Speaker 1: Welcome to Woke a f with me Danielle Moody. Throughout
Speaker 1: this month, I am highlighting a series of amazing artists
Speaker 1: whose work is on display this summer in New York
Speaker 1: at the Shed Cultural Center as part of their open
Speaker 1: Call program. Last week on my Patreon, which you can
Speaker 1: support now at patreon dot com slash woke AF, I
Speaker 1: spoke with Don Christian Jones, creator of the outdoor performance
Speaker 1: Volvo truck. Don Christian talked with me about his connection
Speaker 1: with cars and car culture and how those connect to
Speaker 1: his greater identity as a black person, as well as
Speaker 1: our collective consciousness, something he calls black quantum physics, which
Speaker 1: connects us all. He also recognized the role of black
Speaker 1: women in his life and how we as a society
Speaker 1: owe a great debt to the black women who have
Speaker 1: come before us ancestral magic. Here is the first half
Speaker 1: of my conversation with Don Christian Jones. Let's start off
Speaker 1: with your exhibit and why you're so excited to share
Speaker 1: this work with folks. It is a multimedia and I
Speaker 1: kind of want you to walk through, like describe it
Speaker 1: to us for folks that are listening, walk us through
Speaker 1: this kind of multimedia exhibit that is upcoming. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to put words to it myself every day as as
Speaker 1: as this evolves. It's really meant to be a living
Speaker 1: breathing installation. So it's performative. It's performance based in that
Speaker 1: you know, there are people enacting and moving, but it's
Speaker 1: also sculpture in so many ways. And really, more than anything,
Speaker 1: I wanted to be a monument, like a living breathing
Speaker 1: monument that is up, that is erected for you know,
Speaker 1: two days, two nights, that people can experience in the
Speaker 1: round and can kind of also encapsulate people as audience.
Speaker 1: So the title of the exhibit is Volvo Truck. Is
Speaker 1: that right? It is? Yeah, talk to me about that
Speaker 1: and why cars are so important and what folks can
Speaker 1: expect as they walk into this installation. Because as I
Speaker 1: was watching a previous interview of yours and understanding the
Speaker 1: fact that you said you didn't play with toys as
Speaker 1: a kid. You played with matchbook cars and trucks, and
Speaker 1: that that was very much a part of your growing up,
Speaker 1: and it reminded me of my younger cousin who I
Speaker 1: remember from when he was two or three years old.
Speaker 1: The only thing that he ever wanted every time that
Speaker 1: we went to a store were those little cars and trucks,
Speaker 1: and his fascination with cars just developed as he got older.
Speaker 1: So I was very endeared as I was learning more
Speaker 1: about this exhibit. But why I work cars and trucks
Speaker 1: so important to you and what's the significance of it
Speaker 1: in this installation? Sure? And I think I've been kind
Speaker 1: of grappling with and coming to terms with what, you know,
Speaker 1: cars kind of symbolized for me in a broader sense,
Speaker 1: but also in this piece, and I think coming to
Speaker 1: to terms like over the years, because I've been so
Speaker 1: inundated almost into this culture of cars, and I've started
Speaker 1: to ask a lot of questions, you know, with regard
Speaker 1: to what they what they mean as symbol especially like
Speaker 1: in a capitalist in a Western world, what they mean
Speaker 1: with relation to blackness and kind of like a very
Speaker 1: black American preoccupation with nice cars or fancy rides, and
Speaker 1: then the ways in which sound and music intersect with
Speaker 1: cars and our experiences growing up in them. Um, I
Speaker 1: think was hugely formative for me, Like I feel like
Speaker 1: so much of my growing up and like realizations made
Speaker 1: and light bulb moments took place in cars, whether I
Speaker 1: was in the backseat with one of my aunts and
Speaker 1: one of their cars, or my grandfather or my dad,
Speaker 1: and there was always music, and there was always some
Speaker 1: sound skips, some sound score or landscape provided by outside
Speaker 1: the windows, you know. So I just remember I can
Speaker 1: recall conversations had in passing or like sirens or other
Speaker 1: cars with you know, booming basses rattling. So I think
Speaker 1: I just have had this longing for a really long
Speaker 1: time to try and reenact that that feeling. You know.
Speaker 1: It's funny because as I as I was looking at
Speaker 1: your work and listening to your prior interviews and thinking
Speaker 1: about my own experience with my family, with my aunts
Speaker 1: and uncles in their cars, and that experience of kind
Speaker 1: of growing up in the backseat or actually before you
Speaker 1: were supposed to have children sit in the front seat
Speaker 1: in between two adults in cars, and kind of the
Speaker 1: joy of that experience. Every time a car door opened,
Speaker 1: as a young person, I felt like we were headed
Speaker 1: for an adventure because the world was so fresh and
Speaker 1: so bright through the eyes of my youth. Was there
Speaker 1: a sense of adventure and experience and exposure that riding
Speaker 1: around in Philadelphia, which is where you were from, provided
Speaker 1: for you. Definitely. I think about like the ways in
Speaker 1: which black people occupy urban space, American space, like and
Speaker 1: and the access to car and car culture, and the
Speaker 1: ways that can really change or like reshape one's adolescents
Speaker 1: or just to a broader world. Because I surely had
Speaker 1: met and grown out with some folks that you know,
Speaker 1: they grew up in like a five black radius and
Speaker 1: never and maybe never have experienced the beach before they
Speaker 1: were a teenager or an adult, or made it down
Speaker 1: to you know, the Parkway from South Philly to go
Speaker 1: to the Art Museum. And I think I've grown to
Speaker 1: understand the immense privilege that I was afforded in having
Speaker 1: people around me that were raising me, that could take
Speaker 1: me places, and then hear stories about how they grew up,
Speaker 1: how my grandfather maybe taught them how to drive, or
Speaker 1: my dad taught me how to drive, and these really
Speaker 1: like visceral moments where it's like they just put you
Speaker 1: out on the road in the way that they put
Speaker 1: me in a pool and said swim. So formative. So yeah,
Speaker 1: so there's a gratitude I remember, you know, just hearing
Speaker 1: from my aunts, like their access to the beach, their
Speaker 1: access to Atlantic City and Chicken Bone Beach growing up
Speaker 1: in the sixties, that widen broadened their landscape and I
Speaker 1: imagine the boundaries to which they could dream right or
Speaker 1: see a world outside of what they lived in. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a sense of freedom that I here right, and
Speaker 1: independence from being able to have access to cars and vehicles.
Speaker 1: Like you talk about your aunts, which I want you
Speaker 1: to be able to get into, and your and your
Speaker 1: mother and the fact that they were so influential in
Speaker 1: your life, these different beautiful black women with varied experience
Speaker 1: and access and opportunity, and you speak about them being
Speaker 1: you know, born at these different times which are actual
Speaker 1: really critical points in our history as black people in
Speaker 1: the United States. So I want you to be able
Speaker 1: to speak about how your aunts, how your family are
Speaker 1: wrapped into this installation and this work that is going
Speaker 1: to be presented, and why you think it was important
Speaker 1: to tell their stories great hard questions. Yea. In my adulthood,
Speaker 1: I've been able to kind of step back and really
Speaker 1: regard them as individuals, as human beings, and in so
Speaker 1: many ways almost take them off of this pedestal that
Speaker 1: I once put them on. For having raised me, and
Speaker 1: to be able to find correlation between my own life
Speaker 1: or experience and them and maybe their mother or their father,
Speaker 1: and just a greater reverence for like my own personal
Speaker 1: lineage and ancestry. I think we're living in a time
Speaker 1: like this time is so crazy, and more than anything,
Speaker 1: for me, it's been shadow work. It's been a spiritual reckoning.
Speaker 1: This feels more like spiritual warfare than anything. And I
Speaker 1: say that as an a religious a non religious person,
Speaker 1: but who grew up in religion. So I'm remembering ritual,
Speaker 1: I'm remembering tradition, I'm remembering the power in like ancestral magic.
Speaker 1: And I think this is like a conversation that is
Speaker 1: swelling and almost like breaching this collective consciousness. You know,
Speaker 1: you look at some of the media out today, like
Speaker 1: these movies, these films, Lovecraft, m HBO, random acts of
Speaker 1: flyness that are really verging on like this conversation about
Speaker 1: it's like it's black quantum physics and the realities of
Speaker 1: such and and tapping into this magic that has been
Speaker 1: really relegated in the way we're taught. It's relegated to
Speaker 1: like folklore or like voodoo, or like zombies, on TV,
Speaker 1: But like, what makes that any less tech? High tech?
Speaker 1: What makes our power any less profound, any less scientific?
Speaker 1: You know, I think that's been a part of our
Speaker 1: undoing that they try to implement on us, is to
Speaker 1: make us for you know, we forget where we come from.
Speaker 1: So this past year and maybe a little more, I've
Speaker 1: been really trying to remind myself of where I come
Speaker 1: from through them. So you just blew my mind with
Speaker 1: a couple of things, Black quantum physics, like I want
Speaker 1: to delve into that, and then spiritual warfare and the
Speaker 1: idea of what it means to reconnect to your beginning, right,
Speaker 1: like our beginning, your beginning meaning where your family, where
Speaker 1: we originate from in our family, but then our beginning
Speaker 1: as a community as a people, and ties to our
Speaker 1: land and our ancestry. And I think, you know, Woke
Speaker 1: AF is a political show, right, It is a progressive
Speaker 1: political show where I try and infuse different aspects of
Speaker 1: what it means to show up consciously right, and that
Speaker 1: being conscious is a part of everyday work and exercise
Speaker 1: and practice. I talk about being woke as not something
Speaker 1: that just happens once, like you hid an alarm and
Speaker 1: then you're forever awake, right that it is a constant
Speaker 1: awakening that happens every day, and it's a constant expansion
Speaker 1: that happens when we talk about black consciousness in the
Speaker 1: grand scheme of things. For me, it is about awake
Speaker 1: to what has been lost, or rather what has been robbed.
Speaker 1: So for you, when you are looking at your family
Speaker 1: lineage and how it positions itself within the greater sense
Speaker 1: of blackness, what comes up for you as you've been
Speaker 1: journeying through the development of this work. I mean, surely,
Speaker 1: I think fundamentally it's this a pure reverence for the
Speaker 1: black woman and has having experienced or seen or witnessed
Speaker 1: them as being the scapegoat for the world while simultaneously
Speaker 1: being like the impetus for the world, and to be
Speaker 1: able to see that and witness that through these these
Speaker 1: very real people that are my aunts and my mom,
Speaker 1: their resilience, their creativity, their fortitude, their independence, their sheer
Speaker 1: ability to you know, transcend time and space through their
Speaker 1: work and the people that they've touched over the years.
Speaker 1: You know, I think about well, I'll go into this
Speaker 1: when you talk about black women being both the scapegoat
Speaker 1: and the impetus for the world, the creation of it
Speaker 1: for you. How has your understanding of the kind of
Speaker 1: journeys that your aunts and your mother have taken, How
Speaker 1: has that kind of I guess maybe shifted your thinking
Speaker 1: about black women, or how has it deepened your understanding
Speaker 1: of how the world experiences black women. I'm thinking of
Speaker 1: how you said it's this daily practice, right so to
Speaker 1: never to really like approach every day from this place
Speaker 1: of critical pedagogy, like this is going to be a
Speaker 1: practice I'm going to learn in this day. I'm going
Speaker 1: to ask, and like I was saying, in so many ways,
Speaker 1: I've taken them off this pedestal or these tropes of
Speaker 1: archetype which I've I've realized maybe so much as my
Speaker 1: own projection onto them who I think them to be,
Speaker 1: who I've made who I associated them to out in
Speaker 1: the world, and kind of like wanting to provide space
Speaker 1: for us to just be, to simply just be, to dance,
Speaker 1: to make music, to eat as commune in a political
Speaker 1: way that it will inevitably be politicized. M What has
Speaker 1: their experience with your art been, as I'm assuming you
Speaker 1: have had conversation with family and connected with them because
Speaker 1: They're such an inspiration for this particular project, this particular installation.
Speaker 1: What has their feeling been as kind of seeing themselves
Speaker 1: through your lens? I think much of this project, or
Speaker 1: the meat of it, really has been getting to know
Speaker 1: them again or through new lens. The past year, you know,
Speaker 1: COVID and everything, Well, this was the first time in
Speaker 1: over a decade that they were all on the East
Speaker 1: Coast at the same time. And in having my own
Speaker 1: car for the first time in my life, I was
Speaker 1: now afforded the ability to see them at greater length
Speaker 1: and more often. You know, now at thirty one, it's
Speaker 1: like I'm almost having this reunion with them, which has
Speaker 1: been remarkable. And then going through all of their personal
Speaker 1: archives and documents and photos and letters and their wardrobe,
Speaker 1: you know, being able to touch this stuff that I
Speaker 1: remember from you know, twenty years ago, so much comes up.
Speaker 1: So all this stuff comes up, So we're having conversations
Speaker 1: that I've never had before, Like I'm learning histories about
Speaker 1: my family that were never shared. And then I'm left
Speaker 1: to really think about what does this mean like for
Speaker 1: the shed or for the audience watching this, And it
Speaker 1: almost doesn't matter anymore because, you know, I'm I'm already
Speaker 1: experiencing this work. So much of this work has already
Speaker 1: been done. In the second half of our conversation, Don
Speaker 1: Christian and I got deep into his relationship with art
Speaker 1: and his role as a creator and how it has
Speaker 1: evolved during the pandemic. It was an honest, raw conversation
Speaker 1: and you can hear the rest right now by supporting
Speaker 1: me at patreon dot com, slash Woke app and you
Speaker 1: can see Don Christian perform Volvo Truck on June seventeenth
Speaker 1: at the Shed dot org slash Open Dash Call Dash
Speaker 1: live stream, or if you're in New York, you can
Speaker 1: visit the Shed four free. I will be shocked up
Speaker 1: there this summer checking out all of the amazing artists
Speaker 1: in the open Call program. Whether I see you next
Speaker 1: week in the tweets at D two cents or over
Speaker 1: on Patreon. Power to the people and to all the people. Power,
Speaker 1: get woke and stay woke as fuck.