's pieces, and he's

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Speaker 1: one of my favorite mid century artists, and and I

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Speaker 1: think that's why they caught my eye. And and yet

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Speaker 1: the colors, rather than being in in you know, blocked

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Speaker 1: color temperature, uh, gradients, were so vibrant and and they

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Speaker 1: reminded me of something. And then I realized they reminded

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Speaker 1: me of colors from the desert, colors from you know,

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Speaker 1: pottery that you find along the border. Um, they had

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Speaker 1: that kind of cultural vibrancy. And and in the center

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Speaker 1: of each square, I realized I was looking at some

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Speaker 1: sort of a structure, and and then I learned, um,

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Speaker 1: from the curator, that you had gone and photographed all

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Speaker 1: of the test pieces of this new border wall, which

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Speaker 1: I would just like to clarify as ironic to me

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Speaker 1: and and such a colossal waste of taxpayer money since

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Speaker 1: we already have a border wall, and in some parts

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Speaker 1: of some regions along the borders there's actually already two walls. UM,

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Speaker 1: just just feel like that's important to share. But it

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Speaker 1: was so kind of arresting to me and and beautiful.

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Speaker 1: And I turned to the curator and I said, this

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Speaker 1: is exact claim my kind of activists art. And she said, well,

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Speaker 1: then you have to meet Tony uh. And that's that's

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Speaker 1: how this all began. Oh thank you. Yeah. No, UM,

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Speaker 1: I found it interesting that you know my my work

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Speaker 1: that that that series is called Paranoid Architecture, and it

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Speaker 1: is eight representations of the Trump border wall prototypes and um,

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Speaker 1: because I did do some alteration with photoshop and digital manipulation.

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Speaker 1: But even though they were actual documents of the wall,

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Speaker 1: as the border walls has taken from the Mexican side

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Speaker 1: of the border, UM, they had a hard time including

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Speaker 1: that in the show, because technically it wasn't photography with

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Speaker 1: I had altered it in order to up color contrast,

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Speaker 1: and as you said, referenced modernist formalism like Alberts and

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Speaker 1: I think what was interesting to me is that in

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Speaker 1: the show there are a lot of these magnificent photographs,

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Speaker 1: as you said, of of these epic images of the

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Speaker 1: walls in Israel and around the world, and and very

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Speaker 1: much kind of a national geographic. I feel my work

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Speaker 1: is more about kind of the psychic dimensions that the

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Speaker 1: border has on me personally. We were so used to

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Speaker 1: looking at border walls from the point of view of

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Speaker 1: you know, journalism and the politics that's happening at the border,

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Speaker 1: or my migrant issues, refugee issues that for me, as

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Speaker 1: as important as those are, I feel that I absolutely

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Speaker 1: have to tell my relationship to it in order to

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Speaker 1: make my work uh true. You know, if I can't

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Speaker 1: say how I am and how I experienced the border

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Speaker 1: as a person and someone of partial Mexican descent lives

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Speaker 1: in Los Angeles who's not an immediate migrant right, who's

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Speaker 1: not necessarily evolved and political activism explicitly with the border, Um,

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Speaker 1: how do I reconcile what that space is to someone

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Speaker 1: like myself. And you mentioned living here. You you were

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Speaker 1: born in California. Did you grow up in Los Angeles. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I'm born and raised in Los Angeles, and I've always

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Speaker 1: I've always appreciated the fact that you know, I live

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Speaker 1: about from the border and that, as I said, I'm

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Speaker 1: partial Mexican ancestry, but that part of me and very

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Speaker 1: much part of being from Los Angeles and being surrounded

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Speaker 1: by the culture of Mexico just by default, you know,

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Speaker 1: l A is a Mexican city to a great extent,

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Speaker 1: and um, when I decided to start a broad new series,

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Speaker 1: it seemed like a natural fit to go back to.

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Speaker 1: It's an autobio, autobiography that wasn't a kind of documentation,

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Speaker 1: but was along the field of what it means to

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Speaker 1: be someone who lives in Los Angeles, group in Los

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Speaker 1: Angeles and focused on this aspect of my relationship with

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Speaker 1: the border. I'm curious about that about your your childhood,

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Speaker 1: because I love to focus on what people are doing

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Speaker 1: with them, but I also really love to know how

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Speaker 1: it all began. And I think we have such interesting

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Speaker 1: perspective into why we do what we do. Now when

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Speaker 1: we look back at how we grew up, So what

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Speaker 1: what was growing up in Los Angeles? Like, what were

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Speaker 1: you aware of culturally? Are were your parents very creative people?

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Speaker 1: Um My, My my father is an attorney, but he

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Speaker 1: is very, very much interested in music and he was

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Speaker 1: very very good amateur pianist. Um but I grew up

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Speaker 1: in the suburbs in Torrance, which is, uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: in a little bit from Danna Beach, and it was

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Speaker 1: incredibly boring. Everything. I just I remember that any aspect

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Speaker 1: of difference I could find was I just held onto it.

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Speaker 1: So the fact that, um my dad, especially, we would

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Speaker 1: listen to classical music, we would listen to jazz. My

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Speaker 1: grandfather was a jazz musician. And I'll talk Tom Cheryl.

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Speaker 1: That will come up in our talk, but um uh

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Speaker 1: that and reading history as a kid, and for my

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Speaker 1: dad was into Napoleon and the battles of the early

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Speaker 1: nineteenth century, and I got hooked on that as well.

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Speaker 1: So you have to imagine this kid who was really

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Speaker 1: creative and very interested in the world, but who looked

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Speaker 1: around and saw nothing. You know, I was little league.

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Speaker 1: I did. I did all this stuff you're supposed to do.

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Speaker 1: But none of them after my imagination at all, and

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Speaker 1: so reading, listening to music, making art, I was. I

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Speaker 1: was always drawing whatever I could, whenever I could, and

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Speaker 1: so I had to I had to find my imaginative

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Speaker 1: sources from outside of my immediate world. I had. I

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Speaker 1: had a hunt for that, and I think, like you know,

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Speaker 1: any any inquisitive child does you know, we're just hungry

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Speaker 1: for finding experiences that that means something to us and

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Speaker 1: to a great time. I found them in books, music,

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Speaker 1: and art and not in a cookie cutter suburban buildings. Sure,

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Speaker 1: what what was the meaning you were finding? I mean,

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Speaker 1: you reference your father's piano playing your grandfather's jazz music.

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Speaker 1: What what imaginative doors was that type of creativity opening

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Speaker 1: for you? I think more than anything, uh, because the

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Speaker 1: president didn't seem very interesting. I needed something that had

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Speaker 1: like like a like a tether that I could hold

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Speaker 1: onto from the past, from some exterior source, something that

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Speaker 1: felt more or less emotional. Right, music is immediate. Um.

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Speaker 1: It was funny. In my home there was a kind

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Speaker 1: of a taboo against pop music. It was unspoken, but

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Speaker 1: my dad was was kind of a snob in that

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Speaker 1: in that way. But but for for a good reason,

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Speaker 1: you know. So I listened to pop music on the slide,

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Speaker 1: but for the most part, I guess the gravity of

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Speaker 1: of classical music and the intensity of jazz I did

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Speaker 1: really connect to and and I was looking for a

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Speaker 1: way it's to a great extent to find an imaginative

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Speaker 1: universe and the combination of finding histories outside of myself

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Speaker 1: and personal oddly, I mean, right, why why? How how

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Speaker 1: is it that we can relate to anything that we

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Speaker 1: don't actually experience, but we experienced some second hand, but

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Speaker 1: they still have more meaning than things that that seemed

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Speaker 1: to be immediately around us. I find that really fascinating

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Speaker 1: and very much it's well within my artistic practice. Well,

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Speaker 1: and what an interesting thing to point out that that

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Speaker 1: we can truly be transported, you know, into these worlds

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Speaker 1: through books, films, music. Um understand that we're learning lessons,

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Speaker 1: that we're having cathartic experience with characters, that that we

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Speaker 1: are feeling the humanity of the people who are in

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Speaker 1: these pages. And yet we kind of are dulled or

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Speaker 1: desensitized to the humanity around us quite often, to humanitarian issues,

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Speaker 1: to crises, when you know, when when we speak about

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Speaker 1: the issue at the border which I know we'll get

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Speaker 1: into more later. I'm I'm always so struck when I

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Speaker 1: hear people say, well, they shouldn't have come here. I'm like,

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Speaker 1: let alone the fact that they you know, Mexico was

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Speaker 1: a territory of the United States and the first California

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Speaker 1: Constitution was bilingual. They couldn't have come here, is it's

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Speaker 1: on any level, it's it's insane. Well, and it misses.

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Speaker 1: And you mentioned this earlier, the the natural motion or

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Speaker 1: the natural order, you know, I think I think about

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Speaker 1: how to your point, you know, you weren't wildly inspired

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Speaker 1: by sort of cookie cutter buildings in suburbia. As a

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Speaker 1: person who loves design, I understand that a building that

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Speaker 1: is designed in a way that creates spatial flow can

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Speaker 1: boost creativity. And buildings that are badly designed make people

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Speaker 1: feel kind of itchy when they're inside. You don't feel comfortable,

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Speaker 1: you don't feel like you can breathe. And and I

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Speaker 1: think about the sort of design of these larger systems

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Speaker 1: and how they interfere with motion and with interpersonal relationships,

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Speaker 1: and with even the micro tory patterns of birds and animals.

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Speaker 1: You know, there there is a natural order to the

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Speaker 1: way we move together that can often be interrupted. And

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Speaker 1: and then you see the effects as you mentioned with

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Speaker 1: this border town that you love, that was very multicultural

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Speaker 1: and that had these two nations kind of in flow together,

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Speaker 1: and and then this wall went right through it and

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Speaker 1: the whole place was disrupted for for everyone, quote on

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Speaker 1: both sides. And so and I think that'll that will

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Speaker 1: be an interesting thing to unpack. I don't want to

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Speaker 1: sidetrack us too much into the present because there are

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Speaker 1: more questions I have about your past. Um. It's interesting,

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Speaker 1: you know, talking about I think you know, this is

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Speaker 1: bigger issue of of how we how we sort of

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Speaker 1: disassociate ourselves from the immediate. I think part of that

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Speaker 1: is is that the culture has has really gone so

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Speaker 1: corporate as to really not want who um interact with

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Speaker 1: you as a human being. The culture and culture as

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Speaker 1: we experience it. It's really about a flow pattern of commerce, right.

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Speaker 1: It's sort of positioning you in two various creeks and

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Speaker 1: rivers and tributaries so that you will get from point

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Speaker 1: eight to point B fairly seamlessly. And and the natural

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Speaker 1: inclination of intuition and being inspired and just being able

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Speaker 1: to stop and take a look at something and think

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Speaker 1: about it. Like, our culture doesn't really want you to

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Speaker 1: do that. Our culture just wants you to get to

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Speaker 1: a place where you can either consume or produce and

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Speaker 1: the result. We're really we're really sort of trained to

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Speaker 1: be um like to project effects rather than to reflect

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Speaker 1: upon being alive. Like literally being alive is not some

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Speaker 1: thing that that most of us spent a lot of

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Speaker 1: time appreciating because we're too busy doing other things. I

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Speaker 1: mean I feel that way, you know. Also as a

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Speaker 1: teacher and as a parent, I'm always it's really hard

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Speaker 1: to just stop and just just you know, take a

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Speaker 1: breath and just sort of say, hey, I'm here with

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Speaker 1: these people, and I need to know that that there.

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Speaker 1: I don't have an agenda. My agenda is to be here,

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Speaker 1: you know. That's that's it, and to and to pick

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Speaker 1: up traces of meaning and and experience from these people

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Speaker 1: surrounding me. And it's hard because we're on such a clock. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Presence is tricky and requires such practice. Do you do

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Speaker 1: you think that art helps you find that? Do you

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Speaker 1: feel really present when you make art or when you

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Speaker 1: when you look at art? Oh? Absolutely, I mean I

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Speaker 1: don't know who I would be without making art um

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Speaker 1: And it's every time I'm in the studio, every time

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Speaker 1: I'm thinking about what I'm doing and making something, it's

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Speaker 1: a reset. But it's like you're going back to the

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Speaker 1: I don't know, but I know I need to know

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Speaker 1: the moment of the complete hunger. And it isn't like

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Speaker 1: being in the studio is not like it's not like

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Speaker 1: an epiphany all the time. You know, it's not like

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Speaker 1: you're you're seeing fireworks and you're excited about what you're

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Speaker 1: going to do. But there is this kind of amazing, ah,

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Speaker 1: really fulfilling vacuum where you're allowed time to stop and

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Speaker 1: to have to be kind of unfiltered right to not

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Speaker 1: to let let the ego kind of subside and to

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Speaker 1: let all the other um penetrating thoughts inside and then

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Speaker 1: allow that to manifest themselves through action. I mean, I

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Speaker 1: I keep telling my students that, um, you're not there

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Speaker 1: to make anything right, You're not there to make art.

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Speaker 1: You don't you don't make art. You you let you

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Speaker 1: let the current flow through you, and it it at

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Speaker 1: some point, it starts to make itself. If you're intuitive

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Speaker 1: enough to pay attention, if you can see that you're

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Speaker 1: controlling something makes dead things, and once you see that

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Speaker 1: not controlling things make living things. And the art that

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Speaker 1: you make is honest, it's uh and and meaningful. And

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Speaker 1: that's how I feel in the studio. I'm always constantly

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Speaker 1: trying to push out anything that says, here's what you

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Speaker 1: need to do and to allow for here's what you

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Speaker 1: might consider. M hmm, that's really beautiful. I'm struck thinking

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Speaker 1: about you're finding a pathway to art as a child,

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Speaker 1: and now in the present you teaching art. You know,

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Speaker 1: it's it's such a it's such a cool thing. Who

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Speaker 1: who was your first art teacher or or were you

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Speaker 1: in your childhood more experiencing art from the position of

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Speaker 1: observing it, you know, were you going to museums? What?

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Speaker 1: What's your kind of earliest memory of understanding that art

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Speaker 1: could be something that you could interact with or make. Well,

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Speaker 1: it's funny. I mean, the most profound moment I have

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Speaker 1: is when I was about eleven and my parents took

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Speaker 1: me to France and we went to the Louver. You know,

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Speaker 1: I had been a big movie buff. I've been a

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Speaker 1: big fan even as a kid. I remember going to

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Speaker 1: sit around the dome and seeing amazing art experiences, and

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Speaker 1: I remember seeing like Kubrick films on big screen. I mean,

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Speaker 1: I remember seeing movies as art. But when we went

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Speaker 1: to the Louver, I saw that painting was especially on

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Speaker 1: that level, especially like academic painting. In them, it was

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Speaker 1: was like watching a frozen movie. It was like watching

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Speaker 1: like you know, how one you're in. You're watching a

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Speaker 1: really great movie and you just wish you would stop,

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Speaker 1: just so that you could just you know, you you

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Speaker 1: don't want it to rush, but you don't have any

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Speaker 1: choice because it's time based. And music is similar like that.

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Speaker 1: But painting is such a weird theater. It's such a

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Speaker 1: theater of silence and openness, and I remember thinking this

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Speaker 1: is what I want to do. So even though I

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Speaker 1: kept working, you know, I was making films in high

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Speaker 1: school and I was I actually started at U c

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Speaker 1: l A. Wanting to be a filmmaker. I kept going

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Speaker 1: back to that moment when a single image, a flat

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Speaker 1: image on canvas, could do essentially the same thing that

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Speaker 1: I got out of film. And later on in college

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Speaker 1: I realized that's when I need to make a shift.

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Speaker 1: So I think it's funny that you know, some of

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Speaker 1: my favorite movies are like Lawrence of Arabia and other

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Speaker 1: epic films, and here I am in this other desert

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Speaker 1: making work about this epic political issue, historical issue and

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Speaker 1: the history. Painting that I saw in the Louver, especially

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Speaker 1: artists like Delaquan and Jericho, they they made me just

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Speaker 1: it just opened my eyes to the possibility of doing

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Speaker 1: something epic that's also silent, that's also frozen, and you

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Speaker 1: let the viewer, you know, move through this thing and

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Speaker 1: and let them be uh, let to be occupied forever, endlessly.

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Speaker 1: And that's what I also love about paintings is that

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Speaker 1: you can you can continue to go back to them,

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Speaker 1: and the good ones are always new. It's the oddest

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Speaker 1: phenomenon that I know of, and it's true of film,

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Speaker 1: but you sort of expect that because of the time.

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Speaker 1: But the idea of a fixed object renewing your your

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Speaker 1: your your sense of being on a continual basis, it's

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Speaker 1: such a it's just just kind of wild idea. And

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Speaker 1: so yes, going to museums. M Luckily, my parents were

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Speaker 1: very very much appreciative of my art um so that

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Speaker 1: was huge to me in Los Angeles, and Los Angeles

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Speaker 1: luckily had a great had several great collections, great museums,

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Speaker 1: the Norton, Simon, Lacma, then later on Mocha, now the

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Speaker 1: broad I mean that's something that, like I'm we're always

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Speaker 1: getting our kids to be exposed to, because even though

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Speaker 1: they hate being ACTI museum openings and gallery openings and

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Speaker 1: all of that, I know that at some point it's

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Speaker 1: radically opening up their world two things other than you know,

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Speaker 1: Netflix or whatever. I love that, and it's true. I

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Speaker 1: I do find that in the midst of this, you know,

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Speaker 1: shelter at home, quarantine, we're all experiencing together. One of

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Speaker 1: the things I miss most is museums. I'm just I'm

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Speaker 1: my heart aches when I think about them, and I'm

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Speaker 1: excited for the day when we get to go back

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Speaker 1: into into that space. When when you think about the

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Speaker 1: the impact of those places you know, on you as

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Speaker 1: a child. And you mentioned earlier that you were always drawing.

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Speaker 1: Did you begin making art by drawing? Was that your

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Speaker 1: first kind of endeavor and what were you what were

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Speaker 1: you drawing? Yeah? Uh, you know, it's funny I mentioned

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Speaker 1: National geographics. There was something really transporting about copying different

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Speaker 1: things from national geographic magazines. Um, you know, people's that

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Speaker 1: seemed incredibly exotic to me in my suburban my suburban

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Speaker 1: mini temple, and I you know, the landscapes. All of

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Speaker 1: that seemed as if somehow I was trying to apprehend

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Speaker 1: the world in a in a real modest and maybe

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Speaker 1: dumb way, but uh, it felt like it was an

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Speaker 1: opening up. You know, it was an opening up to

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Speaker 1: question where I was and how big the world was

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Speaker 1: and how much I needed to be out in it. So,

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Speaker 1: you know, it could be skylines of cities that I've

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Speaker 1: never visited, or you know, native peoples in the Amazon,

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Speaker 1: or deserts in the south West. I would just copy

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Speaker 1: these things, and I think they were It was just

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Speaker 1: a way of digesting them as best I could without

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Speaker 1: being and and we're there artists, you know, you speak

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Speaker 1: about these classical historical painters. You became aware of it

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Speaker 1: at the Louver when you went to France. Were there

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Speaker 1: artists that you were trying to emulate as a kid. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Well that's interesting because, um, the other thing I did

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Speaker 1: a lot of was like copied movie posters from the thirties,

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Speaker 1: forties and fifties, which is I think back on that

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Speaker 1: and think that what a weird kid, I must have been.

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Speaker 1: I'm going into these into the library and I'm checking

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Speaker 1: out books on graphic art and design and movie posters,

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Speaker 1: and I would take them home and I would make

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Speaker 1: my own mini movie posters. And also like like you know,

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Speaker 1: war posters and and things that had these kind of

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Speaker 1: you know, epic reaches out an advertise razing for big stories, right,

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Speaker 1: um posters from World War One, you know about buying bonds,

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Speaker 1: and you know, posters of Humphrey Bogart African queen. Like

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Speaker 1: I I forget, like how much time I spent with

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Speaker 1: an open book with graphic art and trying to copy

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Speaker 1: this stuff. And you know, I can't imagine being uh,

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Speaker 1: well actually I can't because my my daughter and then

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Speaker 1: my son are really drawing quite a bit. But how

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Speaker 1: addam must have been from my parents to look over

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Speaker 1: my shoulder and see this open book of you know,

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Speaker 1: movie posters from movies before I was born and me

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Speaker 1: drawing them. I mean, they must have thought would a

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Speaker 1: strange child. But the fact that nobody interferes with you,

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Speaker 1: the fact that you have parents that are generous enough

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Speaker 1: to say to not say, well, you should be playing outside.

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Speaker 1: You know, I never heard that I was like, they

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Speaker 1: just sort of let me be. And I you know,

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Speaker 1: as a parent, I have to fight that preoccupation to

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Speaker 1: interject my my own ideas into my kids. I don't

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Speaker 1: I don't need my kids to be artists. I don't

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Speaker 1: need to be involved in our world. But I do

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Speaker 1: want them to appreciate experiences and then they could do

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Speaker 1: what they want with them. Sure, I I imagine that's

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Speaker 1: such a struggle. I think about it. You know. I

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Speaker 1: said to my mom, I said, God, I just wish

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Speaker 1: you'd made me take piano lessons because I love music.

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00:27:32,040 --> 00:27:35,919
Speaker 1: And she was like, but you didn't want to, you know.

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Speaker 1: And so there's this there's this really interesting thing where

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Speaker 1: I think about some of the hobbies that I had

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Speaker 1: as a kid, and and how lucky I was that

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Speaker 1: my parents let me pursue them. And then I also

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Speaker 1: wish that, you know, they had they had kind of

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Speaker 1: forced me to do some things I could have held

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Speaker 1: onto um in my adult life. And I don't know

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Speaker 1: how as a parent you're meant to solve for that.

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Speaker 1: It must be quite a conundrum to know, to your point,

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Speaker 1: where to interject and where not to. So you know,

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Speaker 1: you never had any like musical leanings or I've always

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Speaker 1: really I've always really loved music. UM. But I think

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Speaker 1: the thing that probably threw me from becoming more musical.

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Speaker 1: Um the school that I was in as a really

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Speaker 1: young kid didn't have a music program. And then when

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Speaker 1: I got into a school that did, Uh, my option

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Speaker 1: was to join the orchestra, and I was assigned to

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Speaker 1: play the flute, and like, I just don't care about

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Speaker 1: the flute. I think it's beautiful, don't get me wrong,

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Speaker 1: But for me, it wasn't a thing I wanted to

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Speaker 1: stick with. And I think in my little, you know,

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00:28:45,760 --> 00:28:50,280
Speaker 1: childhood brain that wasn't developed to make the connections I

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Speaker 1: can make now, I went, I don't want to do this.

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Speaker 1: It wasn't maybe I should try another instrument, you know.

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Speaker 1: And it's so easy to make horrible sound. It is.

430
00:29:00,160 --> 00:29:03,760
Speaker 1: When you start playing the flute. A minute then you try,

431
00:29:03,840 --> 00:29:05,680
Speaker 1: you're like, oh my god, I can't do like this

432
00:29:05,720 --> 00:29:08,880
Speaker 1: is it's terrible. You feel like you're hurting the world.

433
00:29:09,280 --> 00:29:10,920
Speaker 1: And for me it was just gross. I was like,

434
00:29:10,960 --> 00:29:14,040
Speaker 1: there's a spit trap. This is disgusting. I don't want

435
00:29:14,040 --> 00:29:18,920
Speaker 1: to I don't want to do this. Um. But now

436
00:29:19,240 --> 00:29:22,360
Speaker 1: as an adult I'm I'm beginning to figure out how

437
00:29:22,400 --> 00:29:25,200
Speaker 1: to learn to play the piano. And it's the thing

438
00:29:25,240 --> 00:29:28,760
Speaker 1: that I realized, you know, if I, if I love it,

439
00:29:28,840 --> 00:29:32,520
Speaker 1: I should lean into it. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean I

440
00:29:32,920 --> 00:29:38,480
Speaker 1: did play quite a lot of piano growing up. It's interesting,

441
00:29:38,880 --> 00:29:41,200
Speaker 1: you know, I was pretty much forced to play piano,

442
00:29:42,160 --> 00:29:45,040
Speaker 1: and I played it to being a teenager, and then

443
00:29:45,040 --> 00:29:47,520
Speaker 1: I stopped because it didn't feel right. But I picked

444
00:29:47,520 --> 00:29:52,600
Speaker 1: it up later in my late twenties early thirties, and

445
00:29:52,640 --> 00:29:56,600
Speaker 1: I got pretty good for a while. And it is

446
00:29:56,680 --> 00:29:58,960
Speaker 1: there's something it was really I was really appreciate the

447
00:29:58,960 --> 00:30:01,959
Speaker 1: fact that I had enough of a base line of

448
00:30:02,120 --> 00:30:04,600
Speaker 1: knowledge so that later on when I wanted to play

449
00:30:04,640 --> 00:30:07,719
Speaker 1: some things that are more sophisticated, I know, I wasn't afraid.

450
00:30:08,840 --> 00:30:11,560
Speaker 1: So I think as long as you're a kid and

451
00:30:11,600 --> 00:30:15,400
Speaker 1: you have a kind of familiarity, it just breeds a

452
00:30:15,480 --> 00:30:20,360
Speaker 1: kind of trust, and then you can turn that into

453
00:30:20,360 --> 00:30:24,280
Speaker 1: a kind of confidence. You know. Uh, but if you

454
00:30:24,480 --> 00:30:27,840
Speaker 1: if you, if you've had these bad experiences are not

455
00:30:28,120 --> 00:30:31,640
Speaker 1: non experiences with with some of these things, I think

456
00:30:31,680 --> 00:30:36,040
Speaker 1: that you know, you don't you don't follow through later

457
00:30:36,360 --> 00:30:38,440
Speaker 1: like it's great that you're open enough to do this

458
00:30:38,560 --> 00:30:42,600
Speaker 1: because I'm sure you've been inspired by friends, people you know,

459
00:30:42,720 --> 00:30:46,240
Speaker 1: musicians you know, and musicians you don't know, and and

460
00:30:46,240 --> 00:30:51,080
Speaker 1: and you you have a connection that's not just as

461
00:30:51,120 --> 00:30:54,960
Speaker 1: a consumer. You have a connection as appear on some level,

462
00:30:55,000 --> 00:30:58,280
Speaker 1: however modest, and you want to participate in that. Right.

463
00:31:00,160 --> 00:31:03,920
Speaker 1: So I wonder, then, how when we think about how

464
00:31:03,960 --> 00:31:08,400
Speaker 1: we participate in what we pursue. When did the switch

465
00:31:08,440 --> 00:31:13,840
Speaker 1: flip for you where you realized that art was something

466
00:31:13,920 --> 00:31:16,960
Speaker 1: you could do as a career, that that it wasn't

467
00:31:17,000 --> 00:31:19,520
Speaker 1: just a hobby. You didn't just want to draw and

468
00:31:19,600 --> 00:31:24,440
Speaker 1: trace and and you know, recreate posters and paintings, that

469
00:31:24,440 --> 00:31:30,520
Speaker 1: that you wanted to make art as your job. When

470
00:31:30,520 --> 00:31:35,880
Speaker 1: did I know that, Oh, we're realized it was possible. Yeah,

471
00:31:35,960 --> 00:31:38,959
Speaker 1: well it's it's still difficult, you know. I mean, an

472
00:31:39,080 --> 00:31:45,120
Speaker 1: artist is never easy. Um, but I would have to

473
00:31:45,160 --> 00:31:49,479
Speaker 1: say that, Um, you know, when I made the commitment

474
00:31:49,520 --> 00:31:52,040
Speaker 1: to go to grad school in San Francisco and major

475
00:31:52,120 --> 00:31:56,880
Speaker 1: in painting, then then you're kind of you're all in. Right.

476
00:31:56,920 --> 00:31:59,640
Speaker 1: It's one thing to get a degree in college with

477
00:31:59,720 --> 00:32:02,560
Speaker 1: a Bachelors of Fine Arts and you've been painting. It's

478
00:32:02,560 --> 00:32:05,920
Speaker 1: another thing to go to grad school because you're you're

479
00:32:06,000 --> 00:32:10,600
Speaker 1: quite responsible for not only history of your craft, but

480
00:32:10,960 --> 00:32:15,520
Speaker 1: also theory of your craft, and and um, you you

481
00:32:15,600 --> 00:32:18,640
Speaker 1: sort of position yourself when the within the legacy of

482
00:32:18,640 --> 00:32:22,480
Speaker 1: it and the weight of it, and also the opportunities

483
00:32:22,520 --> 00:32:27,760
Speaker 1: of the future that it might provide. And um, you know,

484
00:32:28,120 --> 00:32:35,840
Speaker 1: grad school in painting is hilarious place to be. Why

485
00:32:36,440 --> 00:32:38,920
Speaker 1: that's not what I expected you to say. As far

486
00:32:38,960 --> 00:32:41,640
Speaker 1: as the feedback about getting a master's of fine art?

487
00:32:43,240 --> 00:32:45,760
Speaker 1: What's hilarious in this sense that you know, you're really

488
00:32:46,840 --> 00:32:49,840
Speaker 1: and I don't think people well I think people you know,

489
00:32:50,040 --> 00:32:52,280
Speaker 1: find it ludicrous on some levels, but you kind of

490
00:32:52,320 --> 00:32:56,280
Speaker 1: are a quantum physicists athetics. You know, you're you're pushing

491
00:32:56,280 --> 00:33:03,320
Speaker 1: the boundaries of what is. I mean, just the other night, uh,

492
00:33:03,400 --> 00:33:05,640
Speaker 1: somebody asked me, well, can you tell me what art is?

493
00:33:06,640 --> 00:33:08,400
Speaker 1: And I was like, and this was at the end

494
00:33:08,400 --> 00:33:10,840
Speaker 1: of a of a of a dinner conversation, and and

495
00:33:10,880 --> 00:33:13,480
Speaker 1: I said, seriously, you're gonna ask me that now, like

496
00:33:13,480 --> 00:33:16,400
Speaker 1: we're at the end of dinner, Like this is not

497
00:33:16,440 --> 00:33:19,320
Speaker 1: there's no takeaway from that from that question. And I

498
00:33:19,520 --> 00:33:22,000
Speaker 1: just sort of say, yes, uh, oh, here's what art

499
00:33:22,080 --> 00:33:24,360
Speaker 1: is check please. You know it doesn't work like that.

500
00:33:25,480 --> 00:33:29,600
Speaker 1: So you know it's it's and and in art school

501
00:33:29,640 --> 00:33:32,520
Speaker 1: it's it's it's you know, years of reading and theory

502
00:33:32,720 --> 00:33:38,040
Speaker 1: and and critiques and and you know, criticism that hurts

503
00:33:38,120 --> 00:33:42,840
Speaker 1: and criticism that you really respect, and you sort of

504
00:33:42,920 --> 00:33:47,840
Speaker 1: bashed around as a person um while you're still trying

505
00:33:47,840 --> 00:33:51,160
Speaker 1: to make alliances and you're you're trying to Yeah, you

506
00:33:51,800 --> 00:33:53,760
Speaker 1: the middle of grad school, you do figure, you do

507
00:33:53,960 --> 00:33:56,400
Speaker 1: question yourself like, wow, is this really what I want

508
00:33:56,400 --> 00:33:59,000
Speaker 1: to do. But at the end of the day, when

509
00:33:59,040 --> 00:34:00,880
Speaker 1: you're alone in your student you or with your with

510
00:34:00,960 --> 00:34:05,040
Speaker 1: friends and you're talking about work, and it just it

511
00:34:05,200 --> 00:34:08,239
Speaker 1: washes over you that of course this is what I

512
00:34:08,239 --> 00:34:12,080
Speaker 1: should be doing. There is nothing else, Like everything else is,

513
00:34:12,600 --> 00:34:15,560
Speaker 1: it seems thin, Which is funny because to everyone else

514
00:34:15,680 --> 00:34:20,000
Speaker 1: art seems really thin. Everyone else, art seems like the

515
00:34:20,080 --> 00:34:22,200
Speaker 1: last thing you do at the end of the day.

516
00:34:22,280 --> 00:34:23,919
Speaker 1: You do it when it's it's it's when you when

517
00:34:23,920 --> 00:34:26,440
Speaker 1: you when you have time, you write a poem, when

518
00:34:26,480 --> 00:34:29,120
Speaker 1: you have time, you play some music when you have

519
00:34:29,120 --> 00:34:31,400
Speaker 1: you know, it's like it's never the first thing you

520
00:34:31,400 --> 00:34:36,520
Speaker 1: should do. And once you realize that without it, there

521
00:34:36,600 --> 00:34:42,839
Speaker 1: is nothing else, right, then that's when you realize you're

522
00:34:42,880 --> 00:34:45,520
Speaker 1: in the right place. And grad school to a great extent,

523
00:34:45,680 --> 00:34:54,400
Speaker 1: is about um separating, uh, separating what you should be

524
00:34:54,440 --> 00:34:57,160
Speaker 1: doing for what you think you should be doing. Like

525
00:34:57,239 --> 00:35:04,320
Speaker 1: it's really about centering yourself. That really strikes me as interesting,

526
00:35:04,440 --> 00:35:07,480
Speaker 1: separating what you're doing from what you think you should

527
00:35:07,480 --> 00:35:12,360
Speaker 1: be doing. So, what were some of the lessons that

528
00:35:12,440 --> 00:35:15,399
Speaker 1: you learned there? What are some of those lightbulbs about

529
00:35:15,520 --> 00:35:25,719
Speaker 1: where you invest your time? Yeah, um, well, it's interesting.

530
00:35:26,480 --> 00:35:29,600
Speaker 1: I did know. I did know early on that I

531
00:35:29,680 --> 00:35:33,000
Speaker 1: was very interested in different types of materials and different

532
00:35:33,040 --> 00:35:36,839
Speaker 1: types of of thanks to work with so even as

533
00:35:36,880 --> 00:35:42,720
Speaker 1: even as even as painting matters to me very very much, Um,

534
00:35:42,760 --> 00:35:45,239
Speaker 1: I was playing around with different types of materials, but

535
00:35:45,400 --> 00:35:49,720
Speaker 1: also the image. Really, once I realized how important images

536
00:35:49,760 --> 00:35:55,920
Speaker 1: are and how much they stick with you, I, image

537
00:35:55,920 --> 00:35:59,440
Speaker 1: and memory are very, very, very connected. Right when you

538
00:35:59,480 --> 00:36:04,200
Speaker 1: think of you're childhood, there's probably a few images you

539
00:36:04,200 --> 00:36:08,040
Speaker 1: know immediately spring to mind, like very specific images, and

540
00:36:08,080 --> 00:36:11,960
Speaker 1: we craft our identities and narratives around those images. And

541
00:36:12,000 --> 00:36:14,440
Speaker 1: it's so funny about all the things we forget or

542
00:36:14,480 --> 00:36:19,960
Speaker 1: all the things we uh we choose to forget um

543
00:36:20,080 --> 00:36:25,160
Speaker 1: so that what memory does, an image memory is really

544
00:36:25,280 --> 00:36:31,239
Speaker 1: create this alternative being from the being that's living. Right.

545
00:36:31,760 --> 00:36:34,600
Speaker 1: What what's interesting about art is that you're you're you're

546
00:36:34,640 --> 00:36:40,600
Speaker 1: making images and creating or working with images. That our

547
00:36:40,760 --> 00:36:45,760
Speaker 1: combination of how you literally picture the world by choice

548
00:36:46,280 --> 00:36:49,560
Speaker 1: and then how you exist in the world by chance.

549
00:36:52,280 --> 00:36:53,960
Speaker 1: That was that was a very important thing I got

550
00:36:53,960 --> 00:36:57,520
Speaker 1: out of grad school that I was dealing with certain

551
00:36:57,560 --> 00:37:00,440
Speaker 1: types of personal histories, images from those two trees, but

552
00:37:00,520 --> 00:37:04,359
Speaker 1: also images from things that had meaning, and then how

553
00:37:04,400 --> 00:37:14,520
Speaker 1: they felt within the presence of the studio. Well you

554
00:37:14,800 --> 00:37:18,319
Speaker 1: because I realized we're speaking about it and and I'm

555
00:37:18,360 --> 00:37:23,040
Speaker 1: sure there's some people listening who I love the idea

556
00:37:23,080 --> 00:37:29,200
Speaker 1: of theory purpose, you know, what activates us, how deep

557
00:37:29,360 --> 00:37:33,440
Speaker 1: art is. But we touched on you getting your m

558
00:37:33,560 --> 00:37:35,640
Speaker 1: f A, your master's a fine art in grad school.

559
00:37:36,440 --> 00:37:38,839
Speaker 1: What does that really mean? What is what is the

560
00:37:38,960 --> 00:37:43,680
Speaker 1: process of a master's? Because I would wager that there

561
00:37:43,719 --> 00:37:46,719
Speaker 1: are some students wondering if it's for them, And perhaps

562
00:37:46,800 --> 00:37:50,479
Speaker 1: you can shed a little bit of light on what

563
00:37:50,800 --> 00:37:57,200
Speaker 1: goes into the pursuit of an education around that depth

564
00:37:57,520 --> 00:38:01,960
Speaker 1: of art and what art has actually meant to society

565
00:38:02,040 --> 00:38:05,200
Speaker 1: and and the way that I would I would pose it.

566
00:38:06,280 --> 00:38:11,680
Speaker 1: Society could not have developed without art. So what is

567
00:38:11,719 --> 00:38:15,200
Speaker 1: it to study that in that way? Well, that's a

568
00:38:15,200 --> 00:38:20,319
Speaker 1: those are that's a great question. It's very big. Let's

569
00:38:20,320 --> 00:38:23,000
Speaker 1: try try and do my bad just you know, there's

570
00:38:23,000 --> 00:38:26,160
Speaker 1: a casual thing for you on a Tuesday. I know.

571
00:38:26,920 --> 00:38:32,040
Speaker 1: Um well, I would say first of all that if

572
00:38:32,040 --> 00:38:35,080
Speaker 1: you if you don't live and die art, and I

573
00:38:35,080 --> 00:38:37,560
Speaker 1: don't mean by like the big picture like you making it,

574
00:38:37,800 --> 00:38:41,560
Speaker 1: don't don't go to school like it's just you have

575
00:38:41,640 --> 00:38:44,080
Speaker 1: to you have to think if you have to understand

576
00:38:44,080 --> 00:38:48,800
Speaker 1: yourself as someone who who it's like oxygen or blood.

577
00:38:48,880 --> 00:38:54,160
Speaker 1: Like it's just it's just there, um for for anyone

578
00:38:55,239 --> 00:38:58,279
Speaker 1: approaching the idea, you know, masters of fine art. It's

579
00:38:58,400 --> 00:39:00,399
Speaker 1: it depends on which school you go to, right Some

580
00:39:00,400 --> 00:39:03,560
Speaker 1: schools are very theory late and summer very craft laden,

581
00:39:05,080 --> 00:39:06,719
Speaker 1: so you really have to do your homework about where

582
00:39:06,719 --> 00:39:10,080
Speaker 1: you want to be. I chose San Francisco because it

583
00:39:10,160 --> 00:39:12,759
Speaker 1: had a had a legacy of of sort of a

584
00:39:12,800 --> 00:39:19,160
Speaker 1: particular West Coast avant garde, and especially what is the

585
00:39:19,400 --> 00:39:21,799
Speaker 1: what does the West Coast avant garden mean? To to

586
00:39:21,880 --> 00:39:26,879
Speaker 1: a lay person. Yeah sure, um, well, you know, I'll

587
00:39:26,960 --> 00:39:29,960
Speaker 1: use my grandfather's example before you get are. But basically,

588
00:39:30,640 --> 00:39:33,320
Speaker 1: like historically there's been a West Coast East Coast jazz.

589
00:39:33,360 --> 00:39:36,600
Speaker 1: I mean, it's also true of wrap, like you take

590
00:39:36,600 --> 00:39:39,799
Speaker 1: a common medium, but there's a flavor on the East coast,

591
00:39:39,880 --> 00:39:43,560
Speaker 1: it's a flavor on the West coast and jazz. Uh.

592
00:39:43,600 --> 00:39:46,200
Speaker 1: Everyone was on the beach, you know, pump, you know,

593
00:39:46,239 --> 00:39:50,360
Speaker 1: everyone's like everyone's intense, really on it. But in the

594
00:39:50,400 --> 00:39:53,120
Speaker 1: West Coast it was laid back and everyone who was

595
00:39:53,160 --> 00:39:57,640
Speaker 1: sort of post beat, so dump nump up nut dump.

596
00:39:58,120 --> 00:40:01,239
Speaker 1: It was kind of like slightly mind and that sort

597
00:40:01,280 --> 00:40:04,799
Speaker 1: of flattened out the sound in a way which kind

598
00:40:04,800 --> 00:40:11,000
Speaker 1: of got more of a groove that wasn't caffeinated. You know. Uh,

599
00:40:11,200 --> 00:40:14,600
Speaker 1: like I listened to you know, you know, be about

600
00:40:14,640 --> 00:40:16,640
Speaker 1: from the fifties, it's like, holy sh it, like these

601
00:40:16,680 --> 00:40:23,200
Speaker 1: guys are like incredibly tight and on task. Meaning in

602
00:40:23,239 --> 00:40:28,360
Speaker 1: the in the West Coast, um, uh kind of was

603
00:40:28,480 --> 00:40:32,080
Speaker 1: non or less intellectual intellectual in a way. It was.

604
00:40:32,160 --> 00:40:34,640
Speaker 1: It was kind of in the same vein. It was

605
00:40:34,760 --> 00:40:41,359
Speaker 1: much more uh, much more physical and not embarrassed that

606
00:40:41,480 --> 00:40:45,239
Speaker 1: the physicality of it wasn't tied to an intellectual aspect,

607
00:40:45,680 --> 00:40:50,120
Speaker 1: like there was a sort of relationship between the body,

608
00:40:50,560 --> 00:40:54,000
Speaker 1: not as an abstract the maker of work, but the

609
00:40:54,080 --> 00:40:56,920
Speaker 1: body is kind of a person, like an individual character

610
00:40:57,040 --> 00:41:00,840
Speaker 1: who uh, in a various kind of simple way, painted

611
00:41:00,880 --> 00:41:03,360
Speaker 1: what they felt, painted what they saw. And there was

612
00:41:03,440 --> 00:41:05,759
Speaker 1: also a huge history, especially in the Bay Area, of

613
00:41:05,800 --> 00:41:10,640
Speaker 1: relationship to Eastern art, which completely changed the trajectory of

614
00:41:10,719 --> 00:41:22,880
Speaker 1: art history that references to Buddhism and Japanese printmaking heavily

615
00:41:22,920 --> 00:41:27,200
Speaker 1: influenced artists on the West Coast in Los Angeles and California.

616
00:41:27,600 --> 00:41:30,839
Speaker 1: I'm sorry in San Francisco that that allowed the work

617
00:41:30,880 --> 00:41:37,600
Speaker 1: to be I think a little more kind. What do

618
00:41:37,640 --> 00:41:45,359
Speaker 1: you mean by that? Um Well, A lot of art,

619
00:41:45,840 --> 00:41:49,520
Speaker 1: especially abstract art from the post war period, tended to

620
00:41:49,560 --> 00:41:54,239
Speaker 1: be very intense and sort of grabs you by the

621
00:41:54,239 --> 00:41:57,400
Speaker 1: the the color and says you need to see me,

622
00:41:57,520 --> 00:41:59,759
Speaker 1: you need to see this, right, you need to see

623
00:42:00,239 --> 00:42:04,719
Speaker 1: you need to deal with me. West Coast art I

624
00:42:04,800 --> 00:42:09,719
Speaker 1: didn't didn't have that same effect. It said, you know,

625
00:42:10,280 --> 00:42:13,600
Speaker 1: you can take me, you can leave me, uh to

626
00:42:13,640 --> 00:42:17,080
Speaker 1: a great extent, as long as you experienced me and

627
00:42:17,120 --> 00:42:20,680
Speaker 1: take me at face value. I'm happy, and there's also

628
00:42:20,760 --> 00:42:24,400
Speaker 1: more humor in West Coast start. One of the greatest

629
00:42:24,480 --> 00:42:26,839
Speaker 1: artists is edwar who a lot of your listeners are

630
00:42:27,120 --> 00:42:31,520
Speaker 1: familiar with Jaldon Baldassari. Amazing, amazing artists and teacher c

631
00:42:31,680 --> 00:42:34,880
Speaker 1: l A just passed. These are artists that always had

632
00:42:34,880 --> 00:42:37,680
Speaker 1: a twinkle in their eye, you know, always was like,

633
00:42:37,840 --> 00:42:39,920
Speaker 1: you know what this is a I'm gonna give you

634
00:42:40,200 --> 00:42:42,440
Speaker 1: a big insight, but it's kind of like a con

635
00:42:42,600 --> 00:42:44,080
Speaker 1: It's like a it's like a little bit of a

636
00:42:44,640 --> 00:42:46,919
Speaker 1: riddle and I'm gonna do it in a way which

637
00:42:47,040 --> 00:42:55,400
Speaker 1: you're gonna walk away saying huh rather than wow. So um.

638
00:42:55,400 --> 00:42:59,120
Speaker 1: When I chose San Francisco, uh, And also the East

639
00:42:59,120 --> 00:43:00,759
Speaker 1: Coast is always seemed ver foreign to me because the

640
00:43:00,800 --> 00:43:04,040
Speaker 1: point reason lay that I just felt it felt like

641
00:43:04,080 --> 00:43:09,200
Speaker 1: a better fit for me. Um. Ironically, when I went

642
00:43:09,239 --> 00:43:12,120
Speaker 1: to San Francisco, a lot of the some of the

643
00:43:12,120 --> 00:43:15,000
Speaker 1: teachers thought my work was too cool and to l

644
00:43:15,080 --> 00:43:20,200
Speaker 1: a because there were a lot more gestural and sort

645
00:43:20,200 --> 00:43:23,080
Speaker 1: of a motive and I was kind of playing with

646
00:43:23,120 --> 00:43:26,799
Speaker 1: a sort of a cooler vibe and they said like, oh, yeah,

647
00:43:26,840 --> 00:43:30,440
Speaker 1: your your work looks like it's from l A L.

648
00:43:30,440 --> 00:43:34,880
Speaker 1: I has this at this attitude and uh in the

649
00:43:35,000 --> 00:43:37,480
Speaker 1: art world of being kind of a very different special

650
00:43:37,520 --> 00:43:42,239
Speaker 1: place where just come on, come on here and make

651
00:43:42,280 --> 00:43:45,319
Speaker 1: the work you want to make, and we won't ask

652
00:43:45,360 --> 00:43:47,279
Speaker 1: anything of you. Doesn't need to look a certain way,

653
00:43:47,320 --> 00:43:49,560
Speaker 1: it just needs to and you ceased to be authentic,

654
00:43:50,360 --> 00:43:52,640
Speaker 1: and then we'll fit it in with everything else is

655
00:43:52,680 --> 00:43:56,040
Speaker 1: happening in the city. And that's why I've never felt

656
00:43:56,480 --> 00:43:59,520
Speaker 1: compelled to leave. I've always felt that it's always a

657
00:43:59,520 --> 00:44:04,080
Speaker 1: new city. It doesn't ask me to be anyone in particular.

658
00:44:04,320 --> 00:44:07,560
Speaker 1: It doesn't have that that headbutting that you find in

659
00:44:08,080 --> 00:44:13,200
Speaker 1: New York. It's a place where, like I was saying earlier,

660
00:44:13,239 --> 00:44:16,560
Speaker 1: you really can just sort of stop and just look

661
00:44:16,600 --> 00:44:18,840
Speaker 1: around you. I noticed that behind you you have a

662
00:44:18,840 --> 00:44:22,680
Speaker 1: photograph from Joshua Tree. And that's exactly what I'm talking about.

663
00:44:22,719 --> 00:44:28,279
Speaker 1: Can you imagine that photograph in New York, right in

664
00:44:28,320 --> 00:44:30,759
Speaker 1: a New New York person's house. It doesn't I don't

665
00:44:30,800 --> 00:44:32,840
Speaker 1: even heard of them. It was Joshua Trees are the

666
00:44:32,880 --> 00:44:35,440
Speaker 1: oldest trees I think living things are. They're close to

667
00:44:35,480 --> 00:44:40,160
Speaker 1: the oldest living things on the planet Earth, and they're

668
00:44:40,200 --> 00:44:44,439
Speaker 1: they're they're very alien, they're strange, they're interesting by silhouette

669
00:44:45,080 --> 00:44:49,840
Speaker 1: right there, not the forests of the East coast. Uh,

670
00:44:50,040 --> 00:44:53,640
Speaker 1: it's it's a it's a flat horizon of desert and

671
00:44:53,640 --> 00:44:56,400
Speaker 1: these amazingly weird things pop up in the middle of it.

672
00:44:56,480 --> 00:44:59,240
Speaker 1: I think that's a really good example of the people

673
00:44:59,239 --> 00:45:02,000
Speaker 1: in l A too. Right, we're sort of all stuck

674
00:45:02,000 --> 00:45:04,799
Speaker 1: on this plane. We're all very interesting in the way

675
00:45:04,800 --> 00:45:10,000
Speaker 1: we are, and and with with a lot of space.

676
00:45:10,040 --> 00:45:11,600
Speaker 1: I mean, we have a lot of space here. So

677
00:45:11,880 --> 00:45:16,640
Speaker 1: all that stuff affected my work and still does. As

678
00:45:16,680 --> 00:45:20,480
Speaker 1: you were developing your style and you know, getting your

679
00:45:20,520 --> 00:45:25,800
Speaker 1: masters and really diving so deep into as you mentioned,

680
00:45:25,920 --> 00:45:30,560
Speaker 1: the history and the craft of art, did you find

681
00:45:30,560 --> 00:45:36,160
Speaker 1: a mentor or mentors? Mm hmm. I asked because people

682
00:45:36,200 --> 00:45:38,920
Speaker 1: have asked me that, you know, who was your mentor?

683
00:45:39,000 --> 00:45:42,000
Speaker 1: And I never had one, and I wish that I had,

684
00:45:42,120 --> 00:45:48,520
Speaker 1: And so I'm curious now about if artists who I

685
00:45:48,600 --> 00:45:52,960
Speaker 1: admire have or had mentors. Yeah, it's funny. I never

686
00:45:53,000 --> 00:45:56,799
Speaker 1: had the kind of hand on your shoulder mentor, but

687
00:45:56,880 --> 00:45:58,799
Speaker 1: I had some people that influenced me quite a bit,

688
00:45:58,880 --> 00:46:01,840
Speaker 1: and one of them was in Underground. Uh. It's an

689
00:46:01,920 --> 00:46:09,280
Speaker 1: artist named Marvin harden Um uh, really terrific l a artist.

690
00:46:10,239 --> 00:46:15,080
Speaker 1: And it was amazing about him was that every day

691
00:46:15,120 --> 00:46:17,680
Speaker 1: he would show up to class in the exact same outfit,

692
00:46:18,239 --> 00:46:23,600
Speaker 1: which was blue jeans and a jeans jacket. And he's

693
00:46:23,719 --> 00:46:28,919
Speaker 1: very handsome man, uh uh. And he wore he wore

694
00:46:29,160 --> 00:46:36,560
Speaker 1: these heavily tinted purple glasses. And he was a painting teacher,

695
00:46:37,239 --> 00:46:39,200
Speaker 1: and he would look at a painting of mine and

696
00:46:39,239 --> 00:46:43,879
Speaker 1: talk about color, and I always thought, how the hell

697
00:46:43,960 --> 00:46:46,480
Speaker 1: the like, how can you see that this shade of

698
00:46:46,600 --> 00:46:50,760
Speaker 1: yellow is the wrong yellow or is too antagonistic or whatever?

699
00:46:52,640 --> 00:46:55,160
Speaker 1: And with these glasses on, and he would make he

700
00:46:55,200 --> 00:46:58,200
Speaker 1: would be was very good colorist, but he never I

701
00:46:58,239 --> 00:47:01,080
Speaker 1: never saw him not wearing these glass us is what

702
00:47:01,200 --> 00:47:03,480
Speaker 1: I learned from him. And his his language he made

703
00:47:03,680 --> 00:47:07,680
Speaker 1: very very very subtle again sort of getting back to

704
00:47:07,800 --> 00:47:13,080
Speaker 1: maybe a part of it, uh, sort of a zen mindset. Um.

705
00:47:13,120 --> 00:47:16,520
Speaker 1: He didn't speak a lot. He was very quiet. I

706
00:47:16,600 --> 00:47:20,320
Speaker 1: knew he was a he was fond of horseback riding.

707
00:47:20,480 --> 00:47:24,480
Speaker 1: And anyway, he would make his little tiny drawings that

708
00:47:24,640 --> 00:47:30,160
Speaker 1: were maybe six inches tall and one inch wide pencil

709
00:47:30,760 --> 00:47:34,120
Speaker 1: at least little tiny hatch marks and often in the

710
00:47:34,320 --> 00:47:36,680
Speaker 1: very bottom there would be a tiny little animal like

711
00:47:36,719 --> 00:47:41,120
Speaker 1: a horse. There was just the weirdest little drawings, and

712
00:47:41,120 --> 00:47:44,239
Speaker 1: and the thing I walked away from them. You know,

713
00:47:44,320 --> 00:47:47,720
Speaker 1: here's this kid who was so impressed with these giant,

714
00:47:48,040 --> 00:47:52,040
Speaker 1: epic French paintings in the louver. I didn't feel any

715
00:47:52,080 --> 00:47:55,239
Speaker 1: different when I looked at those little drawings he made,

716
00:47:56,080 --> 00:48:01,000
Speaker 1: and and his sort of approach of subtlety and generosity.

717
00:48:01,520 --> 00:48:09,080
Speaker 1: He was harsh, um, but he's always honest, and at

718
00:48:09,120 --> 00:48:10,720
Speaker 1: the time I didn't think of him as a mentor

719
00:48:10,719 --> 00:48:13,520
Speaker 1: at all. There are there are other teachers that I

720
00:48:13,600 --> 00:48:18,960
Speaker 1: enjoyed more and the same as true as grad school. Um,

721
00:48:19,120 --> 00:48:24,479
Speaker 1: but I'll just never forget the kind of aura he had.

722
00:48:25,200 --> 00:48:31,799
Speaker 1: It just sort of generated kindness, a methodical looking and

723
00:48:31,880 --> 00:48:38,400
Speaker 1: a real appreciation to He was always talking about every

724
00:48:38,480 --> 00:48:43,880
Speaker 1: single square inch of your work needs to matter. Do

725
00:48:44,000 --> 00:48:46,560
Speaker 1: not do not think that the things on the edges

726
00:48:47,239 --> 00:48:49,960
Speaker 1: are less consequential than the things in the center. Ever,

727
00:48:51,719 --> 00:48:58,759
Speaker 1: and I learned that that is the most important thing

728
00:48:58,880 --> 00:49:02,120
Speaker 1: in making art. There's no such thing as a periphery.

729
00:49:03,280 --> 00:49:07,640
Speaker 1: It's a it's a total plane of experience. Because in

730
00:49:07,760 --> 00:49:10,480
Speaker 1: getting back to this idea of the silent object operating

731
00:49:10,520 --> 00:49:13,320
Speaker 1: on you so magnificently. If you look at at a

732
00:49:13,960 --> 00:49:17,959
Speaker 1: fantastic painting like the Girl with the pearl earring right,

733
00:49:18,960 --> 00:49:23,080
Speaker 1: which is in the Hague. UM, I was fortunate to

734
00:49:23,080 --> 00:49:27,120
Speaker 1: see that in person there is no moment in that painting,

735
00:49:27,160 --> 00:49:32,160
Speaker 1: including a vast dark area around around uh, the portrait

736
00:49:32,200 --> 00:49:37,640
Speaker 1: of the woman, every part of it feels so intense

737
00:49:38,120 --> 00:49:43,320
Speaker 1: and so many poul that. Uh. What I got from

738
00:49:43,320 --> 00:49:46,279
Speaker 1: from Marvin was this, this this knowledge that, like it's

739
00:49:46,280 --> 00:49:49,680
Speaker 1: super knowledge right there, that scale really doesn't matter. A

740
00:49:49,920 --> 00:49:55,200
Speaker 1: scale doesn't matter, point of reference doesn't matter. Everything matters.

741
00:49:55,560 --> 00:50:02,200
Speaker 1: When you care, everything matters. M I'm so struck by

742
00:50:03,840 --> 00:50:06,279
Speaker 1: what that lesson meant to you for your work. The

743
00:50:06,360 --> 00:50:08,800
Speaker 1: idea that there is no such thing as a periphery,

744
00:50:09,880 --> 00:50:14,239
Speaker 1: this notion of one plane when you care, everything matters,

745
00:50:14,560 --> 00:50:19,400
Speaker 1: All of that feels inherently equally relatable to how we

746
00:50:19,440 --> 00:50:24,040
Speaker 1: look at society. There is no such thing as a periphery.

747
00:50:24,120 --> 00:50:26,680
Speaker 1: The way we've been cultured to kind of look at

748
00:50:26,680 --> 00:50:28,839
Speaker 1: what's in front of us and push what we don't

749
00:50:28,880 --> 00:50:31,800
Speaker 1: like out to the sides. You know, we become desensitized

750
00:50:31,880 --> 00:50:36,160
Speaker 1: to the crisis of refugees or to gun violence. But

751
00:50:36,920 --> 00:50:39,960
Speaker 1: we really live on one plane of existence. Every single

752
00:50:40,040 --> 00:50:45,520
Speaker 1: person is in a way the central figure in their

753
00:50:45,560 --> 00:50:48,719
Speaker 1: own painting or their own photograph. And and if we

754
00:50:48,760 --> 00:50:51,960
Speaker 1: could remember when we look at people that they are

755
00:50:52,080 --> 00:50:56,400
Speaker 1: as important to someone as our spouse or child, or

756
00:50:56,560 --> 00:51:00,520
Speaker 1: parent or sister is to us, you know what would

757
00:51:00,520 --> 00:51:04,000
Speaker 1: that How would that change the way we relate to

758
00:51:04,040 --> 00:51:07,560
Speaker 1: each other? And and this notion, you know that when

759
00:51:07,600 --> 00:51:11,040
Speaker 1: you care, everything matters. I think that's the sort of

760
00:51:11,120 --> 00:51:14,959
Speaker 1: root feeling of so many activists of why so many

761
00:51:15,040 --> 00:51:18,000
Speaker 1: of us, in various ways do what we do. And

762
00:51:18,080 --> 00:51:22,359
Speaker 1: it all leads me to wonder, how early in your

763
00:51:22,440 --> 00:51:25,959
Speaker 1: career did you start to because you were making those

764
00:51:26,000 --> 00:51:30,560
Speaker 1: types of observations, how early did you start making interpretations

765
00:51:30,680 --> 00:51:39,440
Speaker 1: of historical and political works. Uh? Well, I think I

766
00:51:39,480 --> 00:51:42,760
Speaker 1: think it was always there. I mean we talk about childhood,

767
00:51:42,880 --> 00:51:45,200
Speaker 1: right and how you know, I mean even listening to

768
00:51:45,239 --> 00:51:49,480
Speaker 1: classical music as a youth without the intention of being

769
00:51:49,480 --> 00:51:55,800
Speaker 1: a classical musician learning about history. Uh it put me

770
00:51:55,840 --> 00:52:00,200
Speaker 1: in a trajectory where I was always thinking about you know,

771
00:52:00,320 --> 00:52:03,480
Speaker 1: not not my reference within my my own years, but

772
00:52:03,600 --> 00:52:09,280
Speaker 1: my reference as as at the end tale of many

773
00:52:09,320 --> 00:52:12,239
Speaker 1: many many years prior that I would that I was

774
00:52:12,320 --> 00:52:15,319
Speaker 1: that was really part of a legacy of being that

775
00:52:16,600 --> 00:52:22,000
Speaker 1: you know, had an infinite a starting point. And so

776
00:52:22,200 --> 00:52:24,520
Speaker 1: I've always been interested in finding places that are not

777
00:52:24,560 --> 00:52:28,480
Speaker 1: immediately next to me, but places that or a hundred

778
00:52:28,600 --> 00:52:31,480
Speaker 1: years ago or two hundred years ago. I've read so

779
00:52:31,560 --> 00:52:37,600
Speaker 1: much amazing you know what, when I'm when I'm making work,

780
00:52:37,640 --> 00:52:42,279
Speaker 1: I'm I'm always referencing all sorts of types of histories. Uh.

781
00:52:43,560 --> 00:52:47,160
Speaker 1: I remember reading a book once about how people in

782
00:52:47,200 --> 00:52:50,920
Speaker 1: the medieval Europe saw nature and how that started to

783
00:52:51,040 --> 00:52:53,800
Speaker 1: change around the seventeenth century, that the nature itself was

784
00:52:53,840 --> 00:52:57,399
Speaker 1: seen as a sacred space. We think of we think

785
00:52:57,400 --> 00:53:01,680
Speaker 1: of Western history as being, you know, the culprit behind

786
00:53:02,280 --> 00:53:06,720
Speaker 1: climate change, and it certainly recent history is right recent,

787
00:53:06,760 --> 00:53:10,279
Speaker 1: meaning that last a couple of centuries. But before that,

788
00:53:10,320 --> 00:53:12,759
Speaker 1: there was a time it was it was sick like

789
00:53:13,160 --> 00:53:16,960
Speaker 1: that things like mining from for metal was thought of

790
00:53:17,000 --> 00:53:22,200
Speaker 1: as being, uh a sort of rape of the earth.

791
00:53:22,960 --> 00:53:29,320
Speaker 1: That there was an actual European mindset when mining and uh,

792
00:53:29,400 --> 00:53:34,640
Speaker 1: you know, taking things out through greed was an actual

793
00:53:35,320 --> 00:53:39,560
Speaker 1: horrific interference with with the natural forces that that we

794
00:53:39,560 --> 00:53:42,920
Speaker 1: we should we should generously accept what it has, not

795
00:53:43,120 --> 00:53:47,480
Speaker 1: take from it. And that I remember thinking, well, this

796
00:53:47,560 --> 00:53:51,120
Speaker 1: is not my understanding of history. This is you know,

797
00:53:51,200 --> 00:53:54,840
Speaker 1: so reading these alternate histories about you know, when you

798
00:53:54,880 --> 00:53:57,719
Speaker 1: think about a certain thing, usually there's a history at

799
00:53:57,719 --> 00:54:01,719
Speaker 1: some point that contradicts what you normally think about it, right,

800
00:54:01,800 --> 00:54:04,719
Speaker 1: There's always if you dig deep enough, you'll realize that

801
00:54:04,760 --> 00:54:09,000
Speaker 1: the stories that you take for granted are wrong. And

802
00:54:09,360 --> 00:54:11,400
Speaker 1: I would say to a great extent that that my

803
00:54:11,560 --> 00:54:13,920
Speaker 1: work about the border is part of that idea that

804
00:54:15,440 --> 00:54:18,000
Speaker 1: you know, I had. I had thought about the border

805
00:54:18,000 --> 00:54:21,239
Speaker 1: as a place of and in a very particular way,

806
00:54:21,280 --> 00:54:24,440
Speaker 1: based on how I was taught, based on my knowledge

807
00:54:24,480 --> 00:54:29,080
Speaker 1: of history and politics and even my own, you know,

808
00:54:29,400 --> 00:54:32,719
Speaker 1: my own personal history. In order to get to know it,

809
00:54:32,800 --> 00:54:35,760
Speaker 1: I had to just sort of fine new ways of

810
00:54:36,080 --> 00:54:40,360
Speaker 1: shaking off the dust of all of that poor sentiments

811
00:54:40,640 --> 00:54:43,759
Speaker 1: of knowledge. I think most of us are coded with

812
00:54:44,000 --> 00:54:50,080
Speaker 1: poor information, right, And the best information you have to

813
00:54:50,120 --> 00:54:54,120
Speaker 1: look for it yourself. It's there, the true stuff, the

814
00:54:54,160 --> 00:54:59,920
Speaker 1: stuff that really is mature, right, it's not pre digestive,

815
00:55:00,000 --> 00:55:02,320
Speaker 1: it from some other source like a you know, mama

816
00:55:02,360 --> 00:55:05,839
Speaker 1: bird to a baby bird. The best stuff for all

817
00:55:05,880 --> 00:55:12,279
Speaker 1: of us, you have to find and you yourself, you

818
00:55:12,320 --> 00:55:13,960
Speaker 1: have to you have you have to make it. So

819
00:55:14,200 --> 00:55:18,400
Speaker 1: the Border project, it's titled Border Theory, really is about that.

820
00:55:18,480 --> 00:55:21,840
Speaker 1: It's about me digesting this this thing that's had consequences

821
00:55:21,880 --> 00:55:25,680
Speaker 1: for my own uh life, but also, um, it's something

822
00:55:25,719 --> 00:55:28,759
Speaker 1: that I find relevant to how we should all pick

823
00:55:28,800 --> 00:55:34,560
Speaker 1: apart things that we otherwise hold as a bias very tight.

824
00:55:36,080 --> 00:55:38,560
Speaker 1: I wish I could do with everything. Yeah, I mean,

825
00:55:38,600 --> 00:55:43,400
Speaker 1: the the examination of self, of belief, of society. It

826
00:55:43,480 --> 00:55:47,919
Speaker 1: feels so incredibly important and and I'm also, I guess

827
00:55:47,960 --> 00:55:51,080
Speaker 1: because of the time that we live in so worried

828
00:55:51,120 --> 00:55:55,040
Speaker 1: about how people go to search because there are these

829
00:55:55,120 --> 00:56:01,000
Speaker 1: crazy disinformation campaigns and conspiracy theories and you know, God,

830
00:56:01,040 --> 00:56:04,080
Speaker 1: I just got a message the other day. I I

831
00:56:04,200 --> 00:56:10,239
Speaker 1: had interviewed a scientist to talk about, you know, what

832
00:56:10,239 --> 00:56:14,160
Speaker 1: what all of this COVID business means and how we're

833
00:56:14,160 --> 00:56:15,640
Speaker 1: going to get to the other side of it, and

834
00:56:15,800 --> 00:56:17,560
Speaker 1: what does it really look like to find a vaccine?

835
00:56:17,600 --> 00:56:19,560
Speaker 1: And I got a message from someone saying, well, you

836
00:56:19,600 --> 00:56:22,239
Speaker 1: know that all the vaccine companies are owned by Bill

837
00:56:22,280 --> 00:56:24,720
Speaker 1: Gates and he's going to make billions and they probably

838
00:56:24,800 --> 00:56:27,600
Speaker 1: let this virus out and I was like, where are

839
00:56:27,640 --> 00:56:34,200
Speaker 1: you getting your information? What is happening? You know? And

840
00:56:34,280 --> 00:56:40,239
Speaker 1: I worry for us that now when we try to

841
00:56:40,360 --> 00:56:44,360
Speaker 1: go and learn more, there is the risk of being

842
00:56:44,600 --> 00:56:48,239
Speaker 1: yanked into these I see it almost like there's these

843
00:56:48,360 --> 00:56:51,040
Speaker 1: venus fly traps that have been set that are trying

844
00:56:51,080 --> 00:56:55,840
Speaker 1: to yank people into h into these rabbit holes that

845
00:56:55,880 --> 00:56:58,920
Speaker 1: will make us distrust each other more that that are

846
00:56:58,960 --> 00:57:04,440
Speaker 1: that are filled with this dangerous sort of nationalistic, tribalistic

847
00:57:04,600 --> 00:57:09,200
Speaker 1: mess and and tribalism really has only ever served two

848
00:57:10,280 --> 00:57:14,680
Speaker 1: denigrate humanity and also to cause a lot of pain

849
00:57:14,760 --> 00:57:16,480
Speaker 1: and a lot of death and a lot of loss.

850
00:57:16,600 --> 00:57:18,960
Speaker 1: And and it's always in the places where we get

851
00:57:18,960 --> 00:57:22,320
Speaker 1: in better flow with each other, where we create better systems,

852
00:57:22,360 --> 00:57:24,840
Speaker 1: where we can live together, where we have more access,

853
00:57:25,520 --> 00:57:27,560
Speaker 1: where where we look out for each other, those are

854
00:57:27,600 --> 00:57:32,840
Speaker 1: always the places where humanity gets better. And so, my god,

855
00:57:32,880 --> 00:57:36,080
Speaker 1: I hope that as we talk about ways to shake

856
00:57:36,080 --> 00:57:40,200
Speaker 1: off the sediment, people listening and just people out there

857
00:57:40,200 --> 00:57:45,000
Speaker 1: will also be really careful and cognizant of, you know,

858
00:57:46,280 --> 00:57:51,480
Speaker 1: where they're seeking information and and do so with you know,

859
00:57:51,560 --> 00:57:57,960
Speaker 1: respected and trusted sources, because it's Harry out there's a

860
00:57:58,040 --> 00:58:01,640
Speaker 1: there's a problem, there's a trust issue. It's really has

861
00:58:01,720 --> 00:58:07,920
Speaker 1: happened to a great extent, is that, um, everyone, everyone

862
00:58:08,120 --> 00:58:13,560
Speaker 1: is desperate for trust. Everyone is desperate to say yes, yes,

863
00:58:13,760 --> 00:58:19,000
Speaker 1: I you and I are together. Right, But but everyone,

864
00:58:19,120 --> 00:58:24,400
Speaker 1: there's so many agents that are doing that for their

865
00:58:24,400 --> 00:58:27,960
Speaker 1: absolute wrong reasons. They're just to create numbers, right, to

866
00:58:28,080 --> 00:58:37,480
Speaker 1: create your great numerical data allies and or votes, and uh.

867
00:58:38,240 --> 00:58:43,440
Speaker 1: Trust has to be trust has to be earned on

868
00:58:44,080 --> 00:58:48,080
Speaker 1: so many levels. And yet the methods for acquiring trust

869
00:58:48,120 --> 00:58:52,800
Speaker 1: to become so flimsy and easy. Now that I know

870
00:58:52,840 --> 00:58:57,080
Speaker 1: people that I really respect, and then they'll say something like, oh,

871
00:58:57,120 --> 00:58:59,400
Speaker 1: well you ever thought about this because blah blah blah.

872
00:58:59,400 --> 00:59:01,400
Speaker 1: I just so you're talking thinking about and I'm like, WHOA,

873
00:59:01,720 --> 00:59:05,680
Speaker 1: I didn't think you had that in you. I didn't

874
00:59:05,680 --> 00:59:08,040
Speaker 1: think I didn't think you were like that, you know,

875
00:59:08,320 --> 00:59:14,080
Speaker 1: conspiracies or whatever it is. And it's almost as if

876
00:59:14,120 --> 00:59:16,680
Speaker 1: you if you don't have an answer for something, people

877
00:59:16,720 --> 00:59:19,640
Speaker 1: won't trust you, Like if you don't have opinion about something,

878
00:59:19,680 --> 00:59:25,919
Speaker 1: people won't trust you. And and you know, what about

879
00:59:25,920 --> 00:59:32,600
Speaker 1: honoring people who who take the time to consolidate lots

880
00:59:32,600 --> 00:59:35,520
Speaker 1: of different options and make up their mind and who

881
00:59:35,520 --> 00:59:39,640
Speaker 1: are just you know, like I said, methodical Why why?

882
00:59:39,680 --> 00:59:41,280
Speaker 1: And the reason is, of course, it's because of the

883
00:59:41,280 --> 00:59:43,440
Speaker 1: way we frame time and what we're supposed to do,

884
00:59:43,560 --> 00:59:47,120
Speaker 1: like you're supposed to make all your decisions quickly, and

885
00:59:47,200 --> 00:59:50,000
Speaker 1: that the analog time is for for all intents and

886
00:59:50,040 --> 00:59:55,640
Speaker 1: purpose has been completely leveled. Right, Analog time is kind

887
00:59:55,680 --> 01:00:01,680
Speaker 1: of a part of human history, at least modern history

888
01:00:01,880 --> 01:00:04,920
Speaker 1: that seems to have disappeared. Ironically, you have to go

889
01:00:04,960 --> 01:00:07,240
Speaker 1: out of your way to get back into that kind

890
01:00:07,240 --> 01:00:10,880
Speaker 1: of time, which and and to a great sense of luxury. Right,

891
01:00:10,960 --> 01:00:14,720
Speaker 1: a lot of people escape to get that analog time back.

892
01:00:15,040 --> 01:00:18,000
Speaker 1: That that those moments where you slow down enough so

893
01:00:18,080 --> 01:00:20,440
Speaker 1: that you can trust on a humane level and not

894
01:00:20,520 --> 01:00:24,480
Speaker 1: just a political or ego centric level. So when we

895
01:00:24,560 --> 01:00:30,480
Speaker 1: think about the current landscape, you know, trust information, disinformation.

896
01:00:31,240 --> 01:00:36,720
Speaker 1: What's what's happening to people? This this sort of false

897
01:00:36,760 --> 01:00:40,960
Speaker 1: illusion of a periphery. I think about your work at

898
01:00:40,960 --> 01:00:46,560
Speaker 1: the Border. But before before I launched us into this

899
01:00:46,920 --> 01:00:49,840
Speaker 1: newer project, I feel like it would be remissed to

900
01:00:49,840 --> 01:00:54,920
Speaker 1: not discuss your movie Dick series, um because again on

901
01:00:54,920 --> 01:00:59,160
Speaker 1: on your interpretations of the historical political and literary movie

902
01:00:59,160 --> 01:01:01,160
Speaker 1: Dick feels like a big one to touch on, and

903
01:01:01,240 --> 01:01:04,760
Speaker 1: I I would just love for you to walk us

904
01:01:04,800 --> 01:01:08,160
Speaker 1: through that a bit, where the idea came from. You

905
01:01:08,160 --> 01:01:10,840
Speaker 1: know what what the project is about, how it's framed.

906
01:01:12,120 --> 01:01:18,520
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, um uh, well, I had never read the book.

907
01:01:18,880 --> 01:01:21,080
Speaker 1: I know that it's it's one of those things that

908
01:01:21,840 --> 01:01:24,640
Speaker 1: you know, people really push, push away, or they read

909
01:01:24,640 --> 01:01:27,960
Speaker 1: in high school for some horrible English teacher who thought

910
01:01:28,000 --> 01:01:31,320
Speaker 1: it was a gift from God, but they didn't that

911
01:01:31,440 --> 01:01:34,760
Speaker 1: you couldn't get into it. But I read it only,

912
01:01:35,080 --> 01:01:40,240
Speaker 1: you know, fairly recently, and and I couldn't believe how

913
01:01:40,280 --> 01:01:42,560
Speaker 1: pressing it was. I couldn't believe that it felt like

914
01:01:42,760 --> 01:01:51,080
Speaker 1: contemporary America on multiple levels. Uh. The biggest part, because

915
01:01:51,120 --> 01:01:54,760
Speaker 1: I could go on forever about about the novel was

916
01:01:54,840 --> 01:02:00,800
Speaker 1: that it seemed to say that America, the America's founding myth,

917
01:02:01,640 --> 01:02:08,000
Speaker 1: was antagonistic, that there was always another, it was there

918
01:02:08,560 --> 01:02:10,600
Speaker 1: was another that we need, that that we can only

919
01:02:10,640 --> 01:02:16,280
Speaker 1: identify ourselves around the notion in opposition to the other.

920
01:02:17,840 --> 01:02:23,400
Speaker 1: So this idea of an expansive utopian uh content that

921
01:02:23,480 --> 01:02:27,600
Speaker 1: was quote unquote discovered right. Well, of course it wasn't discovered,

922
01:02:27,640 --> 01:02:31,520
Speaker 1: and of course that it wasn't there's for the taking, right,

923
01:02:31,840 --> 01:02:34,400
Speaker 1: It was not. It was not, It was not for America.

924
01:02:34,440 --> 01:02:38,800
Speaker 1: America was not preordained. But America likes to think of

925
01:02:38,840 --> 01:02:45,120
Speaker 1: itself as being preordained because it it pushes itself into

926
01:02:45,160 --> 01:02:49,480
Speaker 1: a future of necessity rather than a future of condition. So, like,

927
01:02:49,720 --> 01:02:51,160
Speaker 1: you know, if you grew up in all and any

928
01:02:51,200 --> 01:02:54,600
Speaker 1: other country in the world, it's a really it's a mess, right,

929
01:02:54,680 --> 01:02:58,400
Speaker 1: it's a mess of histories. But America's central identity has

930
01:02:58,400 --> 01:03:04,000
Speaker 1: always been the poor towards uh, you know, you know,

931
01:03:04,160 --> 01:03:08,720
Speaker 1: the frontier spirit, right, like the myth, the central myth

932
01:03:08,760 --> 01:03:14,360
Speaker 1: of America is the rugged individual uh finding their own

933
01:03:15,160 --> 01:03:20,200
Speaker 1: place within a hostile environment. And Moby Dick is the

934
01:03:20,320 --> 01:03:26,120
Speaker 1: story of a incredibly brilliant but very deranged captain who's

935
01:03:26,160 --> 01:03:30,520
Speaker 1: willing to sail over the entire globe in order to

936
01:03:30,600 --> 01:03:33,840
Speaker 1: hunt down this one whale that did off his leg.

937
01:03:35,880 --> 01:03:38,880
Speaker 1: So the center of this story is this crazy story

938
01:03:39,000 --> 01:03:46,680
Speaker 1: about madness and paranoia and all sorts of stuff, and

939
01:03:46,680 --> 01:03:49,560
Speaker 1: and and when I read the book, it was during

940
01:03:49,880 --> 01:03:53,600
Speaker 1: the it was in two thousand six, during the Iraq War.

941
01:03:53,960 --> 01:03:58,479
Speaker 1: And literally am i as I'm reading this book, uh

942
01:03:58,600 --> 01:04:01,720
Speaker 1: Felusia has taking place. Ballafelusia was one of the most

943
01:04:01,760 --> 01:04:07,880
Speaker 1: you know, devastating operations for the Marines. And I'm thinking

944
01:04:07,920 --> 01:04:13,920
Speaker 1: about Saddam Hussein as the whale and President Bush as

945
01:04:14,040 --> 01:04:18,760
Speaker 1: um captain they have and this had already been spoken

946
01:04:18,800 --> 01:04:23,720
Speaker 1: about that that you know, Osama bin Lauden is the whale,

947
01:04:24,720 --> 01:04:28,360
Speaker 1: right like that We've always had these, not coronavirus, right.

948
01:04:28,440 --> 01:04:32,280
Speaker 1: Like I feel like even Trump's relationship to the I

949
01:04:32,320 --> 01:04:35,600
Speaker 1: think he calls it the great Unseen enemy, right or

950
01:04:35,640 --> 01:04:39,600
Speaker 1: that or worse, the Chinese virus. Right. He has to

951
01:04:39,680 --> 01:04:42,640
Speaker 1: posit it in a sense that it's it's not natural,

952
01:04:43,520 --> 01:04:47,000
Speaker 1: like the coronavirus is an extension of nature as much

953
01:04:47,000 --> 01:04:50,400
Speaker 1: as the leads outside of my window. Like just it

954
01:04:50,520 --> 01:04:53,120
Speaker 1: is an enemy. It's because it's because it's a it's

955
01:04:53,120 --> 01:04:57,240
Speaker 1: an existential threat. Right. But to college it in political terms,

956
01:04:58,000 --> 01:05:01,400
Speaker 1: let alone racial terms, is absolutely that's yet crazy and

957
01:05:01,440 --> 01:05:04,840
Speaker 1: that's certain. Yeah, That's what Ahab was all about, was

958
01:05:04,920 --> 01:05:10,680
Speaker 1: like like projecting all of his inabilities to find peace

959
01:05:10,800 --> 01:05:16,439
Speaker 1: within himself onto this thing that he would he would

960
01:05:16,600 --> 01:05:20,640
Speaker 1: literally take down his ship and all its crew in

961
01:05:20,760 --> 01:05:27,360
Speaker 1: order for him to get salvation from that confrontation. God,

962
01:05:27,400 --> 01:05:30,920
Speaker 1: it does feel oddly related, doesn't it, Because when I

963
01:05:31,040 --> 01:05:36,959
Speaker 1: when I look at the incredibly unfortunate circumstance of us

964
01:05:37,000 --> 01:05:42,080
Speaker 1: being supposedly led by a quote leader, but who exhibits

965
01:05:42,120 --> 01:05:46,720
Speaker 1: nothing but a repeated dereliction of duty, This desire to

966
01:05:47,160 --> 01:05:54,840
Speaker 1: make foreign m HM a virus, this desire to you know,

967
01:05:54,960 --> 01:05:59,200
Speaker 1: when a when a reporter asks why we're not testing.

968
01:05:59,440 --> 01:06:02,520
Speaker 1: We need to be testing. The lack of testing and

969
01:06:02,560 --> 01:06:07,600
Speaker 1: the lack of contact tracing is making the United States

970
01:06:07,600 --> 01:06:09,640
Speaker 1: fall victim to this virus in a way that no

971
01:06:09,680 --> 01:06:12,240
Speaker 1: other country has. We have the largest numbers in the world.

972
01:06:12,280 --> 01:06:18,280
Speaker 1: It's incredibly scary. And and he his responses asked China,

973
01:06:19,480 --> 01:06:21,840
Speaker 1: It's like, what does that even mean? And you know

974
01:06:21,880 --> 01:06:25,640
Speaker 1: the again, the conspiracy theories that have come out, people saying, well,

975
01:06:25,680 --> 01:06:29,680
Speaker 1: you know the lab in Wuhan. I want to be like, hey, guys,

976
01:06:29,720 --> 01:06:32,520
Speaker 1: you know there were eleven there's eleven labs around the

977
01:06:32,520 --> 01:06:36,240
Speaker 1: world studying coronaviruses, and we study them as a team.

978
01:06:36,280 --> 01:06:40,000
Speaker 1: You know, we we fund these governments in every country

979
01:06:40,000 --> 01:06:43,960
Speaker 1: to have their best researchers studying the kinds of zoonotic

980
01:06:44,080 --> 01:06:48,840
Speaker 1: viruses that make people sick, like, you know, so that

981
01:06:48,880 --> 01:06:52,080
Speaker 1: we don't have another plague, viruses like stars, things that

982
01:06:52,120 --> 01:06:57,320
Speaker 1: are incredibly dangerous to all of humanity. And and he

983
01:06:57,400 --> 01:07:00,480
Speaker 1: has this weird thing it seems to me as an

984
01:07:00,480 --> 01:07:03,840
Speaker 1: observer where if he can make it someone else's fault,

985
01:07:04,880 --> 01:07:10,160
Speaker 1: he doesn't have to take responsibility for not leading. You know.

986
01:07:10,280 --> 01:07:15,240
Speaker 1: It's it's almost like a parent whose kid falls down

987
01:07:15,240 --> 01:07:17,520
Speaker 1: and breaks their arm because they weren't looking, and they say, well,

988
01:07:17,760 --> 01:07:19,920
Speaker 1: this other parent was distracting me, And it's like, what

989
01:07:19,960 --> 01:07:21,920
Speaker 1: does that even mean? Take your kid to the hospital.

990
01:07:22,600 --> 01:07:27,600
Speaker 1: Why are we having this conversation? Completely irrelevant, it's completely irrelevant.

991
01:07:27,680 --> 01:07:32,160
Speaker 1: And yet it's it's stunning that in his mind, uh,

992
01:07:32,320 --> 01:07:36,080
Speaker 1: it's the most important thing that then it's that this

993
01:07:36,160 --> 01:07:39,520
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with me. I mean just certainly

994
01:07:39,520 --> 01:07:43,280
Speaker 1: said that's what he's saying, right, he's saying this has

995
01:07:43,320 --> 01:07:45,640
Speaker 1: nothing to do with me. Well, and saying it from

996
01:07:45,680 --> 01:07:49,120
Speaker 1: a place where he and everyone else in the White

997
01:07:49,120 --> 01:07:53,720
Speaker 1: House get tested every day, where we've we've now learned

998
01:07:53,800 --> 01:07:56,439
Speaker 1: that everyone in the White House is required to wear

999
01:07:56,480 --> 01:08:00,680
Speaker 1: a mask uh in in in in the White House

1000
01:08:00,680 --> 01:08:03,640
Speaker 1: on property and around him, But he won't wear a

1001
01:08:03,680 --> 01:08:06,080
Speaker 1: mask because he doesn't want to be seen doing so

1002
01:08:06,280 --> 01:08:10,760
Speaker 1: because again he thinks that makes him look weak or something,

1003
01:08:10,880 --> 01:08:14,760
Speaker 1: Whereas it's just what scientists are asking us to do.

1004
01:08:14,960 --> 01:08:19,160
Speaker 1: And you know, you see these poor these poor team members.

1005
01:08:19,200 --> 01:08:21,759
Speaker 1: You know, I just feel for Dr Fauci so much

1006
01:08:22,000 --> 01:08:24,880
Speaker 1: right now. You know, his trying to stay in good

1007
01:08:25,000 --> 01:08:30,760
Speaker 1: enough graces that he can remain in his position so

1008
01:08:30,800 --> 01:08:34,440
Speaker 1: that he can advise Americans, but also having to constantly

1009
01:08:34,720 --> 01:08:40,960
Speaker 1: clean up you know, this mess. It just it's so strange,

1010
01:08:40,960 --> 01:08:43,640
Speaker 1: and it it does. I hadn't thought about the parallel,

1011
01:08:44,040 --> 01:08:48,040
Speaker 1: uh to this current experience that we're all in together

1012
01:08:48,280 --> 01:08:51,960
Speaker 1: and and the kind of experience of the crew on

1013
01:08:52,040 --> 01:08:56,280
Speaker 1: Moby Dick's ship, but I am certainly thinking about it now. Well,

1014
01:08:56,280 --> 01:08:59,200
Speaker 1: it's it's a it's a it's a constant American. I mean,

1015
01:08:59,560 --> 01:09:02,720
Speaker 1: you know the story of racism the United States, uh,

1016
01:09:03,960 --> 01:09:05,640
Speaker 1: you know, whether it's the US Mexican border, or the

1017
01:09:05,680 --> 01:09:10,880
Speaker 1: Chinese Exclusion Act or the interment of Japanese Americans and

1018
01:09:11,000 --> 01:09:16,400
Speaker 1: Mansanar in other camps. Um. Speaking of which, the very

1019
01:09:16,439 --> 01:09:23,240
Speaker 1: first border fence was made, uh, like the first official

1020
01:09:23,280 --> 01:09:27,960
Speaker 1: border fence was made with the materials taken down after

1021
01:09:28,040 --> 01:09:33,519
Speaker 1: World War Two from a Japanese American internment camp. I

1022
01:09:33,520 --> 01:09:35,960
Speaker 1: want you to think about that for a minute, that

1023
01:09:36,880 --> 01:09:40,400
Speaker 1: the very material of the border wall separating United States

1024
01:09:40,400 --> 01:09:45,800
Speaker 1: and Mexico came from a Japanese American camp that was

1025
01:09:45,880 --> 01:09:50,120
Speaker 1: used to enclose American citizens, and that a later iteration

1026
01:09:50,600 --> 01:09:53,439
Speaker 1: was metal sheets that were left over from the Vietnam War.

1027
01:09:54,840 --> 01:10:00,240
Speaker 1: So the actual even the materiality of the fence is ingrained,

1028
01:10:00,000 --> 01:10:10,000
Speaker 1: an ingrained history of xenophobia and fear. And um, it's

1029
01:10:10,080 --> 01:10:13,800
Speaker 1: it's it's a consistent within American history. I mean, it's

1030
01:10:14,240 --> 01:10:17,160
Speaker 1: you know, it's not all of American history. But you

1031
01:10:17,160 --> 01:10:20,799
Speaker 1: don't have to dig very deep to find it, and

1032
01:10:20,800 --> 01:10:23,200
Speaker 1: and you don't have to dig very deep to relate

1033
01:10:23,240 --> 01:10:28,200
Speaker 1: it to the comments that the President made. It's all

1034
01:10:28,240 --> 01:10:31,040
Speaker 1: part and parcel of a kind of an underlying panic

1035
01:10:31,200 --> 01:10:34,000
Speaker 1: that somehow America is always under threat well, and that

1036
01:10:34,160 --> 01:10:36,400
Speaker 1: somehow we have to always be afraid of the other.

1037
01:10:37,560 --> 01:10:42,599
Speaker 1: When what does that even mean? Right? This this idea

1038
01:10:42,640 --> 01:10:47,960
Speaker 1: of otherism is so strange to me, as a huge species,

1039
01:10:48,000 --> 01:10:52,400
Speaker 1: It's so strange to me. It's it is it isn't

1040
01:10:52,479 --> 01:10:56,920
Speaker 1: it is hard word for it on some level, but

1041
01:10:56,920 --> 01:10:59,040
Speaker 1: but it is it. I mean, that's that's why all

1042
01:10:59,080 --> 01:11:04,960
Speaker 1: of this this misinformation works, right, It's just immediately plugs

1043
01:11:05,000 --> 01:11:09,160
Speaker 1: into our our sensibilities that we're under attack. I mean,

1044
01:11:09,320 --> 01:11:11,680
Speaker 1: I keep on going back to like some some in

1045
01:11:11,720 --> 01:11:14,080
Speaker 1: all of us, there's the we're afraid of the big

1046
01:11:14,120 --> 01:11:17,160
Speaker 1: bear coming into the interest of the cave. Like I think,

1047
01:11:17,200 --> 01:11:21,320
Speaker 1: like human beings, there's it just depends on where that

1048
01:11:21,360 --> 01:11:24,160
Speaker 1: pressure point is. But at some point we just panic.

1049
01:11:25,439 --> 01:11:30,559
Speaker 1: We lose all sense of of rational thought and empathy

1050
01:11:30,600 --> 01:11:36,080
Speaker 1: and compassion, and we just we just seek some kind

1051
01:11:36,080 --> 01:11:39,360
Speaker 1: of shelter or protection and we don't care what the

1052
01:11:39,400 --> 01:11:43,040
Speaker 1: consequences are. And that's just a that's a horrible position

1053
01:11:43,120 --> 01:11:46,120
Speaker 1: to still have in the in the contemporary world, when

1054
01:11:46,120 --> 01:11:49,160
Speaker 1: we have such access to raw power in terms of

1055
01:11:49,720 --> 01:11:55,439
Speaker 1: you know, um, internet data and nuclear weapons and you know,

1056
01:11:57,760 --> 01:12:00,680
Speaker 1: all sorts of commodities and the way we farm, like

1057
01:12:00,760 --> 01:12:03,759
Speaker 1: we have so much power and and it's the flip

1058
01:12:03,800 --> 01:12:06,719
Speaker 1: of a switch. If it's motivated by panic and fear,

1059
01:12:07,240 --> 01:12:11,719
Speaker 1: we're screwed because it affects ever. And again that goes

1060
01:12:11,800 --> 01:12:14,599
Speaker 1: back to your observation. There's just no such thing as

1061
01:12:14,600 --> 01:12:25,599
Speaker 1: a periphery. So it's funny because in going from that

1062
01:12:25,680 --> 01:12:29,680
Speaker 1: series into your present project, you know, talking about the

1063
01:12:29,720 --> 01:12:33,240
Speaker 1: work at the US Mexico border and how you've incorporated

1064
01:12:33,280 --> 01:12:35,639
Speaker 1: it into your art, it feels silly because I feel

1065
01:12:35,680 --> 01:12:37,720
Speaker 1: like we're already in it, We're already talking about it.

1066
01:12:37,720 --> 01:12:41,320
Speaker 1: It's it's always been there in a way. And you

1067
01:12:41,360 --> 01:12:45,559
Speaker 1: know you mentioned being acutely aware of the reality and

1068
01:12:45,560 --> 01:12:50,680
Speaker 1: the duality even as a child. When when did you

1069
01:12:50,720 --> 01:12:55,320
Speaker 1: decide to take all of that experience, those observations and

1070
01:12:55,439 --> 01:13:03,120
Speaker 1: actually begin creating these specific projects that went on the border, um,

1071
01:13:03,200 --> 01:13:05,920
Speaker 1: you know, to to great extent. I was when I

1072
01:13:05,960 --> 01:13:11,000
Speaker 1: got preoccupied with satellite you know, Google Earth, and started

1073
01:13:11,120 --> 01:13:14,920
Speaker 1: looking at the way Google because Google Earth is fascinating

1074
01:13:14,960 --> 01:13:18,599
Speaker 1: because you can see the Earth both, you know, without

1075
01:13:18,640 --> 01:13:22,880
Speaker 1: international boundaries, without cities, without any kind of documentation, and

1076
01:13:22,880 --> 01:13:25,120
Speaker 1: it looks one way. And then you overlay all that

1077
01:13:25,160 --> 01:13:28,240
Speaker 1: stuff and then you just see how all of this

1078
01:13:28,400 --> 01:13:31,400
Speaker 1: line drawing and all of this, you know, two great

1079
01:13:31,479 --> 01:13:37,040
Speaker 1: and compositional formatting creates a bigger reality than the Earth

1080
01:13:37,120 --> 01:13:40,240
Speaker 1: as its as its own thing. Right it used to

1081
01:13:40,240 --> 01:13:43,559
Speaker 1: be where boundaries were all natural, right, Well, there's those

1082
01:13:43,600 --> 01:13:46,160
Speaker 1: mountains behind us, and you know, really am in this

1083
01:13:46,360 --> 01:13:50,519
Speaker 1: valley and that river is where the next people let start, right,

1084
01:13:50,560 --> 01:13:55,799
Speaker 1: And there's always been inner tribal conflict, but it's always

1085
01:13:55,800 --> 01:13:57,840
Speaker 1: been through natural boundaries and kind of an understanding of

1086
01:13:57,920 --> 01:14:00,439
Speaker 1: place is a real place. Well, what what I started

1087
01:14:00,439 --> 01:14:02,560
Speaker 1: being fascinated by was with Sella photography, you could just

1088
01:14:02,600 --> 01:14:08,680
Speaker 1: see how completely abstract and absurd a lot of these

1089
01:14:08,680 --> 01:14:12,679
Speaker 1: boundaries are. And uh, you know in this straight line

1090
01:14:12,760 --> 01:14:15,320
Speaker 1: which is half of the Mexican US Mexico border, which

1091
01:14:15,320 --> 01:14:18,880
Speaker 1: was drawn with a pencil, or the Middle East, right,

1092
01:14:18,960 --> 01:14:21,960
Speaker 1: the entire Middle East was pretty much drawn into existence

1093
01:14:22,000 --> 01:14:29,160
Speaker 1: around nineteen nineteen, and you know, look at a look

1094
01:14:29,160 --> 01:14:31,360
Speaker 1: at the conflicts that happened. You have you know to

1095
01:14:31,439 --> 01:14:35,400
Speaker 1: some two great extent nomadic people's who are moving across borders,

1096
01:14:35,400 --> 01:14:38,679
Speaker 1: moved across or just spaces now of a sudden, they're

1097
01:14:38,680 --> 01:14:42,599
Speaker 1: moving across borders. Uh. So that that when I started

1098
01:14:42,600 --> 01:14:47,880
Speaker 1: looking at that those satellite maps, it started we thinking

1099
01:14:47,880 --> 01:14:51,559
Speaker 1: in terms of art and in terms of with within

1100
01:14:52,720 --> 01:14:56,240
Speaker 1: Within the history of abstract painting, there's been always this

1101
01:14:56,320 --> 01:14:59,760
Speaker 1: idea that it was sort of utopian and sort of

1102
01:15:00,040 --> 01:15:04,840
Speaker 1: host national list, meaning that abstraction was a language and

1103
01:15:04,840 --> 01:15:06,840
Speaker 1: you were mentioning albers has been a big influence on

1104
01:15:06,920 --> 01:15:11,000
Speaker 1: my work at the At the core of Alberts idea

1105
01:15:12,080 --> 01:15:16,880
Speaker 1: is this idea that shapes and color can speak for themselves,

1106
01:15:17,160 --> 01:15:19,519
Speaker 1: and that they don't have an agenda. They don't have

1107
01:15:19,520 --> 01:15:22,400
Speaker 1: a national agenda, they don't have a you know, everyone

1108
01:15:22,439 --> 01:15:25,920
Speaker 1: sees a shape, everyone sees a color, and they all

1109
01:15:26,720 --> 01:15:32,000
Speaker 1: see it equally. What what what I started to think

1110
01:15:32,000 --> 01:15:34,360
Speaker 1: about was how you could take that those same types

1111
01:15:34,479 --> 01:15:39,919
Speaker 1: of forms and digressions and they could be kind of sinister.

1112
01:15:40,320 --> 01:15:42,960
Speaker 1: Write a line, when is the when are you? What

1113
01:15:43,080 --> 01:15:45,960
Speaker 1: do you? When do you ever fear? Aligned? Well, when

1114
01:15:45,960 --> 01:15:49,240
Speaker 1: you cross the border right the minute any one of

1115
01:15:49,320 --> 01:15:53,200
Speaker 1: us crosses the border, we somehow feel differently. I always

1116
01:15:53,200 --> 01:15:55,560
Speaker 1: find that fascinating. I remember once being an Ecuador and

1117
01:15:56,720 --> 01:15:58,519
Speaker 1: you know, they has a little place it's kind of

1118
01:15:58,560 --> 01:16:00,479
Speaker 1: like four corners right where you can put one ft

1119
01:16:00,479 --> 01:16:03,439
Speaker 1: in northern hemisphere, and you know, I'm standing in the

1120
01:16:03,479 --> 01:16:07,320
Speaker 1: middle of the earth, and it's such a bizarre thing,

1121
01:16:07,320 --> 01:16:10,040
Speaker 1: and it's completely untrue because it's like you're you know,

1122
01:16:10,520 --> 01:16:12,439
Speaker 1: there's no middle of the earth right that it's a

1123
01:16:12,479 --> 01:16:14,640
Speaker 1: global it's a sphere, So how can there be a

1124
01:16:14,680 --> 01:16:17,640
Speaker 1: middle but we think of in those terms because of

1125
01:16:17,640 --> 01:16:21,480
Speaker 1: the poles, and again it's an opposition by polar opposition

1126
01:16:21,600 --> 01:16:25,760
Speaker 1: creates the hemispheres. The hemispheres create the hemisphere line, and

1127
01:16:25,800 --> 01:16:28,920
Speaker 1: the line creates difference. So when all of those things

1128
01:16:29,000 --> 01:16:32,519
Speaker 1: started to move into how I think about abstract painting,

1129
01:16:32,520 --> 01:16:36,000
Speaker 1: and the more I began to think, like with Trump's prototypes,

1130
01:16:36,760 --> 01:16:41,240
Speaker 1: they're they're thirty by thirty ft squares right there, purely

1131
01:16:41,360 --> 01:16:47,760
Speaker 1: almost platonic forms, and the square used in art has

1132
01:16:47,800 --> 01:16:50,400
Speaker 1: always been kind of liberating, right It's a way of

1133
01:16:50,479 --> 01:16:56,160
Speaker 1: thinking about, you know, a modular unit that's sort of mathematical,

1134
01:16:56,240 --> 01:16:59,320
Speaker 1: like math has thought it as being pure. And when

1135
01:16:59,320 --> 01:17:03,200
Speaker 1: I started seeing those squares on those prototypes, they seemed

1136
01:17:03,360 --> 01:17:07,400
Speaker 1: very much a part of a utopian ideal of geometry,

1137
01:17:07,760 --> 01:17:12,840
Speaker 1: but in practice were very sinister. And that's so the

1138
01:17:13,040 --> 01:17:16,000
Speaker 1: whole border theory project has been about sort of relate,

1139
01:17:16,240 --> 01:17:21,080
Speaker 1: relating the abstract with with the political. It's a great

1140
01:17:21,120 --> 01:17:26,800
Speaker 1: extent and and where those things interact, how personal does

1141
01:17:26,840 --> 01:17:31,400
Speaker 1: that feel for you? Well, it it's it is definitely,

1142
01:17:31,720 --> 01:17:36,240
Speaker 1: it's it's uh. It's an intellectual exercise to a great extent.

1143
01:17:36,439 --> 01:17:45,479
Speaker 1: Its instances aesthetic exercise. But um, the reason I started

1144
01:17:45,479 --> 01:17:48,920
Speaker 1: focusing on going to the border and moving away from

1145
01:17:49,000 --> 01:17:50,960
Speaker 1: satellite imagery is it all of a sudden it felt

1146
01:17:51,479 --> 01:17:53,479
Speaker 1: it felt it felt a little fake, right, It felt

1147
01:17:53,479 --> 01:17:56,120
Speaker 1: a little like too removed. Here I am a studio

1148
01:17:56,200 --> 01:17:59,760
Speaker 1: making foot taking photographs from satellite and I'm making these

1149
01:17:59,760 --> 01:18:03,080
Speaker 1: pain meetings based on it. That felt a little strange

1150
01:18:03,120 --> 01:18:05,679
Speaker 1: after a while, and then I started saying, I really

1151
01:18:05,680 --> 01:18:08,600
Speaker 1: need to spend more time at the border documenting with

1152
01:18:08,640 --> 01:18:12,839
Speaker 1: my own photography. And then, you know, it wasn't too

1153
01:18:13,479 --> 01:18:15,559
Speaker 1: much later that I'm at you know, I'm in the

1154
01:18:15,600 --> 01:18:21,320
Speaker 1: refugee camp uh in Tijuana, at the Manitoarez Sports Complex,

1155
01:18:21,439 --> 01:18:25,120
Speaker 1: seeing the real ramifications of all this stuff and incorporating

1156
01:18:25,160 --> 01:18:28,960
Speaker 1: that into my work. So I like to think of

1157
01:18:29,080 --> 01:18:32,200
Speaker 1: my work as being something that is honest in the

1158
01:18:32,280 --> 01:18:35,600
Speaker 1: sense that I am I'm not inherently a political activists,

1159
01:18:35,800 --> 01:18:38,880
Speaker 1: but I am absolutely connected to do it on whatever

1160
01:18:39,000 --> 01:18:43,679
Speaker 1: level that relates to the border. And also I am

1161
01:18:43,720 --> 01:18:45,439
Speaker 1: at a distance of three hund miles and being in

1162
01:18:45,479 --> 01:18:47,559
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, having my student Los Angeles. I'm not at

1163
01:18:47,560 --> 01:18:49,559
Speaker 1: the border on every day. I'm not I'm not someone

1164
01:18:49,600 --> 01:18:52,960
Speaker 1: who lives at the border right there. There are are

1165
01:18:53,240 --> 01:18:56,320
Speaker 1: artists that that grew up in Tijuana and went to

1166
01:18:56,360 --> 01:19:01,479
Speaker 1: school in San Diego right uh in the seventies, and

1167
01:19:02,479 --> 01:19:04,640
Speaker 1: those people they have a very different relationship to the

1168
01:19:04,640 --> 01:19:08,080
Speaker 1: word than I do. I'm trying to be honest about Like,

1169
01:19:09,200 --> 01:19:15,000
Speaker 1: I'm only a quarter Mexican, so I take that into account, right,

1170
01:19:15,000 --> 01:19:17,960
Speaker 1: It's like, it's not an autobiographical project. It's not a

1171
01:19:18,000 --> 01:19:22,040
Speaker 1: political project exclusively. It's part of someone who has spent

1172
01:19:22,080 --> 01:19:25,680
Speaker 1: their lives thinking of the sells them taking myself as

1173
01:19:25,720 --> 01:19:30,479
Speaker 1: an artist who takes into account the kind of obvious

1174
01:19:30,680 --> 01:19:34,519
Speaker 1: and subtle ways in which I've been informed by by

1175
01:19:34,560 --> 01:19:37,040
Speaker 1: the border. Well, and to be able to examine the

1176
01:19:37,080 --> 01:19:40,160
Speaker 1: ways in which you are of something and also removed

1177
01:19:40,240 --> 01:19:44,599
Speaker 1: from it, you know too, two things in that way

1178
01:19:44,720 --> 01:19:48,040
Speaker 1: can be true simultaneously. And and what I think is

1179
01:19:48,080 --> 01:19:52,639
Speaker 1: so interesting about it as a person who also grew

1180
01:19:52,720 --> 01:19:55,400
Speaker 1: up in Los Angeles, I I have friends who, by

1181
01:19:55,439 --> 01:19:57,280
Speaker 1: the way, grew up in Tijuana. We're going to school

1182
01:19:57,280 --> 01:20:01,439
Speaker 1: in San Diego. Um, so I of their experience, but

1183
01:20:01,600 --> 01:20:05,920
Speaker 1: again I am not of it, and I I don't

1184
01:20:05,960 --> 01:20:10,200
Speaker 1: have a personal, you know, experience in my family of

1185
01:20:10,240 --> 01:20:14,520
Speaker 1: the U s Mexico relationship. But I have personal experience

1186
01:20:14,560 --> 01:20:19,200
Speaker 1: of immigration, being that my grandmother came to the US

1187
01:20:19,280 --> 01:20:22,519
Speaker 1: from Italy on a boat, you know, came through Ellis Island.

1188
01:20:22,600 --> 01:20:26,080
Speaker 1: My dad immigrated here in the late sixties and became

1189
01:20:26,120 --> 01:20:32,080
Speaker 1: a citizen in the nineties. Um So it's interesting to

1190
01:20:32,240 --> 01:20:35,519
Speaker 1: realize that we all have these touch points, you know,

1191
01:20:35,560 --> 01:20:38,880
Speaker 1: we all have these degrees of closeness and separation to

1192
01:20:40,160 --> 01:20:46,759
Speaker 1: what being a citizen means, what being a neighbor means,

1193
01:20:46,800 --> 01:20:49,280
Speaker 1: what being an immigrant means. You know, many of these

1194
01:20:49,320 --> 01:20:54,640
Speaker 1: things are true for us simultaneously. And and why I

1195
01:20:54,840 --> 01:20:58,439
Speaker 1: enjoy having conversations like this and viewing art like yours

1196
01:20:58,520 --> 01:21:04,040
Speaker 1: is because I think, okay, it matters that we get

1197
01:21:04,240 --> 01:21:09,320
Speaker 1: still and check in with what all of this means,

1198
01:21:10,320 --> 01:21:15,520
Speaker 1: with what we might consider to be existing in our periphery,

1199
01:21:15,600 --> 01:21:20,799
Speaker 1: which is in fact not it is. You know, we

1200
01:21:20,800 --> 01:21:25,400
Speaker 1: we are, to your point, on this plane together. And

1201
01:21:25,400 --> 01:21:27,120
Speaker 1: and I think there are so many things that do

1202
01:21:27,240 --> 01:21:30,839
Speaker 1: depersonalize that, you know, the the satellite imagery is easier

1203
01:21:30,880 --> 01:21:35,120
Speaker 1: to look at than the neighbor who is threatened in

1204
01:21:35,120 --> 01:21:38,400
Speaker 1: a way that I am not. So whatever can bring

1205
01:21:38,479 --> 01:21:43,280
Speaker 1: us back to each other feels very exciting to me

1206
01:21:44,160 --> 01:21:50,280
Speaker 1: and important, and it's and it's and it's uh inexhaustible.

1207
01:21:50,520 --> 01:21:53,840
Speaker 1: It's it's beautifully inexhaustible. Right, you don't get tired of

1208
01:21:53,880 --> 01:21:57,240
Speaker 1: it because it's a it's a it's a compass heading

1209
01:21:57,560 --> 01:22:02,280
Speaker 1: and it and it just always allows you to focus

1210
01:22:02,560 --> 01:22:05,120
Speaker 1: on your starting point but not necessarily know where the

1211
01:22:05,200 --> 01:22:10,240
Speaker 1: endpoint is. And I think as creators, we this is

1212
01:22:10,240 --> 01:22:14,559
Speaker 1: where intuition is so important. I never questioned why this

1213
01:22:14,680 --> 01:22:17,600
Speaker 1: was something worth my while. I never thought, oh, I

1214
01:22:17,640 --> 01:22:21,599
Speaker 1: need to do something that's pseudo political, and you know,

1215
01:22:22,200 --> 01:22:25,280
Speaker 1: I never And it just felt right because it felt

1216
01:22:25,280 --> 01:22:27,880
Speaker 1: like it was meeting a lot of different needs within

1217
01:22:27,920 --> 01:22:33,880
Speaker 1: my psyche and within within my emotional state about reconciling

1218
01:22:34,200 --> 01:22:36,720
Speaker 1: where I am with who I am, with what I

1219
01:22:36,760 --> 01:22:41,439
Speaker 1: like and what I'm interested in. And so anyone who

1220
01:22:41,479 --> 01:22:44,040
Speaker 1: has a chance to do that, I think has the

1221
01:22:44,080 --> 01:22:50,800
Speaker 1: greatest It's just it's just incredibly profound. You you've said

1222
01:22:50,840 --> 01:22:55,000
Speaker 1: that you've found that this line that divides our two

1223
01:22:55,040 --> 01:22:59,639
Speaker 1: countries is something that we need to examine beyond culture

1224
01:22:59,640 --> 01:23:04,080
Speaker 1: and politics. And yet here we are having such deep

1225
01:23:04,120 --> 01:23:08,439
Speaker 1: conversation about both culture and politics. So what do you

1226
01:23:08,479 --> 01:23:10,720
Speaker 1: mean by that when when you when you say you

1227
01:23:10,760 --> 01:23:15,439
Speaker 1: want to look beyond that, where where do we look? Well,

1228
01:23:15,439 --> 01:23:19,320
Speaker 1: it's funny. I mean, in January, a colleague and I

1229
01:23:19,400 --> 01:23:24,280
Speaker 1: started recording the border. We started going down and I'm

1230
01:23:24,360 --> 01:23:26,680
Speaker 1: very hostile to the idea that all the information we

1231
01:23:26,800 --> 01:23:29,560
Speaker 1: get about the border is through news, you know, newscasts

1232
01:23:29,600 --> 01:23:33,800
Speaker 1: and news feeds and topical stories. The people that live

1233
01:23:33,840 --> 01:23:37,800
Speaker 1: along the border, um, it's in many cases their backyard.

1234
01:23:39,000 --> 01:23:42,240
Speaker 1: And I find it fascinating that the farther you are

1235
01:23:42,280 --> 01:23:44,879
Speaker 1: away from the US Mexican border, that there's a tendency

1236
01:23:44,920 --> 01:23:49,800
Speaker 1: to be more uh xenophobic. The closer you get to

1237
01:23:49,840 --> 01:23:54,040
Speaker 1: the board, people tend to be like, think it's ridiculous

1238
01:23:54,040 --> 01:23:57,840
Speaker 1: and disgraceful that there is a border that if you

1239
01:23:57,920 --> 01:24:02,080
Speaker 1: live in in the a West or like you think

1240
01:24:02,080 --> 01:24:05,240
Speaker 1: of this as a as an absolutely antagonistic relationship. So

1241
01:24:05,280 --> 01:24:08,639
Speaker 1: a lot of my work is about kind of moving

1242
01:24:08,680 --> 01:24:12,840
Speaker 1: away from that h polarized way of thinking about it.

1243
01:24:12,960 --> 01:24:16,640
Speaker 1: So what going down to the border to record, and

1244
01:24:16,680 --> 01:24:20,519
Speaker 1: what we're trying to do is use the sounds that

1245
01:24:20,560 --> 01:24:23,080
Speaker 1: you would never associate with the border, Things that things

1246
01:24:23,120 --> 01:24:26,280
Speaker 1: that wou that are just there, but they are never

1247
01:24:26,320 --> 01:24:31,000
Speaker 1: revealed because of the politics of the situation, right Uh,

1248
01:24:31,120 --> 01:24:33,240
Speaker 1: I mean I was struck with the very first thing.

1249
01:24:33,880 --> 01:24:36,640
Speaker 1: The very first thing we recorded was a swarm of

1250
01:24:36,720 --> 01:24:40,759
Speaker 1: bees along a creek that runs parallel to the border.

1251
01:24:41,360 --> 01:24:43,400
Speaker 1: Like when I thought about, oh I'm gonna record, I'm

1252
01:24:43,400 --> 01:24:44,920
Speaker 1: gonna go down the border. One of my first thing

1253
01:24:44,920 --> 01:24:49,040
Speaker 1: on the record, we purposely avoided the border checkpoints and

1254
01:24:49,160 --> 01:24:51,479
Speaker 1: we went to some more remote stretches and just to

1255
01:24:51,640 --> 01:24:56,200
Speaker 1: kind of cat make catalogs of sounds that were that

1256
01:24:56,320 --> 01:24:58,519
Speaker 1: were there. There are things that need people need to

1257
01:24:58,560 --> 01:25:01,320
Speaker 1: hear so that we sort of module are are thinking of.

1258
01:25:01,360 --> 01:25:05,639
Speaker 1: It was something a lot more I was used more poetic,

1259
01:25:05,720 --> 01:25:08,439
Speaker 1: but but it definitely like puts us in a different

1260
01:25:08,479 --> 01:25:15,480
Speaker 1: mindset well and somehow more natural, something more about the ecosystem,

1261
01:25:15,720 --> 01:25:22,400
Speaker 1: something more about the EBB and flow that existed to

1262
01:25:22,520 --> 01:25:26,120
Speaker 1: your point before we tore down internment camps and put

1263
01:25:26,200 --> 01:25:32,160
Speaker 1: up a border wall. I'm struck by conversations I've heard

1264
01:25:32,200 --> 01:25:36,720
Speaker 1: along you know, the border fence in those cities, the

1265
01:25:36,840 --> 01:25:41,960
Speaker 1: music that you get to listen to. Um there, to

1266
01:25:42,080 --> 01:25:47,200
Speaker 1: your point, there's so much that is not systematized and

1267
01:25:47,320 --> 01:25:51,840
Speaker 1: um about checking papers and we just we don't often

1268
01:25:51,880 --> 01:25:57,280
Speaker 1: get shown those things. Yeah, I mean, we we put

1269
01:25:57,320 --> 01:26:02,439
Speaker 1: contact mix on the border because of these the steel ballard,

1270
01:26:02,800 --> 01:26:08,760
Speaker 1: the sort of fifteen twenty ft long hollow steel posts.

1271
01:26:09,680 --> 01:26:14,000
Speaker 1: So listening, I mean, you know, it's it's it was

1272
01:26:14,840 --> 01:26:17,439
Speaker 1: very meaningful to me to listen to the wind hitting

1273
01:26:17,479 --> 01:26:20,479
Speaker 1: the tops of the posts and having that sound travel

1274
01:26:20,800 --> 01:26:25,439
Speaker 1: down inside the tubes of the steel supports recording those

1275
01:26:26,400 --> 01:26:31,200
Speaker 1: as you know, as as as important as the images

1276
01:26:31,240 --> 01:26:34,599
Speaker 1: of the border are, the physicality of it, the sort

1277
01:26:34,600 --> 01:26:38,960
Speaker 1: of texture of that space can can can be describing

1278
01:26:39,040 --> 01:26:43,960
Speaker 1: a lot of different types of ways. And um, you know, listening,

1279
01:26:44,000 --> 01:26:46,000
Speaker 1: you know, and we're talking about how Komba this this

1280
01:26:46,040 --> 01:26:48,599
Speaker 1: sort of town that was cut in half by the border.

1281
01:26:48,640 --> 01:26:52,640
Speaker 1: We recorded the town, the twin towns, how koombey and

1282
01:26:52,800 --> 01:26:56,600
Speaker 1: Kumbabacher across from each other, separated by the wall. We

1283
01:26:56,680 --> 01:27:01,599
Speaker 1: recorded the morning, like uh, the dawn between the two

1284
01:27:01,600 --> 01:27:07,960
Speaker 1: cities and hearing you know, roosters on one side and uh,

1285
01:27:08,720 --> 01:27:11,439
Speaker 1: you know, traffic on one side, Like just hearing this

1286
01:27:11,720 --> 01:27:15,360
Speaker 1: both cities rise at the same time. It was just

1287
01:27:15,439 --> 01:27:22,160
Speaker 1: really wonderful and and uh, yeah, there is a natural

1288
01:27:22,280 --> 01:27:26,600
Speaker 1: nous there that has to be understood because it counteracts

1289
01:27:26,600 --> 01:27:32,520
Speaker 1: the weight of of the border as a systemized enforcement

1290
01:27:32,680 --> 01:27:36,439
Speaker 1: of difference. We have to remind ourselves of it as

1291
01:27:36,479 --> 01:27:40,800
Speaker 1: an as a place of a continuum, and if we

1292
01:27:40,880 --> 01:27:47,840
Speaker 1: don't do that, then we lose sight of its true nature. Continueum,

1293
01:27:47,880 --> 01:27:50,640
Speaker 1: I really like that. And there's this great artists that

1294
01:27:50,680 --> 01:27:53,120
Speaker 1: have that have really worked with with that. I mean,

1295
01:27:53,160 --> 01:27:56,240
Speaker 1: I don't know if you saw the Teeter Totter Wall

1296
01:27:57,000 --> 01:28:01,639
Speaker 1: that Ronald Real did. Um. He's a professor of architecture

1297
01:28:01,640 --> 01:28:07,439
Speaker 1: at Berkeley, and he has a wonderful look called border

1298
01:28:07,439 --> 01:28:11,360
Speaker 1: Wallace Architecture, and it's all of these designers and architects

1299
01:28:11,360 --> 01:28:15,400
Speaker 1: thinking of different ways to re envision the border for example,

1300
01:28:15,439 --> 01:28:22,320
Speaker 1: to build a border wallace architecture. And he invited uh

1301
01:28:22,800 --> 01:28:25,880
Speaker 1: many many designers and architects to sort of reconfigure the

1302
01:28:25,880 --> 01:28:28,080
Speaker 1: space and you have all these different ideas of what

1303
01:28:28,120 --> 01:28:31,880
Speaker 1: the border could be. His was the Teeter Totter Wall,

1304
01:28:31,920 --> 01:28:34,160
Speaker 1: and he was actually made that right, used to use

1305
01:28:34,240 --> 01:28:37,880
Speaker 1: the border as a as a fulcrum for for play

1306
01:28:38,160 --> 01:28:43,400
Speaker 1: and for communications. But others have designed like libraries, right,

1307
01:28:43,479 --> 01:28:47,280
Speaker 1: like you make the space a place that's a library

1308
01:28:47,280 --> 01:28:51,960
Speaker 1: where you where both sides could come and and talk interface. Uh,

1309
01:28:52,680 --> 01:28:57,360
Speaker 1: have have places to calm down, read like you could.

1310
01:28:57,400 --> 01:28:59,240
Speaker 1: You could make the porter could be so much more

1311
01:28:59,280 --> 01:29:04,880
Speaker 1: interesting and so much more to its actual I don't know,

1312
01:29:04,920 --> 01:29:07,599
Speaker 1: to a more generous self than it is. We've taken

1313
01:29:07,600 --> 01:29:11,320
Speaker 1: it to the end extreme of military fortress. We can

1314
01:29:11,360 --> 01:29:14,000
Speaker 1: still have the United States in Mexico. That's not the question.

1315
01:29:14,600 --> 01:29:17,040
Speaker 1: The question is, you know, people always kind of like, well,

1316
01:29:17,080 --> 01:29:18,800
Speaker 1: you either have a wall or it's open borders, right,

1317
01:29:18,800 --> 01:29:20,519
Speaker 1: It's like it's got to be one or the other.

1318
01:29:21,120 --> 01:29:25,560
Speaker 1: But the fact is that, you know, we could devise

1319
01:29:25,920 --> 01:29:32,040
Speaker 1: systems that allow for community I think of national communities

1320
01:29:32,200 --> 01:29:38,640
Speaker 1: rather than national players. When when you think about that militarization,

1321
01:29:38,920 --> 01:29:42,000
Speaker 1: I'm I'm curious. You've been working on this project for

1322
01:29:42,040 --> 01:29:46,519
Speaker 1: a long time now, and obviously in the last four

1323
01:29:46,600 --> 01:29:53,600
Speaker 1: years with the Trump administration taking ahold of the country.

1324
01:29:53,920 --> 01:29:59,920
Speaker 1: Have the policies that we've seen changing the um intensification

1325
01:30:00,040 --> 01:30:04,120
Speaker 1: and of border trauma, the separation of families at the border.

1326
01:30:05,200 --> 01:30:10,120
Speaker 1: I have those things affected your work with the wall,

1327
01:30:10,479 --> 01:30:13,640
Speaker 1: both in your access to it and in your perspective

1328
01:30:13,680 --> 01:30:19,480
Speaker 1: of it. Oh? Yeah, I mean it's it's those situations.

1329
01:30:19,560 --> 01:30:23,720
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a human tragedy, and my my impulse

1330
01:30:23,920 --> 01:30:28,400
Speaker 1: is that the best reaction to it is immediate action.

1331
01:30:28,439 --> 01:30:32,760
Speaker 1: It's not to make art, right, we volunteer. You give

1332
01:30:32,800 --> 01:30:36,360
Speaker 1: money to like border angels and group different groups that

1333
01:30:37,640 --> 01:30:40,760
Speaker 1: you know, uh, you know places that that you need

1334
01:30:40,840 --> 01:30:44,439
Speaker 1: money just to have water for for migrants crossing in

1335
01:30:44,479 --> 01:30:48,120
Speaker 1: the middle of death days of way stations that with Yeah,

1336
01:30:48,120 --> 01:30:51,800
Speaker 1: the most simple things, right, like like uh, fifty gallon

1337
01:30:51,880 --> 01:30:54,559
Speaker 1: barrels of water with flags attached to it, so that

1338
01:30:54,640 --> 01:30:56,439
Speaker 1: people know that that's a place where they can get

1339
01:30:56,439 --> 01:31:00,519
Speaker 1: water as they cross the United States. Art seems really

1340
01:31:00,520 --> 01:31:05,960
Speaker 1: feeble in comparison to to direct human tragedy, right, So

1341
01:31:06,680 --> 01:31:10,439
Speaker 1: that aspect of of of my relationship is very different

1342
01:31:10,439 --> 01:31:14,799
Speaker 1: than the making our part. But some of the images

1343
01:31:14,840 --> 01:31:17,960
Speaker 1: I did have taken of, say the refugee camps, it

1344
01:31:18,080 --> 01:31:21,880
Speaker 1: has it has made itself into my work mainly as

1345
01:31:21,880 --> 01:31:27,040
Speaker 1: a way of dispelling the way in which like journalistic

1346
01:31:27,040 --> 01:31:31,920
Speaker 1: photographers frame everything. So journalists often look for them the

1347
01:31:31,960 --> 01:31:35,120
Speaker 1: sound bite photograph, right, they look for the way in

1348
01:31:35,120 --> 01:31:38,240
Speaker 1: which you could say, here's all the information in one

1349
01:31:38,280 --> 01:31:42,679
Speaker 1: photograph and it looks very um and because these these

1350
01:31:42,720 --> 01:31:46,799
Speaker 1: these people are so good as photographers. It often looks

1351
01:31:48,280 --> 01:31:53,400
Speaker 1: oddly aestheticized, like it's it. I don't know how it's funny.

1352
01:31:53,479 --> 01:31:57,000
Speaker 1: Human beings we we we react to tragedy based on

1353
01:31:57,080 --> 01:32:03,800
Speaker 1: empathy often can be exploited in art in such a

1354
01:32:03,800 --> 01:32:08,280
Speaker 1: way where your pain is greater than their pain. I

1355
01:32:08,320 --> 01:32:10,160
Speaker 1: don't know, Like, I don't know how to explain. It's

1356
01:32:10,200 --> 01:32:15,760
Speaker 1: like you wound up, you wind up feeling bad. Really,

1357
01:32:15,800 --> 01:32:17,880
Speaker 1: there's only one thing that happens. Their situation needs to

1358
01:32:17,920 --> 01:32:24,040
Speaker 1: be better, right, you need we need to address some

1359
01:32:24,120 --> 01:32:28,400
Speaker 1: of these situations immediately. There's situations all over the world.

1360
01:32:30,040 --> 01:32:31,800
Speaker 1: The best thing to do is to donate if you

1361
01:32:31,800 --> 01:32:35,120
Speaker 1: have money, right to two NGOs and two two organizations

1362
01:32:35,400 --> 01:32:37,920
Speaker 1: as directly there. That's they're gonna do. There's gonna be

1363
01:32:37,920 --> 01:32:41,080
Speaker 1: a lot more work than anything I do. However, there

1364
01:32:41,120 --> 01:32:45,000
Speaker 1: are artists that to take a more confidential, confrontational approach

1365
01:32:45,120 --> 01:32:49,720
Speaker 1: with political activism. Um And one thing I've learned from

1366
01:32:50,160 --> 01:32:55,120
Speaker 1: uh these artists group called post Commodity, is that they

1367
01:32:55,200 --> 01:32:57,080
Speaker 1: really believe that if you're going to make work about

1368
01:32:57,120 --> 01:33:00,920
Speaker 1: the border, you actually do have to interface significantly with

1369
01:33:01,000 --> 01:33:04,040
Speaker 1: communities along the border. So that's something I've I've definitely

1370
01:33:04,080 --> 01:33:07,479
Speaker 1: started to incorporate into the work more is not just

1371
01:33:07,880 --> 01:33:12,080
Speaker 1: seeing it solely from a kind of aesthetic view, but

1372
01:33:12,160 --> 01:33:18,599
Speaker 1: also really start to incorporate the voices at the border.

1373
01:33:19,760 --> 01:33:24,200
Speaker 1: It is a never ending project, right um and and again,

1374
01:33:24,439 --> 01:33:28,559
Speaker 1: the further you get into it, the more the more

1375
01:33:28,640 --> 01:33:32,680
Speaker 1: wonderful and subtle it is. But also the voices can

1376
01:33:32,760 --> 01:33:37,200
Speaker 1: get much louder and more emphatic. And that's something that

1377
01:33:37,640 --> 01:33:40,040
Speaker 1: I'm continuing to work on, and it is a it

1378
01:33:40,200 --> 01:33:46,880
Speaker 1: is a balance between immediate aid action activism and the

1379
01:33:47,000 --> 01:33:52,639
Speaker 1: expression that you, as an individual feel called to create.

1380
01:33:55,040 --> 01:33:59,320
Speaker 1: I do think that to your point, a lot of

1381
01:33:59,400 --> 01:34:04,200
Speaker 1: people get desensitized to these photojournalist images, not to say

1382
01:34:04,240 --> 01:34:06,800
Speaker 1: they aren't beautiful or important. They are, but when we

1383
01:34:06,960 --> 01:34:10,840
Speaker 1: see so much of something, we can begin to dull

1384
01:34:11,200 --> 01:34:15,680
Speaker 1: to it. Which takes me back to what I was

1385
01:34:15,840 --> 01:34:18,680
Speaker 1: explaining to the listeners at the beginning of this conversation,

1386
01:34:18,800 --> 01:34:23,200
Speaker 1: this magnetic draw that I had to your work at

1387
01:34:23,240 --> 01:34:28,160
Speaker 1: the Annenberg Space, and it makes me think, you know,

1388
01:34:28,560 --> 01:34:32,880
Speaker 1: art has the power to change minds in a way

1389
01:34:33,200 --> 01:34:36,439
Speaker 1: at times that other mediums just can't. They don't they

1390
01:34:36,479 --> 01:34:40,320
Speaker 1: don't cut to the emotional core and then open us

1391
01:34:40,400 --> 01:34:43,280
Speaker 1: to the emotional experience of the subject in the piece.

1392
01:34:44,520 --> 01:34:47,720
Speaker 1: Why do you think that art can be such a

1393
01:34:47,840 --> 01:34:53,040
Speaker 1: great mind changer or mind opener. I'm primarily because it's

1394
01:34:53,080 --> 01:35:00,160
Speaker 1: deductive in a way that few things are. H I

1395
01:35:00,160 --> 01:35:04,800
Speaker 1: I feel like when i'm I'm literally trying to seduce

1396
01:35:05,720 --> 01:35:09,200
Speaker 1: the viewer to look at the work. I often one

1397
01:35:09,240 --> 01:35:12,320
Speaker 1: of my main strategies is to make something interesting enough

1398
01:35:13,160 --> 01:35:19,080
Speaker 1: and visually interesting enough to to let you give you

1399
01:35:19,160 --> 01:35:21,160
Speaker 1: a moment to look a little deeper. So like when

1400
01:35:21,200 --> 01:35:23,320
Speaker 1: you were saying you you were attracted to the color

1401
01:35:23,680 --> 01:35:28,839
Speaker 1: right in in those Paranoide architecture people, that was intentional.

1402
01:35:29,360 --> 01:35:32,320
Speaker 1: That's exactly what I wanted to have happened. I wanted

1403
01:35:32,360 --> 01:35:34,080
Speaker 1: you to not know that it was about the border.

1404
01:35:34,880 --> 01:35:37,280
Speaker 1: I wanted you to just sort of be drawn to it.

1405
01:35:37,680 --> 01:35:39,600
Speaker 1: And then, as you said, the very steps that you

1406
01:35:39,640 --> 01:35:42,200
Speaker 1: were talking about, the more that you saw the central images,

1407
01:35:43,520 --> 01:35:45,640
Speaker 1: did you realize, oh my god, this is about this

1408
01:35:45,840 --> 01:35:49,640
Speaker 1: is into something else. And that's that's what art can do.

1409
01:35:50,000 --> 01:35:53,120
Speaker 1: It's not give you the obvious picture. I can give

1410
01:35:53,200 --> 01:35:59,080
Speaker 1: you the important picture. What we confuse obvious from portant

1411
01:35:59,160 --> 01:36:07,120
Speaker 1: all the time, and and and it are never dwells ever,

1412
01:36:07,400 --> 01:36:10,880
Speaker 1: dwells on the obvious that aren't always dwells on the

1413
01:36:11,680 --> 01:36:16,240
Speaker 1: the latent. You know what, what what comes after the second, third, fourth,

1414
01:36:16,320 --> 01:36:23,360
Speaker 1: fifth movement and work? And I think with that too.

1415
01:36:24,400 --> 01:36:27,519
Speaker 1: Unlike a lot of forms of communication, art can continue

1416
01:36:27,560 --> 01:36:30,720
Speaker 1: to resonate even when you're not around it. You know,

1417
01:36:31,320 --> 01:36:34,080
Speaker 1: photograph or a good film or a good piece of

1418
01:36:34,160 --> 01:36:39,439
Speaker 1: music and linger in your mind. Not just because it's catchy,

1419
01:36:40,320 --> 01:36:43,360
Speaker 1: although that does happen too, but it can linger because

1420
01:36:43,439 --> 01:36:46,479
Speaker 1: you still have questions about it. Why Why did that? Why?

1421
01:36:46,800 --> 01:36:49,280
Speaker 1: Why was it that? Why did that? Artists decide to

1422
01:36:49,320 --> 01:36:52,400
Speaker 1: take Trump's prototype walls and turn them into kind of

1423
01:36:52,439 --> 01:36:57,479
Speaker 1: a weird abstract theater of color like why, And so

1424
01:36:57,840 --> 01:37:01,080
Speaker 1: that that feedback with then the mind and the viewer

1425
01:37:01,920 --> 01:37:08,000
Speaker 1: um creates a virtual rereading of the experience, and and

1426
01:37:08,360 --> 01:37:11,360
Speaker 1: so you walk away with having more questions and answers.

1427
01:37:11,600 --> 01:37:14,439
Speaker 1: That's what art's good at. And that's why I love it,

1428
01:37:14,520 --> 01:37:19,400
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, that's it fulfills that that otherwise

1429
01:37:19,520 --> 01:37:24,200
Speaker 1: troubling relationship with information and experience and quick on a

1430
01:37:24,360 --> 01:37:32,519
Speaker 1: on a more consistent note of sustainability and regeneration. I

1431
01:37:32,600 --> 01:37:38,680
Speaker 1: love I love that about art did too the intimacy

1432
01:37:38,760 --> 01:37:42,880
Speaker 1: of it really, because what's interesting is whether you you

1433
01:37:43,120 --> 01:37:46,280
Speaker 1: use the word seductive. To me, art feels so intimate

1434
01:37:47,080 --> 01:37:52,439
Speaker 1: and all of those words are representative of a space

1435
01:37:52,640 --> 01:37:56,320
Speaker 1: that is within you know that that really is personal,

1436
01:37:56,439 --> 01:37:59,400
Speaker 1: that is in the heart and the body. And I

1437
01:37:59,479 --> 01:38:04,000
Speaker 1: think about a way that it can put us inside

1438
01:38:04,040 --> 01:38:07,120
Speaker 1: of ourselves and also put the subjects inside of us.

1439
01:38:07,200 --> 01:38:12,320
Speaker 1: It creates a closeness when you think about that closeness,

1440
01:38:12,479 --> 01:38:17,120
Speaker 1: the intimate experience that people have when they are viewing

1441
01:38:17,240 --> 01:38:23,120
Speaker 1: your art. When you're working on a series, do you

1442
01:38:24,600 --> 01:38:27,559
Speaker 1: do you think about how people will interpret it? Can

1443
01:38:27,640 --> 01:38:30,599
Speaker 1: you not be bothered to do that? Do you want

1444
01:38:30,720 --> 01:38:33,360
Speaker 1: people to interpret your work in their own way or

1445
01:38:33,400 --> 01:38:35,360
Speaker 1: are you really hoping that they will see it in

1446
01:38:35,400 --> 01:38:37,120
Speaker 1: the way that you see it? What? What is that

1447
01:38:37,439 --> 01:38:43,640
Speaker 1: experience like as an artist? Uh? You know, Uh, I

1448
01:38:43,760 --> 01:38:47,519
Speaker 1: like it when I'm impressed by my own work. And

1449
01:38:47,640 --> 01:38:49,800
Speaker 1: by that I don't mean by like in an ego sense,

1450
01:38:50,320 --> 01:38:54,280
Speaker 1: like literally, I love the moment when I like, I'll

1451
01:38:54,320 --> 01:38:56,679
Speaker 1: work in the studio for hours and I go, Jesus,

1452
01:38:56,760 --> 01:38:59,280
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm not I don't know what I'm doing.

1453
01:38:59,479 --> 01:39:02,320
Speaker 1: It's it's just it just feels like an incredible up

1454
01:39:02,320 --> 01:39:05,280
Speaker 1: and struggle, and I'll come back the next day and

1455
01:39:05,400 --> 01:39:09,960
Speaker 1: it's like like you know, a genie had put something

1456
01:39:10,200 --> 01:39:13,840
Speaker 1: magical on the wall, Like it feels. It feels as

1457
01:39:13,840 --> 01:39:16,200
Speaker 1: if I didn't make it. It feels as if it

1458
01:39:16,280 --> 01:39:18,439
Speaker 1: came out from some other source. And when I get

1459
01:39:18,520 --> 01:39:24,200
Speaker 1: that real like sort of ecstatic idea that the things

1460
01:39:24,280 --> 01:39:31,080
Speaker 1: I've been working on, when looked, look refreshing rather than oh,

1461
01:39:31,160 --> 01:39:35,439
Speaker 1: it's exactly the way I wanted it to look. So

1462
01:39:36,080 --> 01:39:38,160
Speaker 1: I have you know, you have to you have to

1463
01:39:38,520 --> 01:39:43,800
Speaker 1: not look at your work to see it. Ah Uh.

1464
01:39:44,040 --> 01:39:49,759
Speaker 1: You have to put it away mentally and visually sometimes

1465
01:39:49,840 --> 01:39:52,080
Speaker 1: in order just to be have a fresh look at it.

1466
01:39:52,479 --> 01:39:55,240
Speaker 1: And then if it does impress you, not because of

1467
01:39:55,320 --> 01:39:58,400
Speaker 1: your skills, but because it just it sort of has

1468
01:39:58,479 --> 01:40:01,240
Speaker 1: its own relational harmony, It has its own little dance

1469
01:40:01,320 --> 01:40:05,479
Speaker 1: that's doing on his own. That that's when I feel

1470
01:40:05,520 --> 01:40:07,400
Speaker 1: really gratified, because I know that's what's gonna happen to

1471
01:40:07,439 --> 01:40:11,519
Speaker 1: other people. And that's a very subjective thing. But you know,

1472
01:40:11,720 --> 01:40:16,040
Speaker 1: with enough making of art, one begins to trust. Uh,

1473
01:40:17,040 --> 01:40:21,200
Speaker 1: your little victory laps uh that you get from seeing

1474
01:40:21,200 --> 01:40:23,400
Speaker 1: your own work, like you you see, oh, this is

1475
01:40:23,479 --> 01:40:26,240
Speaker 1: this is this is a work that's thriving. Right, It's

1476
01:40:26,360 --> 01:40:30,080
Speaker 1: it's self propelled. And when I when I see that happening,

1477
01:40:30,400 --> 01:40:32,240
Speaker 1: I know that that's going to happen for other people

1478
01:40:34,320 --> 01:40:38,439
Speaker 1: like that that that parent architecture was a series. This

1479
01:40:38,520 --> 01:40:41,519
Speaker 1: is my first digital series, right, I've never really worked

1480
01:40:42,200 --> 01:40:46,960
Speaker 1: with photoshop to that extent, combined photography with it. But

1481
01:40:47,080 --> 01:40:50,680
Speaker 1: when I when I, when I started getting towards the

1482
01:40:50,800 --> 01:40:54,160
Speaker 1: final result, it seemed like I was sort of fascinated

1483
01:40:54,240 --> 01:40:56,920
Speaker 1: by it. It seemed like a kind of like an

1484
01:40:56,960 --> 01:41:01,439
Speaker 1: alternative portfolio I'd find in a library from a completely

1485
01:41:01,479 --> 01:41:04,960
Speaker 1: different culture. Like it felt very strange, but it felt

1486
01:41:05,120 --> 01:41:08,240
Speaker 1: very attractive. And once they knew that started to happen,

1487
01:41:08,320 --> 01:41:10,679
Speaker 1: I realized that I was on something that other people

1488
01:41:10,760 --> 01:41:14,160
Speaker 1: could access to. It's it's it's all are making artists

1489
01:41:14,160 --> 01:41:19,200
Speaker 1: about about finding um People say it's like finding your

1490
01:41:19,200 --> 01:41:21,080
Speaker 1: own voice, and I really don't like that. I think

1491
01:41:21,120 --> 01:41:24,000
Speaker 1: it's more like finding your own ear. It's like the echo.

1492
01:41:24,479 --> 01:41:26,760
Speaker 1: Your voice does its thing independent of you, but if

1493
01:41:26,800 --> 01:41:30,120
Speaker 1: it here it sounds good after it bounces off against

1494
01:41:30,160 --> 01:41:33,479
Speaker 1: the wall, then it's good. Like finding your ear is

1495
01:41:33,520 --> 01:41:38,479
Speaker 1: really where it's at that's really interesting. Well, I for

1496
01:41:38,600 --> 01:41:43,800
Speaker 1: one can confirm how you know, striking the experience was,

1497
01:41:43,880 --> 01:41:45,760
Speaker 1: because now I have four of those pieces up in

1498
01:41:45,840 --> 01:41:52,200
Speaker 1: my home. Perfect. Yeah, it's very it's very cool. I'm

1499
01:41:52,360 --> 01:41:57,320
Speaker 1: very very proud to on them. I'm very honored things.

1500
01:41:58,880 --> 01:42:01,240
Speaker 1: So when we talk about this project, you know, the

1501
01:42:01,760 --> 01:42:07,800
Speaker 1: photographs of the wall, samples, the recordings that you're taking. Um,

1502
01:42:08,080 --> 01:42:09,720
Speaker 1: some of the things I was able to see when

1503
01:42:09,760 --> 01:42:13,880
Speaker 1: I came to tour your studio. What how would you

1504
01:42:14,000 --> 01:42:17,280
Speaker 1: describe this project that you are working on now? Where

1505
01:42:17,400 --> 01:42:20,840
Speaker 1: where is this leading you? That's interesting? Well? This this

1506
01:42:21,280 --> 01:42:26,560
Speaker 1: this sound the sound works are very important. Um, the

1507
01:42:26,760 --> 01:42:30,559
Speaker 1: idea that this is going to be this uh uh.

1508
01:42:31,800 --> 01:42:37,680
Speaker 1: I have visions of of of cutting an album, right

1509
01:42:37,760 --> 01:42:40,559
Speaker 1: because I think records are kind of fascinating as objects

1510
01:42:40,640 --> 01:42:45,640
Speaker 1: that evoke sound. Using the border recordings and we're going

1511
01:42:45,720 --> 01:42:47,400
Speaker 1: to play with them, we're not going to make music.

1512
01:42:48,040 --> 01:42:50,040
Speaker 1: We are trying to make and they're not field recording,

1513
01:42:50,120 --> 01:42:52,680
Speaker 1: So we're going to try and do something that's a

1514
01:42:52,800 --> 01:42:56,960
Speaker 1: hybrid where the sound of the border is extracted. Is

1515
01:42:57,080 --> 01:42:59,680
Speaker 1: it creates like an environment in the sense that you

1516
01:42:59,760 --> 01:43:03,120
Speaker 1: can you could listen to this and experience the border

1517
01:43:03,200 --> 01:43:05,439
Speaker 1: without it being physically in front of you, which is

1518
01:43:05,479 --> 01:43:09,360
Speaker 1: the same quality that the works on paper and paintings have,

1519
01:43:10,040 --> 01:43:14,880
Speaker 1: Like how do you experience something without photography or without

1520
01:43:15,000 --> 01:43:17,160
Speaker 1: you know, film, Like, how do you experience it as

1521
01:43:17,439 --> 01:43:21,240
Speaker 1: my experience through you know, the way I see the border.

1522
01:43:22,160 --> 01:43:25,679
Speaker 1: So the projects are in a way, I've been thinking

1523
01:43:25,680 --> 01:43:28,400
Speaker 1: a lot more about bringing the physicality of the border

1524
01:43:28,520 --> 01:43:33,599
Speaker 1: to you personally, and so one the last a couple

1525
01:43:33,600 --> 01:43:37,640
Speaker 1: of visits was I started taking these these small boulders

1526
01:43:38,400 --> 01:43:45,080
Speaker 1: from the border and putting them in my studio and uh,

1527
01:43:47,160 --> 01:43:50,120
Speaker 1: thinking about casting them out of steel so that they

1528
01:43:50,400 --> 01:43:52,800
Speaker 1: are the same material as the border, but have the

1529
01:43:52,880 --> 01:43:58,040
Speaker 1: same shape and crags and crevices of the actual thing.

1530
01:43:58,240 --> 01:44:04,080
Speaker 1: So there's a there's a idea of the site non site,

1531
01:44:04,240 --> 01:44:08,920
Speaker 1: the idea of that there's a sort of space of

1532
01:44:09,280 --> 01:44:13,120
Speaker 1: documentation but also a space of presence. Even though they

1533
01:44:13,160 --> 01:44:17,760
Speaker 1: are you know, miles and miles and miles apart, they

1534
01:44:17,920 --> 01:44:24,479
Speaker 1: still describe each other completely. So all the work is

1535
01:44:24,479 --> 01:44:31,000
Speaker 1: getting into some extent more of like weirdly, more archaeological

1536
01:44:31,760 --> 01:44:38,559
Speaker 1: or more um. Yeah, So the the paintings I'm working

1537
01:44:38,600 --> 01:44:43,479
Speaker 1: on now are images of the ground like through these odd,

1538
01:44:44,160 --> 01:44:48,680
Speaker 1: very dry photographs of literally the border itself, like the

1539
01:44:49,240 --> 01:44:53,080
Speaker 1: ground at the border, and then through a combination of

1540
01:44:54,000 --> 01:44:57,400
Speaker 1: photography and painting, I'm making them in these kind of

1541
01:44:57,920 --> 01:45:01,680
Speaker 1: like almost radioactive spaces that the psychically dense spaces, and

1542
01:45:01,760 --> 01:45:06,360
Speaker 1: the college was pushed, the linear movements are pushed so

1543
01:45:06,520 --> 01:45:09,080
Speaker 1: that you're in first glance, they look like abstract paintings,

1544
01:45:09,120 --> 01:45:12,760
Speaker 1: but they and they're very vibrant, but really there their

1545
01:45:12,840 --> 01:45:15,439
Speaker 1: documents of the border itself, and not just the border,

1546
01:45:15,520 --> 01:45:18,280
Speaker 1: but also my experience of the border. So everything is

1547
01:45:18,320 --> 01:45:24,559
Speaker 1: starting to have this kind of smaller view um kind

1548
01:45:24,600 --> 01:45:27,400
Speaker 1: of a more of a microscopic view of the land itself.

1549
01:45:27,479 --> 01:45:30,160
Speaker 1: I mean, one of the oddest experiences I had a

1550
01:45:30,280 --> 01:45:33,519
Speaker 1: few months ago was, you know, they're continually building new

1551
01:45:33,600 --> 01:45:37,800
Speaker 1: stretches of border wall and I was able to we

1552
01:45:38,160 --> 01:45:41,240
Speaker 1: we went to a section which for some reason nobody

1553
01:45:41,360 --> 01:45:44,760
Speaker 1: was there, where there was a fence that just ended,

1554
01:45:45,520 --> 01:45:48,640
Speaker 1: and then there were trenches where new concrete is going

1555
01:45:48,680 --> 01:45:51,799
Speaker 1: to be poured and new fences are going to be installed.

1556
01:45:52,560 --> 01:45:55,760
Speaker 1: And I was able to get inside those trenches, like

1557
01:45:56,000 --> 01:46:00,760
Speaker 1: literally to be in the border and take photographs of

1558
01:46:00,920 --> 01:46:05,439
Speaker 1: this sort of weird channel that, for all intensive purposes

1559
01:46:06,479 --> 01:46:09,960
Speaker 1: is the exact delineation of the United States and Mexico.

1560
01:46:10,840 --> 01:46:14,479
Speaker 1: And you know, so what do I do with those

1561
01:46:14,560 --> 01:46:17,040
Speaker 1: I I try, I try and figure out ways in

1562
01:46:17,160 --> 01:46:20,439
Speaker 1: which taking this information bringing it back to the viewer

1563
01:46:20,600 --> 01:46:23,320
Speaker 1: in a space that's very, very far away from the

1564
01:46:23,360 --> 01:46:29,240
Speaker 1: actual event. Um so yeah, I mean, it's it's a

1565
01:46:30,920 --> 01:46:34,559
Speaker 1: It's the most time I spend down there, the more

1566
01:46:34,920 --> 01:46:37,880
Speaker 1: my relationship changes to it, the more subtle my ears

1567
01:46:37,920 --> 01:46:43,080
Speaker 1: and eyes are, and the more I'm interested in, ah,

1568
01:46:43,800 --> 01:46:48,040
Speaker 1: seeing it as a natural environment and less as a

1569
01:46:49,080 --> 01:46:57,760
Speaker 1: political an oppressive political uh delineation. I'm interested in that

1570
01:46:57,880 --> 01:47:01,479
Speaker 1: with the people I meet too. So you know, we're

1571
01:47:01,520 --> 01:47:04,439
Speaker 1: going to start a project on interviews that people live

1572
01:47:04,520 --> 01:47:07,080
Speaker 1: on the border, trying to figure out ways to make

1573
01:47:07,160 --> 01:47:09,800
Speaker 1: a sort of communion between It's just sort of the

1574
01:47:09,840 --> 01:47:12,160
Speaker 1: heal that the border has often been talked about as

1575
01:47:12,200 --> 01:47:15,200
Speaker 1: a scar, right, like a physical scar in the earth,

1576
01:47:15,880 --> 01:47:19,200
Speaker 1: in the sense that the wound is the is the

1577
01:47:19,280 --> 01:47:22,439
Speaker 1: division of the two countries. The border is a scar.

1578
01:47:22,640 --> 01:47:24,680
Speaker 1: How do you heal a scar? Art is the way

1579
01:47:24,680 --> 01:47:28,440
Speaker 1: to heal a scar. It start doesn't go away necessarily,

1580
01:47:29,080 --> 01:47:30,600
Speaker 1: You're not going to get the same skin that you have.

1581
01:47:30,960 --> 01:47:34,000
Speaker 1: It's not gonna happen, but that you through art you

1582
01:47:34,120 --> 01:47:40,960
Speaker 1: can you can, if not outright heal, you can approach

1583
01:47:41,120 --> 01:47:45,040
Speaker 1: the possibility of healing. And all the all the artists

1584
01:47:45,080 --> 01:47:47,519
Speaker 1: I know that work along the border, that is their goal.

1585
01:47:48,600 --> 01:47:53,000
Speaker 1: So it's sort of alleviate some of the trauma that

1586
01:47:54,479 --> 01:47:59,920
Speaker 1: that exists there to approach the possibility of healing. Feel

1587
01:48:00,200 --> 01:48:05,040
Speaker 1: really yeah, because we're not got you know, we're not politicians,

1588
01:48:05,080 --> 01:48:11,640
Speaker 1: we're not policymakers, can't make it go away, and but

1589
01:48:12,880 --> 01:48:18,320
Speaker 1: we all have the possibility of signaling a better way,

1590
01:48:18,960 --> 01:48:22,200
Speaker 1: in a better way, of a more generous way and

1591
01:48:22,240 --> 01:48:28,840
Speaker 1: more kinder way. Um. Art is always pushed, has been

1592
01:48:28,880 --> 01:48:34,400
Speaker 1: progressive in interesting ways, right, not always. You know, art

1593
01:48:34,560 --> 01:48:37,599
Speaker 1: revolutionizes the world very in a way to very differently

1594
01:48:37,640 --> 01:48:42,760
Speaker 1: than political revolutions, but it is just as effective. Yeah,

1595
01:48:42,920 --> 01:48:49,480
Speaker 1: I mean, historically art has often created the personal emotions

1596
01:48:49,600 --> 01:48:55,879
Speaker 1: necessary to shift policy. Culture. Culture sets policy so exactly.

1597
01:48:56,000 --> 01:48:58,360
Speaker 1: So that's and we forget that, you know, we put

1598
01:48:58,439 --> 01:49:02,560
Speaker 1: so much emphasis on the political, but everyone can participate

1599
01:49:02,640 --> 01:49:05,400
Speaker 1: in rearranging our thought process so that we can accommodate

1600
01:49:05,479 --> 01:49:09,280
Speaker 1: a better vision for the future. But it's it's you know,

1601
01:49:09,360 --> 01:49:11,479
Speaker 1: you can't just say it, you have to you have

1602
01:49:11,560 --> 01:49:13,640
Speaker 1: to feel it. You can't even just think it, you

1603
01:49:13,720 --> 01:49:15,200
Speaker 1: have to feel it. And that's where art comes in.

1604
01:49:16,320 --> 01:49:20,280
Speaker 1: I love that. So when you think about all of this,

1605
01:49:20,520 --> 01:49:25,799
Speaker 1: where you are, what you're working on, the personal, the political,

1606
01:49:25,840 --> 01:49:30,519
Speaker 1: the intersections of all of them, the professional, When you

1607
01:49:30,640 --> 01:49:34,559
Speaker 1: think about having a conversation on a platform titled work

1608
01:49:34,600 --> 01:49:41,080
Speaker 1: in progress, I'm curious, what in this moment feels like

1609
01:49:41,160 --> 01:49:43,880
Speaker 1: a work in progress in your life right now? Wow?

1610
01:49:43,960 --> 01:49:46,679
Speaker 1: Can you sort of reframe that a little bit? Because

1611
01:49:47,280 --> 01:49:51,519
Speaker 1: I just wonder, you know, because the phrase I almost

1612
01:49:51,560 --> 01:49:54,160
Speaker 1: think about mad libs, you know, the phrase work in

1613
01:49:54,240 --> 01:49:58,920
Speaker 1: progress always brings something to mind for people. And so

1614
01:49:59,560 --> 01:50:02,559
Speaker 1: as we sat in this space, you know, we've talked

1615
01:50:02,560 --> 01:50:09,560
Speaker 1: about a lot um across personal, professional, political lenses, and

1616
01:50:09,640 --> 01:50:14,760
Speaker 1: I'm just curious what what feels like a work in

1617
01:50:14,840 --> 01:50:17,360
Speaker 1: progress to you right now in any of those spaces

1618
01:50:17,800 --> 01:50:19,519
Speaker 1: I have. You know, it's I have a lot of

1619
01:50:19,640 --> 01:50:24,439
Speaker 1: faith in the notion of professionalism. When I saw some

1620
01:50:24,600 --> 01:50:30,800
Speaker 1: of those um people come up and testifying Congress, the

1621
01:50:30,880 --> 01:50:34,080
Speaker 1: one thing I was just blown away by was the

1622
01:50:34,280 --> 01:50:38,240
Speaker 1: quality of some of these people that testified about the

1623
01:50:38,320 --> 01:50:42,400
Speaker 1: you know, the Biden the Biden Gate or where you

1624
01:50:42,479 --> 01:50:43,920
Speaker 1: want to call it, and they were and that the

1625
01:50:43,960 --> 01:50:45,600
Speaker 1: woman that was a forget her name, the woman was

1626
01:50:45,640 --> 01:50:51,599
Speaker 1: the ambassador was not ambassador, but yeah, attache to the Ukraine,

1627
01:50:52,200 --> 01:50:56,680
Speaker 1: who was so articulate and so focused about what she

1628
01:50:56,840 --> 01:50:59,800
Speaker 1: was doing that the work in progress for me, that

1629
01:51:00,000 --> 01:51:04,080
Speaker 1: it I'm reminded of is holding yourself to a really

1630
01:51:04,200 --> 01:51:08,040
Speaker 1: high standard of professionalism in a world that wants to

1631
01:51:08,160 --> 01:51:16,120
Speaker 1: be like basically usurved by hacks. You know, like I

1632
01:51:16,240 --> 01:51:20,120
Speaker 1: feel like I feel like attention to detail, attention to

1633
01:51:20,920 --> 01:51:27,080
Speaker 1: focus um and keeping keeping this sense that what I'm

1634
01:51:27,240 --> 01:51:31,880
Speaker 1: about and what I'm doing the standard of it is

1635
01:51:31,920 --> 01:51:34,120
Speaker 1: the kind of standard that I would I would hope

1636
01:51:34,439 --> 01:51:38,960
Speaker 1: everyone approaches within their own realms and whatever profession, whether

1637
01:51:39,040 --> 01:51:44,719
Speaker 1: they're the parents or whatever. It's like, really define what's

1638
01:51:44,800 --> 01:51:49,639
Speaker 1: valuable and really defined your method. Your method and your

1639
01:51:49,720 --> 01:51:54,600
Speaker 1: value have to be, you know, they have to be

1640
01:51:54,960 --> 01:51:58,920
Speaker 1: part and parcel of the same objective and and not

1641
01:51:59,320 --> 01:52:01,960
Speaker 1: and we fore we tend to focus on one or

1642
01:52:02,000 --> 01:52:06,800
Speaker 1: the other. What's my method um that we have it

1643
01:52:06,920 --> 01:52:09,640
Speaker 1: has to match and that's where professionalism comes in. Right

1644
01:52:10,000 --> 01:52:13,040
Speaker 1: to be a true professional means here is my goal

1645
01:52:13,400 --> 01:52:15,160
Speaker 1: and this is the way I do it, and those

1646
01:52:15,320 --> 01:52:21,280
Speaker 1: two maximize my voice and maximize my sound, and the

1647
01:52:21,360 --> 01:52:23,519
Speaker 1: work in progress then becomes as long as I get

1648
01:52:23,560 --> 01:52:29,000
Speaker 1: more information and new experiences, really focus on what is

1649
01:52:29,040 --> 01:52:34,720
Speaker 1: it that I'm doing that is right there with my

1650
01:52:34,880 --> 01:52:39,000
Speaker 1: aims and my experiences, how the message come across in

1651
01:52:39,080 --> 01:52:43,760
Speaker 1: a way that's is clean and effective and lean, so

1652
01:52:43,920 --> 01:52:47,640
Speaker 1: that I don't fall into stereotypes, even my own stereotypes.

1653
01:52:48,479 --> 01:52:51,760
Speaker 1: It's so easy to fall in your own stereotypes, and

1654
01:52:52,240 --> 01:52:57,200
Speaker 1: I'm always always working against that is what professionalism is

1655
01:52:58,600 --> 01:53:01,280
Speaker 1: that I mean, I'm it. One of the things I'm

1656
01:53:01,280 --> 01:53:06,120
Speaker 1: impressed about your your podcast is like and I and

1657
01:53:06,200 --> 01:53:08,720
Speaker 1: I'm so honored to be as part of this incredibly

1658
01:53:09,040 --> 01:53:14,000
Speaker 1: large net that you are the greatest fisherman I've ever seen.

1659
01:53:15,280 --> 01:53:18,720
Speaker 1: The way that you you you you are able to

1660
01:53:18,840 --> 01:53:23,840
Speaker 1: throw out both the multiplicity of voices, like you want

1661
01:53:23,880 --> 01:53:25,600
Speaker 1: to hear what people have to say, and at the

1662
01:53:25,680 --> 01:53:30,240
Speaker 1: same time you allow for a kind of constant within

1663
01:53:30,400 --> 01:53:34,280
Speaker 1: each interview with each podcast, so that we always feel

1664
01:53:34,320 --> 01:53:38,160
Speaker 1: as if we know where we stand and we know

1665
01:53:38,520 --> 01:53:45,760
Speaker 1: that uh, it's going to be something that is beautifully uh,

1666
01:53:46,680 --> 01:53:50,200
Speaker 1: possible for us to digest, like like really consume it

1667
01:53:50,280 --> 01:53:55,360
Speaker 1: in a really healthy way. Yeah, that's tricky, you know,

1668
01:53:55,560 --> 01:53:59,000
Speaker 1: not everyone can do that, to take that big thing

1669
01:53:59,240 --> 01:54:01,920
Speaker 1: and that intimate thing and have him as part of

1670
01:54:01,960 --> 01:54:08,080
Speaker 1: the same meal. That's really kind Tony. Thank you. I

1671
01:54:08,880 --> 01:54:14,960
Speaker 1: think to your point that rigorous self examination, the always

1672
01:54:15,080 --> 01:54:17,960
Speaker 1: checking in to make sure you're not dusty or that

1673
01:54:18,040 --> 01:54:23,760
Speaker 1: you haven't succumbed to some you know, subconscious or cultural stereotype,

1674
01:54:23,920 --> 01:54:31,439
Speaker 1: that that you're interacting with humanity and listening. That's that's

1675
01:54:31,479 --> 01:54:34,000
Speaker 1: the exercise of this. That's that's the joy in this

1676
01:54:34,240 --> 01:54:40,400
Speaker 1: for me is always being able to get out, you know,

1677
01:54:40,640 --> 01:54:45,640
Speaker 1: and and then to really dig in. It feels um

1678
01:54:47,560 --> 01:54:53,800
Speaker 1: like a great shaking off, but also I hope um

1679
01:54:53,960 --> 01:54:58,480
Speaker 1: like a tender and safe space too examine together and

1680
01:54:59,520 --> 01:55:06,560
Speaker 1: if that, if that's what we're doing here, then I'm thrilled. Yeah. No,

1681
01:55:06,680 --> 01:55:08,440
Speaker 1: it is very much like what you're doing is very

1682
01:55:08,520 --> 01:55:12,480
Speaker 1: much in the spirit of an artistic process, right, which

1683
01:55:12,600 --> 01:55:16,400
Speaker 1: is your intuition guides you to to move to a

1684
01:55:16,480 --> 01:55:20,160
Speaker 1: certain location or had in a certain direction, and then

1685
01:55:20,240 --> 01:55:22,400
Speaker 1: once once you're there, you don't say, here's what I

1686
01:55:22,480 --> 01:55:25,360
Speaker 1: want to do. With you. You say, look, how can

1687
01:55:25,440 --> 01:55:28,240
Speaker 1: we figure out where we are because we both arrived

1688
01:55:28,280 --> 01:55:30,920
Speaker 1: at this place independently and now we're together in this

1689
01:55:31,080 --> 01:55:34,360
Speaker 1: one place, and what can come out of that? That

1690
01:55:34,640 --> 01:55:41,000
Speaker 1: is essentially the studio experience. I love that. Wow, I

1691
01:55:41,120 --> 01:55:43,200
Speaker 1: wanna you know, I always want to come hang at

1692
01:55:43,200 --> 01:55:46,920
Speaker 1: the studio so that that feels really that feels really cool.

1693
01:55:47,720 --> 01:55:49,720
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I know. You know, sometimes I love having

1694
01:55:49,800 --> 01:55:51,440
Speaker 1: people come over when I work because it's a lot

1695
01:55:51,480 --> 01:55:53,560
Speaker 1: of my work is very sort of pedantic and you're

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Speaker 1: just sort of like you're doing one thing and you're

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01:55:56,480 --> 01:55:58,240
Speaker 1: you know, it doesn't take a lot of super focus.

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Speaker 1: And it's always fun to have conversations while I'm doing

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Speaker 1: that because I know that for people who think of

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01:56:04,680 --> 01:56:08,400
Speaker 1: artists and otherwise wise mystical process, right, like the magic

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01:56:08,480 --> 01:56:10,320
Speaker 1: that happens in the studio, a lot of it is

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01:56:10,440 --> 01:56:14,960
Speaker 1: really just beautifully mundane, And to have conversations with people

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Speaker 1: and to let them into that that sacred space is

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01:56:20,200 --> 01:56:24,320
Speaker 1: really it's really liberating for me because you know, oftentimes

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Speaker 1: it's just I'm alone. That's so cool. This show is

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01:56:33,320 --> 01:56:37,480
Speaker 1: executive produced by me, Sophia Bush, and sim Sarna, our

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01:56:37,480 --> 01:56:41,520
Speaker 1: associate producer is Kate Linlee, our editor is Josh Wendish,

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Speaker 1: and our music was written by Jack Garrett and produced

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Speaker 1: by Mark Foster. This show is brought to you by

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Speaker 1: Grilliant Anatomy