 Okay hello everybody welcome to the Brooklyn Museum. Thanks so much for coming out. I know it's a beautiful beautiful day, the most beautiful day that we've had so far, so I know there's a lot of competition from the weather. We're really excited to be hosting this conversation today. My name is Matt Branch. I'm the academic programs coordinator here at the Brooklyn Museum. I'm on the team that books public programs for the Brooklyn Museum target for Saturday, Thursday night programs, weekend programs, and I also teach a lot of the college programs here at the Brooklyn Museum. So in the course of my teaching and meeting with a lot of different visitors, people have been really interested in this topic and why museums haven't really, many museums haven't really addressed this topic. So before I delve further into the sort of the impetus behind the conversation, I'm going to welcome Monica Montgomery and Stephanie Cunningham from Museum Hue to say a few words. They helped us promote and they have a fabulous new organization which we're going to just tell you a little bit about. So please join me in welcoming Monica and Stephanie. Hey everybody, if you've heard of Museum Hue, let's give two snaps. All right that's good stuff. Welcome. I'm so glad the Brooklyn Museum invited us to partner with this event. We're super excited to be here. Museum Hue is simply about creating embracing spaces in museums for people of color and our allies. So this is one of many events that we're a partner of. Check us out on social media. I'm not going to give you too much of a speech, but I'm going to let Stephanie tell you the rest. Hi everyone. Again my name is Stephanie Cunningham and we're excited about this event. Like Matthew, I said it's so important for us to hear that museums are talking about the serious issues that's happening in our communities, happening all across the country, and really around the world as well. So we're excited to invite you all if you go to our like Monica said, our social media platform. We have events coming up in different institutions, but we're really excited about today's event because we get to see artists who are also activists talk about the real work that they're doing. So thank you and enjoy this event. So just one housekeeping note, Rashad Newsom was unable to make it today so unfortunately he's not going to be part of the panel, but we have three really dynamic fantastic artists which they're going to be talking and we're going to be having a great conversation. This conversation is happening here at the Brooklyn Museum because I'm sure as many of you know the Brooklyn Museum is an institute that supports the work of artists who respond to contemporary social and political issues. And I just want to take a few minutes to introduce today's panel and to take you on a little bit of a journey on how we arrived here at this program today. So this conversation, art activism in the black body, is timely here at the Brooklyn Museum because we have shows on view and on the way in which artists humanize and heroicize black bodies and encourage museum visitors to see the value in those bodies. In a New Republic by Kehinde Wiley, which is an exhibition which I'm sure many of you have seen, it's upstairs on the fifth floor, Kehinde Wiley creates images of black men and women in a heroic style and in urban fashion pushing back against the idea that a black person has to dress and present themselves in a certain way in order to be respected and to be valued. In a few weeks, we will be celebrating the opening of E.C. Bonello Evidence, an exhibition by South African photographer Zanelli Maholi. In this exhibition, Maholi documents LGBTQ individuals of color and demands that queer black bodies, black stories be told and that queer black bodies be valued and respected. As some of you know, our director Arnold Lehman is retiring after 18 years of service. We also have a new exhibition that just opened on Wednesday evening called Director's Choice Diverse Works and it includes dozens of works from the Brooklyn Museum that have been acquired over the last 18 years. In looking at the checklist for the show, we were really struck by how many of the artists and artworks engage with themes of protest, the placement of the black body, and how many were responding to current event issues. And we're continuing in this tradition today by hosting this conversation with artists who are deeply committed to community and who are using their work to protest the injustices they see in the world and are using their work as a platform and their platform as an artist to create social change. This conversation also comes at a time when so many things are happening out in the world. Over the past few years, we've witnessed countless instances of dehumanization and destruction of the black body. We've lived through the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Ilan Nettles, the imprisonment of Marissa Alexander for firing a warning shot and protecting her children. These are just a few of many stories. Even in the past few weeks, we have witnessed more killings with the death of Walter Scott in South Carolina and of Eric Harris in Oklahoma. And we are here today to discuss the role of the artist in the social protest movement, the role museums have in addressing these issues and what we as a community can do to stop the violence. So the order of the conversation is I'm going to bring out the artists. They're going to introduce themselves and we're going to talk for a while. We're going to open it up to a Q&A and then stick around because we have a dance, a concluding dance performance by Renegade performance group. So please join me in welcoming the artist, Damon Davis, Tatiana Fazler-Lazide and Dred Scott. So let's get started. Instead of introducing the artist myself, I thought it would be a great, it would be great if they could introduce themselves in their own words and also talk a little bit about the projects that they're doing. So Damon, this is Damon Davis, Tatiana Fazler-Lazide and Dred Scott. Damon, would you like to go first and talk about some of the work that you're doing? How y'all doing today? My name is Damon Davis. I'm a St. Louis resident. I was born and raised in East St. Louis, Illinois. If anybody knows what that is, it's just across the river from St. Louis. I make things, I tell stories. So I guess, there we go. A lot of the work that I have here was stuff that I did specifically in Ferguson last year, August, September, October around the killing of Mike Brown and the uprising that happened at home where I'm from. So my work has always had some kind of a lot of political meaning in it, but this stuff was really focused. So this right here, we created this glass casket for Ferguson October and it was basically something that we made just out of mirrors and it was made to sit in front of police as I guess the idea of the death of justice and to just get them to look and make them uncomfortable. A lot of this, a lot of my stuff is to agitate and use as a weapon. That's what I think art should be used for. So what we got next? So I did this one right after we heard that the cop that shot Eric Arnold would not be indicted. Like I woke up the next morning and I drew this and I put it in the computer, photoshopped it up and put it online. I got, it was a lot of response to it. And I try to make my, I don't try to get too intellectualized or, you know, too heady. I make stuff for the people and I want the people to understand it. So I think this one is pretty self-explanatory too. This project has been my most successful project to date. It's called All Hands on Deck. Initially did this on West Florissant during a protest and a plastered a bunch of white, black and white hands of organizers, children of organizers, people that ran safe houses, but people that were in the front putting their lives on the line up because we had a hard time with people seeing us as human beings. So I tried to make something as human as possible and something that couldn't be misconstrued or stirred by the government or the media. And this last one is also something very reflective of what was going on at Ferguson. I did these lawn signs that were hands and we took this for a specific action on Bob McCulloch's neighborhood and we planted a bunch of them in a park and it resembled almost like people reaching up but like souls reaching up the dead coming back. So I think a lot of stuff worked. It made people uncomfortable. It made the people that were already uncomfortable very comfortable. So I think it played our will and that's what I do. Hi everyone. My name is Tatiana Vazla Luzare. I am an artist based here in Brooklyn, New York. I'm originally from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. I moved to Philadelphia when I was 17 so I've been here on the East Coast for a while now. I primarily work as an oil painter and an illustrator. So I work as an illustrator in the form of traditional oil painting. I mostly paint portraits, figures. I consider myself a storyteller. I think as an illustrator you're trying to tell stories in your work. So I'm always trying to tell stories through a figure, through a portrait, through a person. Most of my work is based around social and political issues. So I do work around things that are important to me, important to the people that look like me, important to the people around me, race, identity, gender, racism, sexism, all of these things that all of these forms of oppression that affect me or affect folks that I think need to be talked about. So I mostly do paintings but I've also been doing work in the public. I've been doing a street art project called Stop Telling Women to Smile for the past two years now. Stop Telling Women to Smile is addressing gender based street harassment. And I decided to do this in order to take my work into the street, outside of the gallery, outside of a studio, into the street where people can see it. I think that street art has a very important and impactful advantage when it comes to art and moving things along when it comes to movements and issues, because of who has access to street art when it comes to other forms of art as well. So I decided to get out of the box to do work outside in the street as well as my oil painting work. So that's who I am and that's the work that I do. I'm Dred Scott and I make revolutionary art to propel history forward. We need a revolution. The society we live in is one where a tiny handful controls the wealth and knowledge that humanity as a whole has created. And we don't have to live this way and I make work to hopefully bring people into a deeper sort of understanding the world we live in and what it could be. And so, you know, I work in a lot of media, whether it's, you know, video performance, installation, more conceptual work, painting, but it's all trying to address and get an audience to confront a lot of the coherent norms and values of American society and often to imagine how the world could be radically different and far better. And much of my work shows in museums and galleries and some of it shows on street corners, sometimes with permission, sometimes without. So this is a project called Wanted, which masquerades as wanted posters for things that are not crimes that the police hassle you for a lot. It was both a small eight and a half by 11 signs, but also like 32 by 20 posters as well. And there were many different layers to the project where how the posters were created. It was a collaborative project with young adults about 16 to 20 years old that I worked with over the course of three months. And it was kind of bookend the project sort of when it started getting more out there in the public, but by the murder of Eric Garner on one hand and then Mike Brown on the other with the last day of the project that was was a public forum was when I first heard the name Mike Brown. And we were actually talking about police murder and mass incarceration. This is the project that is a screen print on paper. It was designed originally after the murder of Amadou Diallo and has, you know, in 1999, it was printed in 2001, and it has sort of new resonance. And I look forward to the day when this is not iconic and not urgent and needed. And actually when we're talking about art and activism, as I say, I show in galleries and museums as well as on the street, this is a both a print on paper and it's a sign. And so the sign was often installed on locations or not often, but has been installed on locations where the police have murdered people, but it's also a print on paper that the Whitney Museum recently acquired. So this sort of penetration between the museums and galleries as well as out in the streets is something that's really important to me. This is a project called on the impossibility of freedom in a country founded on slavery and genocide. And I've been thinking a lot about freedom and resistance. And so this references the fire hosing of civil rights demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, but also it's a tactic that's been used against resistors all over the world. But one of the things that's important in looking at these historic photos, and this was a durational performance that lasted for about 23 minutes and there was an audience of several hundred people. But in looking at the photographs of the original demonstrations, what I began to really see and notice was that they weren't fundamentally photographs of oppression, although they were that, but they were really photographs of people resisting. And that's one of the things I've really been thinking about. How do you portray people sort of fighting back, fighting to get free? How do they dream of being free? And free from what? So this is a still from a performance called Dred Scott Decision, which had three elements. One was that I read the verbatim text of the Dred Scott, the historic 1857 Supreme Court decision, which is one of the most well thought out argument for white supremacy I've ever read. And it's all rooted in the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and U.S. and English law and custom. And so I read from that there were four nude black performers who were being harassed and ministered and controlled by live German shepherd dogs. And then the audience became another element in the project where they weren't sitting comfortably in chairs. They actually got lined up in stanchions and had to go into voting booths. But in order to get to the booths, they had to cross this line of black performers. And sometimes the guys were soldiers shoulder and they couldn't really pass them. Other times they were spread far enough apart that you know, you could just pretend they weren't there. And times they were lying on the ground and you had to step over them. So in the last piece is a piece that is, that I'm going to show something that references a lynching campaign that the NAACP did. Every day, every time a man was lynched, they would hang this out of their offices on Fifth Avenue in New York. There just was a banner that said a man was lynched yesterday, as far as fighting to end lynching. And so with the recent murder of Walter Scott as part of this sort of epidemic of police, you know, murdering people, I started to create a man was lynched by police yesterday, which, you know, it will, it doesn't exist as a banner yet, but it will. But I think in terms of what I'm doing now, how I'm thinking about stuff, both resistance and freedom, and how this art sort of goes between the public and the museum and referencing our history, because a lot of my work addresses history and how this sort of the past both sets the stage for the present, but exists in the present in new form. And so, you know, there are more people have been killed by the police in any given 10-year period than were killed by racist mobs at the height of lynching. And so this is something that we really, I think, need to very much fight as if our lives depended on it. So thank you. So now that we know a little bit about what we've been introduced to the artists and know a little bit about what it is that they do, we're going to start start the conversation. So all of you guys do work. Damon, you call some of your work movement art. It can be considered protest art, revolution art, art for revolution. I'm interested in what you think the role of art is in social protest movements, and specifically the role that art plays in this movement in terms of the police killings and things of that nature. I think that art creates this urgency. I think that when people, you know, see something or read something about a movement, or, you know, you have these essays, these articles, these everything that's happening online or in person conversation. I think that that stuff is important. But I think the visual art where that comes in is that it creates a this kind of imagery for the movement for the social issue, you know, more so than what you're already seeing just through the media. You're having artists come in and create some images, some some visual art that speaks to what people are feeling and thinking. And I think that that helps move people, helps move people and energize folks. I really agree with that. I really truly agree that. I think I also think it's it's also the historic record of the loser, too. Because the winner is going to write out all of the stuff that they don't want there. Most times, the only thing left behind is is the art. The only reason we know about the Egyptians is the art. The only reason we know about the Romans and whatever else is the art. So I think also, as artists, we have an obligation to be thinking about how future generations will see this and how how truthful it is, the way you express these ideas and stuff, depending on whatever side you are on, of history. But I think it's a historical record, too, as well as it's made to give people hope to keep fighting most of the time. If you're an advocate of whatever the struggle is. Well, I think those in power sometimes make art to tell their stories. I mean, one only needs to look at Gone with the Wind or Triumph of the Will or Birth of a Nation to see that people with major means actually make money to tell stories that reflects their values. Gone with the Wind is one of the best films ever made, and yet it's supposed to make you feel sorry that the South lost the war. Come on. If you look at Zero Dark Thirty, or this new American sniper, it's glorifying US imperialism. I think that with art, there's a lot of art, including in the visual art, that actually is not really addressing a lot of what's going on. And as far as me, I think my job is, I mean, I look at the world and I wake up and I say, you know, the world is a horror for the great majority of humanity. I mean, it's like, well, if you're a kid in Pakistan, you've got traumatic, post-traumatic stress disorder because there are drones that are killing family members and friends. This is the world that doesn't have to be this way. It really doesn't. But the thing that is sort of standing in the way is capitalism and imperialism, particularly US, you know, capitalism and imperialism. And we're living at a time when now a lot of that's looking very sort of shabby, in part because of what artists and other people are doing. I mean, you know, we were talking a little earlier about sort of, you know, the man who did the video of the murder of Walter Scott. That was profoundly courageous and it was, it sort of reflected something. I mean, it wasn't artwork per se, but it was, you know, it was something, it was the video that didn't exist when Mike Brown was murdered. You know, the exact same thing happened only that Lion Cop could get up and say, oh, well, I was scared for my life. You know, it's like, well, same lie that Cop told in North Carolina, only he got caught on film. You know, and so I think, you know, with somebody who looks at this world and feels very passionately that it needs to be radically different. I am actually doing everything I can, both showing in traditional art spaces, but also making, you know, signs that sometimes get used by activists to talk about this world and hopefully help people see the world with different light. I mean, sometimes I think you're right. Some people might read, you know, political agitation and just like zone out to it right now. I mean, I think that isn't always, well, no, don't clap it. I mean, it's true, but it's like, we were talking earlier about Emory Douglas. Emory Douglas is the Black Panther artist, the minister of information of the Black Panther Party. And so, you know, it's like people would read the Black Panther newspaper in part because Emory's, you know, profound art was on the cover and stuff like that. And so I think you need both. I don't think, I don't think that art is a revolution. We're not going to actually get to a different world or state power with just art, but we actually do need people coming into museums and having not just seeing, you know, some John Singer Sergeant or something, but actually seeing work that challenges the current order. And I'm going to try and make some of that. So do you feel that every artist has, or it should be the responsibility of every artist to address some sort of social issue? We were at, I attended a talk with Dred Scott a few weeks ago where he compared himself to Jeff Koons and talked about how his work... Not so favorably, though. How his work wasn't, you know, isn't about social and political issues and the way that your work is, right? Do you think that you spoke a little bit about seeing things other than a John Singer Sergeant or works that are not engaged in social and political issues? Do you think it's the responsibility of the artist or do you think more artists should be doing this type of work? I think people make work... I mean, look, you know, most people in the world don't have the luxury to sit around and make art. I and, you know, all of us on this stage have the relative freedom to do that. And, you know, most people are working from, you know, can't see in the morning until can't see at night. And then, you know, it's like there ain't slavery in America straight up the way there used to be, but, you know, there are a lot of people in, you know, Colombia, Afghanistan, you know, you go around the world. It's like, you know, Iraq. People work really hard. And, you know, and so given that I both have this freedom and some understanding of the way the world is, I actually choose to make work that's about trying to get... To propel history forward, to get to a different era, to get to an era without exploitation. Jeff Koons, I think he's comfortable with the way things are, you know? I mean, I don't think it is not... I mean, I think that artists make work that reflects their worldview. And, you know, it's like, I think Koons' work... I mean, I think his early work was actually racist. And I think his more recent work is just sort of in contempt of ordinary people of like, look, I can do this higher that mocks people. I mean, I think that the work has content. And so the question is what's that content? And I think, you know, if people think... If people enjoy the world the way it is, they should make work that reflects that worldview. If they think that the exploitation and oppression that exists in the world is a horror they should consider making work that helps people lift that weight off them. I mean, but, you know, there are also going to be people that just make work that doesn't seem to be that directly connected stuff. That's okay. I mean, you know, sometimes I go to... I mean, I was just looking at... There's like, you know, cut glass piece, I think, on the fourth floor that is, you know, just this abstract piece. I'm probably never going to make any work like that, but it was a, you know, transcendent experience. I'm glad people are making that too. Yeah. I mean, it's a choice. You're an artist and you get to choose what you make work about. I think that a lot of us, a lot of artists who do make this type of work, I think, are making it because it's necessary. We feel that it's necessary. But there is also a place for work that is just beautiful. That's just aesthetically pleasing that doesn't have this strong political message behind it. And that's totally fine. I think that art has a very particular advantage when it comes to talking about social issues and moving these political movements along. And I try to take advantage of that. I, you know, as an artist, I'm trying to use my work to say something, to do something. For me, it's not just enough, you know, but that's for me to, you know, make that choice and to make that decision on what my work is going to be about. You know, I think as a woman, as a black woman, a woman of color, I am dealing with all of these things in my daily life, all of these issues, all of these oppressions in my daily life when I step outside my house. And that is going to inform my artwork. I'm painting work and making work that I'm passionate about. And I'm passionate about stuff that angers me. And there's a lot of stuff to be angry about. And so that's why I make the work that I do. But that's not, that's not, you know, an obligation as an artist. It's me taking advantage of the opportunity to make art like that. So I wouldn't say that it's a responsibility of everybody, but it's my responsibility to do it. And I think, and sometimes I think just on a traditional level, every, I don't know, my father, my father was a black panther. I mean, I was just taught early about these situations. And it was always right there in front of me, like I can't run away from it. And just the fact that I am an artist, and the fact that I'm always thinking about these things, it just comes out. It's not like a plan or anything like that. So I really never stress stress out too much about what other people are doing. If it was any art form that I think people have a responsibility and they're not using it, it's like hip hop because it was something that was a major avenue and outlet for political rhetoric or just like informing people. And it morphed into something else. Now, whether it's right or wrong, or you know what I mean, whatever, but that's the only time I would see it being more, where it should be more prevalent than it is currently. But I can't judge nobody of what they do. It's just like it may not be everyone's responsibility, but I truly feel it's mine. So that's why I do it. Great. So the impetus, one of the reasons why we're having this conversation here and today is because so many people have asked, you know, why aren't museums addressing these issues? Plenty of museums. And I think I know, I think I know where the answers might go for this question. But I mean, plenty of museums are collecting black artists and black contemporary artists. What do you think it is about these types of issues, whether it be issues of police violence or issues. There was just a protest at the Whitney a few days ago about fracking. What do you think, what do you think it is about these types of issues that makes it something that the museums don't really want to explore? I think it just makes white people uncomfortable. Quite frankly. Same answer. The people that, I mean, a lot of times, the people that come to museums, you know, or white people, people of, and people that can buy art or people of influence. And like he was saying earlier, like if the world is cool for you, you don't really want it to change and you don't really want to be reminded that it's not cool for somebody else all the time. So I think it's just, I think it's just a comfortability thing, quite frankly. I actually don't just see it as white people. I see it as most people in the arts, I mean, look, most people in any given society kind of at most times in that society basically go along with it as it is. And that's particularly true in America. And if you're a curator at a major museum, you've already, you know, basically accept a lot of the here's the art that's really good, here's the art that's not so good. And, you know, it's, I mean, first off, the first sentence you said of like, you know, art that museums are collecting a lot of black artists now, that you couldn't say that 20 years ago, 25 years ago. It's a good thing that Cairo Walker, Wangashi Mutu, Glenn Ligon, you know, Carrie Mae Weems, it's a very good thing that our institutions are collecting these artists. And that's, you know, it's different than a while back. At the same time with, you know, I mean, I, you know, I think there's, you know, I do think there's a reason of this question of comfort. People, you know, people don't want to confront that this is a country that was founded on slavery and genocide and the ideas of white supremacy are still dominant today. They, they, and if, you know, my work, some of it actually takes that head on. It actually is very much looking and saying this entire system that we live under is worthless and nothing for the good is going to come of it until we actually get rid of this system and get to a different world. And that is something that, you know, it's like, you're going to have a different conversation in your board meetings and in your, you know, curatorial committees and in your things with friends and with your donors. If you've got that work on the wall, then if you've got, I mean, even like, say, Cahinde Wiley, whose work is challenging on a certain level, but that's something you could say, well, black people are human beings done. You don't have to say, well, okay, this artist is talking about how the police are an oppressive force and we actually, you know, they aren't going to bring good. They actually threaten the community. All this thing of like, they do a dangerous job. No, they make black lives. They're a danger to black people, you know, and that's going to be a different conversation that some people, curators, don't want to have. Museum directors don't want to have. Patrons don't want to have. And I hope that changes because people are actually starting to see a lot of the what's going on, but I do think it is, you know, there is a question of, you know, whether you're willing to be uncomfortable or not. Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree. I completely agree. I also think that it's, you're looking at these institutions and we look at these institutions, you're looking at it at a financial and economic way, a class way, who has access to these institutions, who's coming and patronizing these institutions and comparing that to who's dealing with these issues that we're talking about every day, you know, does a, you know, middle-aged white collector really want to be confronted with an issue or even want to think about an issue that's affecting a 17-year-old poor black kid in Missouri, you know, and so it's, you're trying to, like, take that story and put it into that institution, but who, do they really want to be confronted with that, like you're saying? I mean, just like, as an example, I mean, one of the sort of iconic works that I made that, you know, became kind of, how I became known to the world is a project called What's the Proper Way to Display a U.S. Flag? And it had a, photo montage on the wall that had text that said What's the Proper Way to Display a U.S. Flag? Below that was South Korean students burning flags holding signs saying, Yankee, go home, son of a bitch. And below that on the photo montage was a flag drape U.S. coffins coming back in a troop transport from Vietnam. And there was a shelf below that that had originally blank books that people could write responses of the question and there was a three by five foot flag that people had the option of standing on as they interacted with this piece. It got to the point where the, president of the United States, George Bush the first, publicly denounced the work and Congress denounced it and you know, outlawed it. They actually went to the extraordinary measure of outlawing it. It's in foundation art history courses this work is taught. And you know, in many places you can't actually, you know, go through an art history class without teaching. When that work has been shown in some, I mean, institutions have actually been forced to close because they've shown it. People have been threatened when they've shown that work and it's never been shown at a major museum. Even though my work is collected by some museums and shown at some museums but you know, that work is not shown because people are like, look, that's not a conversation I'm willing to say that this is within the legitimate realm of conversation so we won't bring that to our institution. Even though we can teach our students about it that this is an event that happened but we actually don't really think that this is acceptable and polite conversation. So is that, I know there are many reasons but all of you guys do work in the community. I know, Dred, you've done you're the project with the water you did that at a school right around, right around the corner in bedside, right? Well, the fire hose piece wasn't done with a school. There were 200 students from a bedside school that came to it which was fantastic. I mean, it was really great but it was a public art project that was me versus a fire hose under the Manhattan Bridge in Dumbo. Got it. But you're doing a lot of work in Tatiana, you're a stop-toeing woman to smile pieces primarily out in the street and you as well, Damon, with your hands up project. Why is it that you feel it's it's necessary to go into the community to create these these artworks? Well, for me, I mean, it's it's about access who has access to art, you know, it's taking it to people. It's bringing art to people. I mean, with the stop-toeing it's a small project. You know, I'm also looking at that as using the environment as my canvas. And instead of just working in my traditional space, my art studio, it's using the environment to talk about an issue that happens in that environment. It's not enough for me to just make a painting about, you know, street harassment or sexual harassment that happens in public spaces. I need to actually make work that's in those public spaces. You know, it wouldn't have the same effect at all if I was making a painting about sexual harassment and putting it in a gallery than it does when I put it outside on the street because I'm bringing it to the people who need to see it. I'm bringing it to everybody, you know, it's also this idea, you know, I've done murals and just public art in general. And it's the idea of changing the environment, you know, being involved in that community, putting work in that community that's going to affect them. You think of galleries and you think of museums and you think of who's going to these places, who feel like they can go to these places, who can afford to go to these spaces. And then saying, all right, I'm just going to make the art where I live, right? I feel like that's how graffiti and street art is beginning in the first place. I'm just, I'm going to go outside and make some art, you know, using the tools that I have. And it's, you know, it's the access, making it accessible to folks. And for me, it was also confronting folks in the street. You know, this project was about confronting street harassment and confronting folks who don't want to talk about street harassment and making them look at it and making them see it. So, you know, for me it was, it's important. You can't just, you know, stay in one box, you know, doing an oil painting about something is great for whatever the intention is for that. But the intent with this work is for it to be in the street. So that's where it had to go. I agree with that. And I just think you can hide. You don't have to go into the gallery to see, like, like, let's say we, let's say that the rose was reversed and only like social political art or the uncomfortable art was in the gallery. Then nobody would go there. Like the people that didn't want to see it wouldn't go there. They would stay away from it. You know what I mean? It's kind of like it's safe inside of a gallery. So when you put art on the street, you can't escape it. So it's the difference between putting hands up in Ferguson, speaking to the people that are going through it. That's one thing. But if you took those same hands and I put them up in a upper class white neighborhood or just in that, like, right in front of the police chief's house, it's a different thing. You know what I mean? Now it's instead of a rally call, it's a source of agitation. But the street itself gives you that leeway. You know what I mean? You could do what you want to there. And I don't have to accurate it and tell me I could put this up on the street corner and none like that. It's like, it's just truly freeing, I think. And it's for the people. It's not for, it's not really for the gallery. It's for the people that need to see the message. I mean, for me, I'm happy that people that come to museums and galleries get to see some of what I do. And so I'm happy y'all are here and I would like my work to be in institutions like them. And I've shown here in the past and hope to in the future. And one of the great joys of my life was when I walked into the Whitney Museum about 10 years ago. And a piece that they had bought of mine, which I thought would just end up in a drawer and never be shown, was on the wall. And part of why I was so happy was that I got dragged to museums as a kid and I hated it. And I hated it in part because none of the work was anything I could relate to when I knew, wait a minute, this was work that some kid might actually be able to connect with. So I think the museums and galleries are important to show in. But I also show on the streets because I think those people should have access to contemporary complex art, too. And so I just, and I think that there's sometimes like the people if we had work in this museum, there are people that I'd love to reach that are just across the street that might never come in this museum. And so I mean, I don't make any distinction between, oh, this is where I mean, there's some things that is more difficult to do in a museum and there's some stuff that's more difficult to do on the streets based on resources and funding and access and permanence and, you know. But I think that the people, all people need to connect with these ideas. And so I'm happy to show where I can. And sometimes the tactics that are used, you know, are a little bit different. But it's just the main thing is make good art and put it where people need to see it. I agree with that. And I'm not against the gallery system, but the stuff I made wasn't made for gallery. Which is fine. Yeah, you know what I mean? And it was really, it was, yeah. And I never thought that it would even get the recognition that it did, but it was specifically for a time right then. And I just, I just feel like it, I was using it as a weapon. So. Yeah, well. Great. So it seems like there are a lot of answers to the question and overlapping themes that you spoke about, about access, creating access for people who might not feel comfortable in a museum setting, but also at the same time, confronting people who might not be comfortable with your artwork and who might have an opportunity to choose not to see it in a museum setting to be forced to confront it as well. So what do you think? We're here in the Brooklyn Museum, a space that, as I said in the introduction, we have a history of showcasing artists who are engaged in social and political issues. What do you think that we can do here? And also the museum is a museum where many people from the community, we have more visitors from local neighborhoods than almost any other museum in the country. What do you think an institution like the Brooklyn Museum, given its connections to the community and its location in Brooklyn, where so many things are changing and so many things are happening? What do you think the Brooklyn Museum can do to be more engaged in these types of issues? We'll do a project with us. Invite Damon to come out and do a project, give him some funding to do a major show, collect some of his work, put it on the walls. Quick, quick, quick, quick, quick. Quick, quick, quick. That was good, that was good. That was right on time. I'm with that. I'm with that. I think it's... I didn't have, I didn't have access. Like there were no museums in East St. Louis. There was no access to that. So just the fact that like kids that actually live in this neighborhood get to see this stuff, whether it's political or not, next to stuff that's not political or art. Art in a place where people think it's important and it's not just like designed on a cereal box. Cause that's like, that was the stuff that was cool with me, like cartoons and stuff. And that's what I, you know, that was art for me. But just the idea of how like stuff hanging on the walls and being important to people is a big thing. Just the fact that the neighborhood gets that is big. So I would just like keep doing that. Keep those programs going. Cause like, we need those. But also the top, top telling women to smile. That I mean, that should be, look, that should be part of a conversation in all areas of society. And, you know, and this work, you should find a way to program this. And not just like, I mean, it's like as much as I think the education department's important, but the curatorial department should be bringing this work in and finding the ways to, I mean, part of what, you know, this conversation is possible now as there has been all this upsurge, particularly out of Ferguson, but in general. And so, and, you know, we talking earlier, it's like there, and you mentioned that, you know, there are collecting some artists of color now, which is good. But some of this work, the artists of color like us that are making work that is more willing to make people uncomfortable isn't actually so much being collected. And, you know, it's like we are here on this panel, which is great. And I thank you for that. But it would be very important if, you know, and I know there's a show on sort of more protest work that is, it's coming. And I applaud that. And there's been a lot of good work that the Brooklyn Museum does show. But I think there is still this, you know, there's this division between the Eleanatsui and Ai Weiwei shows, which are like, those are real genius artists. And then, oh, well, we'll do some protest art off to the side. And there is, it is complicated because, you know, I mean, I really want, the Eleanatsui show was brilliant. Ai Weiwei is one of my favorite artists. I want that work here. I'm not saying don't have that work. But I'm saying, look, there has to be a shift where this kind of work that is very timely and addressing important social questions and confronting them head on, and that actually all sorts of ordinary people really, really like, you know, and can get into and is accessible to, that should be programmed. And actually there should be a way in which this is, no, this is legitimate art. This is legitimate conversation. And we're going to not treat it as a separate thing that's like maybe good enough to come on a Saturday program, but it's actually good enough to hang on the walls and be part of the collection and be given permanence. And then on that basis, actually more enter into the pantheon and into the canon for debate so it actually has art history written about it. And that would be important. Absolutely. And I think that word legitimate is a good word to use because it's not only the art that you would be saying is legitimate, right? It's the stories that we're talking about. You're going to be saying it's legitimate. And you'll see like who your audience is, who the audience you bring in. Like when museums started in galleries started bringing graffiti off the street and into the gallery or when you have these shows with these more contemporary younger artists, you see that your audience changes. You're bringing in folks who want to see that work because they relate to what they understand it. So if you bring in work that's talking about issues that are affecting poor, black or brown or communities, women, then you're going to see your audience is going to come see that. And not just see it on a wall and see it in this space as being legitimate art, but also seeing their stories being recognized as legitimate. You're going to see young kids coming and seeing their brown faces on the wall and saying my story's legitimate. It's being accepted in this space. So it's important to bring this work into the space. Like you said, talking here is awesome, but we need to be having these conversations with the art on the walls. And it's challenging and it's risky, but it's important to do. It's courageous to do to bring in this type of protest art into these spaces because that's where it also needs to be shown because we also need to be having these conversations. I mean, for me, stop telling them to smile. I would love for it to be shown in an institution like this. It's most important for me that it's in the streets, like that's first and foremost where it needs to be. When you put it all together and put it all in context and put it in a large space like this, then there's a larger conversation that can be had in front of a different audience and that's very important to do. So yeah, it comes down to just bringing in the work and when you bring in the work, you're gonna bring in an audience that wants to see that work. You're gonna be opening up this institution to folks who felt like maybe their stories weren't important before in this space or they weren't important or wanted to hear in their space. And they will be, you'll see that. And I will say that there is a possible shift in the air because I mean the new Whitney Museum which is gonna open on May 1st is going to have some work that goes in this direction. Some of it's historic, some of it's more the, I mean it's work from the 30s and some of it's work from the 80s and 90s, some Keith Herring and Barbara Kruger and more stuff that was urgent at the time. And that's actually very, very good that that's gonna happen and I encourage curators at this institution and elsewhere to take that lead and say well what kind of world do we wanna live in and what would it mean to actually, I mean the work on the fourth floor, a lot of that's very recent work and it's great that museums are now collecting and exhibiting work that was made one year ago, two years ago, five years ago which is different. I mean it's not just like we gotta buy a hundred year old legitimate stuff. It's like we will legitimize stuff and that's fantastic. But then how do we take the lead and say there is this whole section of artists that's doing this work that's really fighting for a different future. How do we bring some of that in and sort of not in a bad way but in a good way institutionalize it. And so you guys have gone a little bit back and forth with saying that you feel like museums in some ways are heading in a direction where more black artists are being represented and everything like that. Do you feel like as they continue to go in this direction that they're gonna start opening up to the different types of subject matter and work that engages with social and political issues or do you think that something big needs to happen in order to dramatically shift that? Well I think we're here right now because of Ferguson. If Ferguson didn't happen, we wouldn't be, this conversation wouldn't be happening. And so it's what's going on in the streets that's actually sort of rolling and rollicking the society and fortunately the people at the Brooklyn Museum and I'm sure you were part of this were actually like we have to pay attention to that. We need to respond. We have this platform, let's use it. Which is great and I say well A, yes, when all of society's paying attention, please do everything possible to kind of engage that more but then there are gonna be times when, unless there's a real profound tectonic shift, Ferguson at a certain point is gonna have been the flavor of the month and yet the seeds that gave rise to the rebellion in Ferguson are still going to exist until a society based on exploitation and oppression is eliminated. You're still going to have all the, I mean there's lots of other Fergussons. I mean there are tons of other little cities that they're police that are just messing with people, locking people up and big cities like New York where that's happening and the one person in New York that's done any time around these police murders is the guy that filmed it. Ramsey Orta is in and out of jail because the police are messing with him. Yet the cop who killed, the cop or five cops who killed somebody on film haven't even been in a jail cell for a second and so this is still going to continue and the question is what do museums do? Do they say, well we're just responsive because it's fashionable and I don't mean that in a bad, I mean I'm glad it's fashionable but I think that are people gonna have some integrity and say actually I don't wanna live in a world where unarmed people are shot by police day after day after day after day and I'm gonna use whatever position I have to highlight that conversation of people trying to change that and not just that but also the entire system that necessitates cops to shoot people down and send planes and bombs and drones halfway around the world to kill people. I think, I agree with that and I do think things tend to calm down and a lot of people may want things to go back to normal but that's where I think that's our job is to make sure it never goes back to, I'm gonna do whatever in my power to make sure it never goes back to normal. You know, like it's never out of people's sight and out of their mind as much as I can personally do but I totally agree, like sometimes it hurts me like to see the Walter Scott video and the spectacle of black people being shot now. It's like we could just see it live. It's a movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger called The Running Man, it was the 80s movie. Yeah, so you could just watch people get killed and stuff like that, that's something that bothers me about the immediacy of everything but as far as what we do as artists, I think, at least me personally, I wanna do everything I can for it not to be the flavor of the month or to be the flavor of the rest of your life and tell it's different, you know what I mean? Yeah, and then as artists, we're also thinking about or I'm also thinking about how to kind of infiltrate these spaces and kind of force the conversation to happen. I remember I was at Basel in Miami when the decision came that there was gonna be an indictment for the cop who killed Eric Garner in December and I was in this space and in this world that was very, you know, this art world elite and so there's all this wealth, there's all these parties, there's all this art going on and nobody was talking about it. Even in the, you know, I was in the street art world so there's a space, Windwood Walls, where everybody's just outside painting and making murals and it's really in this great energy and all of this art going on but nobody was talking about it and nobody was making art about it and I felt really out of place and I felt really disturbed by that. And so the piece that I showed earlier that had the fair blackness and the we pays on the wall, that was in Miami and I wasn't, you know, planning to pace that piece up because I was still working on it, I wasn't sure how I felt about it yet but I had to do something. Sometimes you feel like you have to do something, you have to kind of force these conversations to happen as an artist and that's where the street art comes in and that's where, that's why we just go outside without permission and put this stuff up because we're trying to force these conversations to happen and so I was in this space and this environment where it was all this art going on and all these artists, all of these curators, all of these art administrators and everybody there and no one seemed to be upset and nothing was happening and everybody was just kind of in this bubble and it was my way of trying to break that bubble and be like, do y'all not know what's going on in the world right now? You know what I mean? And so I think that was kind of like a metaphor for the art world at large in general. It's like how do we just kind of break into that and make these conversations happen because as an artist I really felt like I don't even want to be involved in this right now. I want to go home, you know? It was, yeah, it was a really strange space and I kind of feel that way about the art world in general sometime. So interesting, this theme of needing to intervene in spaces and spaces like museums or in spaces where people are not talking about these kinds of conversations and not addressing issues seems like a theme in the way that you relate to your work. I want to bring up another thing that was important to Tatiana in planning this conversation. So some people have noticed that black men and black male identity, especially cisgendered, straight black male identity, tend to dominate these conversations and also they tend to be the ones that we hear most about in the news, black men. But we know that there are women, we know that there are trans men and women, we know that there are queer men and women that are part of these conversations and that are being dehumanized as well. What steps can we take to make sure that all of these voices and all of these stories are included? I think by talking about them, by talking about them, the media isn't really talking about them. There's been, I don't know how many trans women that have died this year in 2015 that nobody seems to really be talking about. And so we're having these conversations and the reason why I brought that up to you was because when this was presented to me, it was about the black body is the title of this talk and but then in the description, we're just saying black men and I think that's just what happens. We talk about black lives matter, we talk about the black body and I think we just kind of instantly think of the black man while there are these other identities that are not really being talked about and I think should be talked about black women, black trans women, we're kind of facing this violence every single day as well because we're black and because we're women. And so I think that it's important to talk about it and to kind of make these conversations happen in the art world and just in conversations in general, with outside of the art world, I'm trying to do that as an artist but I think in other areas in media, everywhere we need to be talking about who are we talking about and when we're talking about violence against black bodies, who exactly are we talking about? Something that I find funny is that you say black lives matter movement and it's tied to black men when like, some of my closest friends are the women that started that three queer women and they have no problem talking about it, everywhere they go, they push it along. So I also think it's about who's controlling the narrative of the overarching story. Like if we could say a lot of stuff but if they cut that out of the story or if they only wanna put certain things, it's just who's telling the story. So like you said, we gotta talk about it, we gotta keep talking about it because it's obvious that whoever's in charge of the story doesn't value those lives as much or it's just not as, it doesn't sell as many papers or get as many click-throughs or whatever. So I think, I agree, I think it's something we need to do and we need to take upon ourselves to talk about all the black lives that matter. But I wish it were as simple as the evil editors at the Washington Post that didn't care about black women. I mean, it's like, I think the two things, one, I mean just the murder by police is something that does happen to men more than women but it happens to women and that should not be written out of the picture and then there's the whole question about how women's lives and trans lives and queer lives within the black community, that's still a very contested question. It's not even just at the hands of the police. I mean, a lot of the violence against women is people that are supposedly their most intimate friends and partners and it's like, so, you know, and, you know, just it, you know, if we are actually gonna get to a world that doesn't have, you know, half the population being dogged and degraded, we're gonna actually have to get to that world and you don't get to it by ignoring it or sidestepping it or, you know, I mean, people, you know, at least amongst sort of activists and progressive people, I mean, it's, you know, sort of common knowledge that, you know, going back to the status quo is gonna mean going back to the situation where police are shooting black people down but it's not so much common accepted knowledge that the conditions that black women face are, you know, that status quo is intolerable and so, you know, I think we do have to talk about it but we also can't just assume that this is something from outside of us. This is something that, and I don't think anybody was saying it but I think, you know, I think that we actually have to be, you know, clear on that because it's easy when you could say, well, the police are shooting us down, they're the enemy, it's a little bit harder to say, well, you know, talking about hip hop, one of the main things that hip hop went from saying is, you know, fuck the police and fight the power to like, bitches, ho, this and that, you know, and dogging and degrading women and have, I mean, it's just, that's what's the most disgusting and insidious about what hip hop has become is it's decided, okay, let's take our male privilege and dog the sisters because that's what we can get paid to do. And that's, that was leading me to another point is that, okay, so we sit on one side of the spectrum and we truly believe in something that we fight for and then there's people on the other side of the spectrum that believe in something else and truly fight for it but most of humanity is on the fence and they just follow along and go along with things. So I don't know exactly what I'm trying to say but I'm trying to, like, I don't think by us talking about it, we gonna win a few people, we gonna win a few people over but the idea that you can just go through life and never make a choice either way, I think is a problem and I think, like being an artist is something that we can bring people out of their shells and confront them and make them make a choice. Either you win the side of good or you win the side of evil. Because most people, like, there's too much duality in the world for it to be like, all right, the Darth Vader and you know what I mean, that doesn't exist in real life. People have good and bad sides but some people choose to, I guess, to push towards good or to push towards evil. Most people don't. So I think us as artists, we have a privilege and a duty to at least ask the question of which side are you on, you know what I mean? At least ask the question. Yeah, and I mean, yeah, you made a couple good points. I mean, me as an artist, as a black artist, as a woman artist, I am fighting multiple things, you know. I am living in a world and working in a world that is mostly white male dominated as an artist and so I am fighting through that, especially in street art, you know, street art is also mostly male dominated field. So to go outside and put up work by a woman of color that's about women, a lot of women of color asserting themselves and taking agency over themselves, it's important for me to do it and I'm very aware of that in the stories that I'm telling. But sometimes it is difficult when I'm also working as an activist and I'm working to tell these stories of people that I think need to be represented and stories that are important. And I'm fighting, you know, we're talking particularly about violence against black folks. So we're out here, you know, fighting and making this work that's about a lot of these black men being killed, you know. I made, as soon as the Mike Brown thing happened, I made a poster that was downloaded for anybody who wanted to go out and use it when they're protesting, right? And so I feel like I am participating in this as a black woman, but then at the same time I'm also getting, I'm not getting support from black men when I'm supporting them sometimes. So it's like I am, I'm putting out this work about Mike Brown and some of the same folks that are retweeting it and, you know, all these black men that are like, yeah, this is awesome. When I say something about sexism or street harassment or turning around and pointing the finger back at me and telling me that I don't support the black community. And so it's, you know, we are, as a black woman, I am dealing with multiple realities and trying to fight multiple things. And I think it's possible to talk about, you know, black men being killed by the police and also talk about black men harassing me on the street at the same time without demonizing anybody, without criminalizing anybody. But for some folks, it doesn't seem to, they don't think that's possible. And so, and I think that's, you know, just talking with my friends and talking with women that I know, I think that's something that we just kind of struggle with a lot is feeling like we are supporting a movement, of course, because I'm black too. And I'm, you know, at, I could get killed by the police too. You know what I mean? We're all like going through this together. But that doesn't eliminate the fact that when I've gone to some of these protests here in New York City, I've been sexually harassed while I'm there. You know what I mean? So it's difficult to kind of navigate that and deal with that. And so, and I think talking about women being killed and women being killed by the state and being killed due to sexual violence, when I brought that up, I brought that up with this in mind, you know what I mean? Thinking about these multiple conversations and realities that I have to deal with. And so that's why it's important for us to talk about black women when we talk about the black body being under threat is because we're, you know, we're under threat from everybody. You know what I mean? It's not just a state or white men or white women or black, it's black men too. It's everybody. So, so yeah, that's, that's why I thought that was important to talk about. Okay, I think we're at a point where maybe we can take some questions from the audience. So if you can get onto the microphone because we're live streaming and also recording just so we can make sure that you're heard and you're picked up and you'll, you know, get onto the internet and everything like that. So you can line up either side. Let's make sure Margot and Green, if you're out there, that the microphones are on. And yeah, we can start over here with the, is that you, Kenne? Hi, this is actually, this question is directly related to what we're just talking about. In terms of conversations about black male bodies and how protests about racism, institutional racism in this country around the body tends to center on the male perspective. My question is, how much do you think that points to internalized self-hatred and patriarchy racism in our communities? And what is agency and allyship, particularly as artists, artists of color who sometimes cross a lot of different communities? What does that look like in our community? And I think this is specifically for the men on the panel. And I think another question that I would ask is what do you think the ubiquity of the N-word, how does that contribute to the ways in which we see ourselves and view ourselves? And especially the way those, in which black men view black women. Could you repeat the first part? About what is agency and allyship? Where you was like internalized. Sexism, racism, patriarchy. All right, something about internalized self-hatred. Yes. Could you repeat? I think that's the part that he's asking. And what's the question about that? How much does that point to internalized self-hatred? The black, the black male, the... The idea of street harassment. And I guess you know what I'll say is it's so funny, Nadia, I'm glad that you said it that we're under threat from everyone because I feel walking down the street, the world in New York City, which is a very populated, densely populated city, feels entitled to my attention to the point that even black women, women of color have taken on that. But it's never a smile and hello. It's usually a mean look. It's an expectation of I can put this off on you because this is where you stand in this reality. But it's hard, it's painful when it comes from members of your community because... I think that I guess the culture of white supremacy, patriarchy, basically what was given to us by Western religion, the spread of Western religion a long time ago is it's a disease that everyone has. I mean, I understand that. But what I'm saying is how does agency and allyship, because we all know that this is happening. We know it on an intellectual level. But emotionally, how do we practice agency and allyship? Because white supremacy is there to pacify us. But if we wanna be active in our lives, and if we wanna be active activists in our community, what does that look like, particularly for men of color, cisgender, straight men of color, in communities when we're talking about black bodies, danger, does that make sense? Yeah, so I don't know what you can do. Personally, from where you sit, what I know that I can do is talk about it, be in uncomfortable places that I wasn't before, meet people that I wouldn't have met before and show them the type of respect that I would expect to get from them. And as far as being an artist, I can only continue to make things that reflect what's right from where I stand. Like, I can't authentically understand what it is like to be harassed on the street as a black woman. But as a black man, I can make something as close as possible to speak to those black men that are doing that, to show them that it's wrong. That's what I can do. And I think that's allyship. It's just like being empathy, empathy for people. Like understanding and truly trying to put yourself in their place. And I think that's the first step to real allyship. Because once you get there, then you'll figure out, good people will figure out what they need to do and what they can do and what talents and gifts they have and what resources they have to change things. But until you see a person, as a person, until you see the person that isn't like you as a human being, then you'll never get to that point. We'll never get to that point. I mean, I think that this question of, sort of what do we do about this and with the understanding that there are, sort of, well, it comes from identity politics. Whereas like, as black people, we understand something that other people don't understand. As women, we understand something that men don't understand. And that people who do understand this are allies. And I think, you know, it's like, I'm not making work about the criminalization of youth because I'm a black man. I'm making work about the criminalization of youth because I'm a communist that I want to see a radically different world. And anybody who sees that, whether they're young or old, Latino, white, black, male or female, whatever their gender orientation, their sexual orientation is, they can make that work and engage that. And I think that, you know, sort of like to look at it that as people of color or black people, we have something that inherently is in our interest. I mean, look, Barack Obama's as black as he wanna be, black people are catching as much hell under his administration as under any other presidency. You know, Mike Brown happened on his watch. Walter Scott happened on his watch. What did he say with Mike Brown? He said, well, you know, a lot of commonly reflect on this and let justice work, let the legalists were a nation of laws. Well, that's not in my interest. And he's as black as he wants to be. I don't want him saying that as a black man, he's saying that as the commander-in-chief, the chief imperialist of this society. And so, you know, just because, I mean, you know, it's like there are women that are doing as much harmful and degrading things towards women, not so much street harassment, but I mean, it's like there are women that are participating in the Congress where there are all these restrictions that are happening under abortion to the point where, you know, it's like if you're a woman in Mississippi, you probably can't get an abortion in your state. You know, same things happening in Texas. You know, so this is not a question of like people of a particular identity automatically have a political perspective that is useful to other people of that same identity. And people who are automatically, not part of that identity, automatically can just be allies. I want, and I think it's, I mean, I think what Damon says is like, he can make work about this. I think that it's a real, you know, it's a real, it's both difficult for men that see the oppression of women and want to make work that addresses it. But the bigger thing is that it's not sort of expected. And I think it is something that men ought to really think about. If you don't want a society where women are degraded and put down and harassed on the street on a daily basis, on a regular basis, then we actually have a lot of work to do. Both men and women have to do that work, but men really should do it, including within the art. And, you know, it's something that we should do. But, I mean, but again, it comes back to what kind of world do you want? I mean, I was saying, Jeff Koons is making the work that he, that reflects his worldview about what he thinks about the world. And I think the challenge could be put to men. If you're making all this political work, but you're never doing anything that talks about women getting free and emancipating women, then what world are you fighting for? Are you half-stepping? Are you overturning every oppression except for one? And if you are, why? Get up off that. And that is a challenge I put to myself, but also to other men who don't want the way that women are harassed and degraded to be something that goes on and on and on. Great, so let's get to another question. I guess we'll go right, left, right, left. Hi, my name is Ashley Love and I'm a journalist and I'm also an organizer with Black Trans Women Lives Matter. And we're a media campaign and we launched last September during the Congressional Black Caucus Conference in DC. And because we had a vigil and a call for peace outside the conference to draw attention to the epidemic of hate crime murders against trans women of color, because a lot of times when we'd reach out to our elected officials to draw support and attention to this cause, they would feel uncomfortable because these are trans women. And then also they would feel uncomfortable because it was black male on black female violence. And I felt that if it's white male on black male violence, then okay. But when it's black men against black trans women or just black women period, we feel like there's a double standard. And before I ask my question, I disagreed that sometimes it's about the editor comment because a lot of times we've reached out to editors and they're just really uncomfortable talking about things that are trans a lot of times. And they have the executive power and a lot of times they censor out our concerns. So I think we do need to hold our media account number because being editor is about dispensing information. It's not about letting your own biases get into the way of telling both sides of the story. But as a black transsexual woman, I do feel really, I mean the only reason I'm here is because Tatiana really empowered me to get some courage and come up here. But a lot of times I feel really uncomfortable in these spaces even acknowledging that I was born different because I just feel like there's transphobia, there's misogyny, there's racism. And so my question is to Tatiana, is there any advice you could give me and to my other trans sisters, how do we, because I'm all about taking a stand against police brutality against black men because I love my brothers. But it does break my heart sometimes that, sometimes I don't feel the love is mutual because they don't always support our causes. So how do you keep the energy going and collaborate when a lot of times you feel like people are closing their ears and you're not a priority? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean it's difficult because what happens is that when you try to tell your story or you tell your story, there are folks who tell you that your story is not valid or that it's not true. And that's what happens in my work and I'm sure that's what happens to a lot of folks, particularly black trans media. This is my story, this is what I go through. It's important, let's talk about this and people either question it or they don't find it valid or worthy. And so it probably starts with just collaborating with folks who are supportive of you, who are allies to you, who do support you and working with them. That's what I do with my work. I am talking about an issue and if you are with it, then let's work together. If you are not, then you're gonna see it anyway because I'm gonna make the work and we're gonna talk about it. So you're doing the work now in order to get in the front of folks and make people pay attention to it. Some folks aren't, those editors, they aren't gonna do it. So you have to find those that will and you have to make your own. It's really just about making your own voice heard however you can and finding those who wanna support you because there are folks that will support you and just work with them, collaborate with them and find solidarity and love within that. You know what I mean? And let that encourage you and empower you because I get folks, men in particular, but a lot of folks always criticizing this work and not even criticizing, just antagonizing it. And, but you don't, you know, you don't let that stop you. So, yeah. Thank you so much. Next question. Hi, I'm Joseph Jean-Baptiste. I'm 18 year old, I'm 18 year old. Could you just speak a little bit louder? Sorry, could you just step into the mic a little bit more, speak a little louder? I'm Joseph Jean-Baptiste. I'm an 18 year old high school student. I go to Dr. Susan S. McKinney, secondary school of arts. And I wanted to ask all of you, how do you gain and keep freedom to create art to help the movement? How do you acquire that and keep it? Well, what do you mean by freedom? So that could mean a lot of things. You mean financial freedom? Cause that's not, I'm nowhere near that, bro. No, how do you like, how do you come to terms with that and move on ignoring that? It's about what do you think is important? I never really cared much about money unless I didn't have enough to like eat simple things, you know? But if I wanted to be rich, I would have been a lawyer. So this makes, this lifestyle that I have right now makes me a lot happier than when I had a nine or five or anything like that. Now, it's really hard to survive. It is, it's really hard to survive, but it's worth it, it's worth it. And I think that's been the question since the beginning of time, since, but just some people, the people that I know that make this work, they don't have a backup plan. There was never a plan B. They never thought about it. It was either, you know, it was either sink or swim and that's what I took upon a long time ago. So sometimes, sometimes I make money, sometimes I don't. So I ain't really got no advice for you on that career. Well, I mean, I think that, you know, this is a difficult society to make art in. I mean, even if you are not doing work that is challenging the status quo, this is a difficult society to make art in and certainly if you are, and not all people are going to be sort of as financially or critically successful. But the point is, you know, you make the work regardless of whether it, you know, it's like you gotta make the work and you gotta find out how to do it and some work you aren't gonna be successful in making. I mean, some projects I've wanted to do that for a range of reasons, including financial, I haven't been able to accomplish the way I'd want to, but you know, it's like I haven't given up or stopped making work and, you know, I think that, you know, as an 18-year-old, I think, you know, it's possible that you'll be the next Kara Walker or Genshi Mutu and I hope that you are, but if you're not, do you still continue to show up and come to the studio or go to the school and say, well yeah, this is gonna, you know, it would be easier if I chose to be a lawyer or more just like some, you know, functionary and some, you know, commercial whatever firm. I mean, that'd be a lot easier than being an artist, but if you actually are interested in making art and changing the world with it, then you just, you know, you figure it out and it's a daily struggle. I mean, it doesn't, you know, it's like sort of finding the money to make a work when it only cost me, you know, $500 was almost as hard as when I'm trying to make a work that costs a million dollars. It's just the work will be bigger, but it's not like it suddenly gets easier because now raising $500 would be easier and more there's a necessity to make work that can play on a bigger stage. And so I gotta raise a lot more money and talk with more curators and get more patrons and backers. And so just, you know, prepare for the long haul and actually commit to yourself and showing up. So we're running low on time, but I do wanna give everybody an opportunity to have their question answered. So what we can do is we can just one by one, each person ask their question and then one by one, each of the panelists can take one of the questions. So you can start second, third and then we'll just answer it back to back. My question is for Damon, hi, Damon. I'm originally from St. Louis. I moved up here three months before Michael Brown was murdered. And I know back home, there were people when it was boarded up, you know, windows and stuff, people were painting like flowery stuff on those, on those, kind of being like, we're gonna put positive things in the community. And I personally did not like that. But I was trying, I wonder what your point of view of it was because there are people who consider themselves our allies. And yet they felt that that was the thing that should go up instead of something else. Does that make sense? So just in the effort of time, let's ask all the questions. I'm writing them down so we can remember. And then one by one, we can answer. Thank you. So I'm also a high school student. I'm a senior. So I remember, well this is questions for anybody on the panel. So I remember you guys saying that there are a lot of white people that are comfortable with how things are currently, like how things currently are because they have the upper hand on things. But also I feel like our younger generation, they're really comfortable with what's going on. So I go to school in dead center of Brownsville. And once the Eric Gardner cases and Mike Brown cases are to come out, many of them, when we were talking to them about it in school, many of them were like, oh, well, it didn't happen to me, so I don't care. And hearing that really upset me because it's young, like our younger generation, we're the ones that are being killed off. So my question is, how can we use art to show them that even though they might not know Mike Brown or Eric Gardner, like how can we use art or conversations like this to influence them, to make them see that those things also affect them. Because hearing you guys saying that you guys work with younger students and doing all these art projects with them, that sounds wonderful to me. But a lot of people do want to come to the middle of Brownsville because they think their majority of us are just a bunch of ghetto teenagers that don't really know anything. So how can you guys or other arts bring your art or these conversations into communities like that and that can better influence myself and younger generations, yes. Thank you, so we'll take the last two questions and then we'll answer. Hi, my name's Erica, thank you guys so much. This has been amazing. So my question goes back to there was some conversation where you guys were talking about museums collecting and showing this protest work. And my question is, do you feel like the work loses its impact when it's out of context? When you're not marching that glass coffin through the streets of Ferguson and putting it down in front of the police officers or the backstory behind the fear of blackness posters where you were really, really upset and uncomfortable about the fact that people were not having that conversation or the one that posters not being posted up right outside of a convenience store on the street where people see them. When it's in a museum or in a gallery, do you feel like it's going to lose its context at all? Okay, thank you. And the last question. I'm Burnett Glover from Chicago, Illinois, visiting your fair city, celebrating my birthday. Yeah, happy birthday. I don't have a question, just a statement. I'm particularly impressed with this conversation. I wish to commend the Brooklyn Museum for opening up a conversation when we don't have a riot outside and we are not snapping at each other to a mixed audience of this sort of figuration. So I'm particularly impressed with this because there are people who feel that we did get emancipated in 1865 and we did get the civil rights in 1960s. And the question is, what is the issue now? So we do need to keep the issue open because it hasn't been solved. So I wish to commend the Brooklyn Museum for opening up a topic of this type. Thank you. Thank you for that. Okay, so the final three questions. The first one for Damon. What was your point of view on, and feel free to correct me if I don't get it correct, on people coming in and trying to beautify neighborhoods like Ferguson, seeing that as the answer to the challenges that are happening. Well, I don't think that was exactly the question, but I got it, okay. So can you repeat the question for me because I obviously didn't get it. So basically, I put up the hands on West Floyd's in another part of town, actually the exact street in neighborhood that I live on. Another young black man was killed named Vandere Meyers, a day before Ferguson in October. And I mean like on my street a block away, tanks rolled out, tear gas, all of that same stuff that was happening in Ferguson was happening right in St. Louis City. That didn't get as much publicity as Mike Brown did. And that part where I live at is, I guess what's happening in Brooklyn, what I see happening in Brooklyn now, it's a mixed neighborhood, lots of businesses, things of that nature, but they boarded up all of those windows the same way. But that is where white people live at. A lot of white people live around there and a lot of the art community lives around there. What I had to do was kind of like migrate out to go to Ferguson and do that. So people came out, they was painting rainbows and unicorns and you know, literally band-aids, like literally painting band-aids on things. And I did not like it and I was very vocal about it. And I may have lost some friends along the way. But I think, again, I really think art is a weapon and in times like this, you have an opportunity to shake things up. And when you do the exact opposite and you do it to make people comfortable by painting rainbows and like, you might as well paint rainbows on body bags. You might as well, if you're just gonna make it pretty for people because everybody knew what those boys were up and nobody, nothing had happened. Nobody had broken anything out. It was just that people was in the street and they was like, that's what they gonna do. They gonna do what they did in Ferguson and all that. So I think it was a waste of a very dynamic moment in my city and I was disappointed in some of my friends. But I also understand that some of them make stuff just, that's what they do is to make people happy and comfortable. But I don't think that was the time and place for that to be personal. Great, so the final two questions, maybe Tatiana can take one and Dred, you can take one. So the two questions are how can we use art to convince young people in particular to care about issues which, as this young lady was saying, she sees as or they see is not directly affecting them because they don't directly happen to them personally. And then the final question of does work that's created in the streets or created with a certain context in mind? Does that work, lose its meaning if after the fact it is taken into the museum and displayed in this type of setting? I think I'll try to answer the young woman's question to the best of my ability. It's a really good question and I'm glad that you're here today. I think that's really awesome. I think a lot of times people think that we need adults to kind of energize youth but I think that youth are really great within themselves. There's probably more that you can do at your school than I can do, you know what I mean, in some way. You know, I worked in Brownsville for a couple years at a school working with youth and the youth that I worked with was really engaged but then you did also see some suitors where it did seem like they just didn't really care about the issues that we were talking about. I don't know how you can use art in particular to make somebody care about something that they don't care about or make them understand that something is important to them even if they don't realize that it's important to their lives and their livelihood. But I think that it's possible, it's just you have to be creative about it. But I think that the fact that you are here, you probably have ideas yourself, like you know what I mean, the fact that you are here today and because you are gonna be in that school, if you can't find somebody to bring to your school, you can't find an artist, you can't find somebody who wants to come to Brownsville and work with your school, what can you do in your school to like help influence your peers, you know what I mean? Because I think that youth have a lot of power too, you as a student, you have a lot of power too, not just me because I'm an adult and a professional artist, you know what I'm saying? That's all I got. I wish I could give you a better answer, but I, you know, somebody else seems to take it. Yeah, okay, the final question. Yeah, well, as far as context, I mean sometimes having work taken out of a street context and put in a museum does defan it, I mean that does happen, but sometimes it actually gives it access to a wider audience and that's worth the risk and it's like, you know, when I was growing up, the music that most spoke to me was actually punk rock, it was sort of really opposing the status quo in a profound way and now I'm hearing class songs as Jaguar commercials and I'm like, damn, what happened? And it's on class, the music I grew up on that was real rebel music is now classic rock and it's like, what the hell happened? But you know, it's like, it's a battle and so I mean, much of the work that I make sort of on the streets doesn't play in museums, but that's, but there's work that I do about similar issues that is made for museums and so I think that's, it's a battle worth having and then I do wanna come back a little bit to Brownsville because I do think that this thing, I mean, I've done work in East New York in Brownsville, including through MANUP, which is an organization whose name I'm not thrilled about, but nonetheless, because getting back to patriarchy, but they do a lot of really good stuff in the community and you know, I think that part of the thing is that the collaboration really was enabling the youth to draw on their experience to see how this work did, these ideas do matter to them, but I don't think we're gonna get everybody. I think some people, you know, and I'd say too, some people aren't gonna, they aren't gonna care and I think part of it is a symptom of how literally under the gun they are and they've seen generation after generation fighting against this and they see that, you know, it's like, damn, you all had, you know, the civil rights movement and you had all this other stuff and we was still catching hell, Mike Brown didn't live around here, I don't care and it's like some people are not gonna actually move off of that, but back in the 60s weren't always the 60s and the Black Panthers didn't always, you know, it's like, I grew up in Chicago and Chicago, you know, as a Black Panther leader, named Fred Hampton, who actually went and challenged a lot of gang bangers, which the gangs were a little different then than they are now, but he challenged them to get out of the gang stuff and get into revolution and some of them did, but it didn't happen all at once, it was a real fight and a real struggle and right now we're seeing like some youth, I mean, there were protests against Murder by Cop that happened on April 14th and some of the youth in street organizations set their differences aside, but that was through political struggle, it wasn't just through or through art and so I think it's like, yes, art's gonna connect with some people, but the main question is, how are people struggling with them? So it does come back to you, how are you struggling with those people who say it ain't about me? I mean, because you actually can say, well, look, we grew up in the same situation, I think it is about us and it is about you, why do you think that? What were you really saying, I know it's about me, I know, you know, this system has no future for me, but I don't think I can do anything about it and that's actually not true, but people who've been sold that and had that hammered into them and the most dangerous thing and the hands of the oppressed is the idea that they can get free of their oppression and that's what the people who run this system are most fearful of and just to be clear, I wasn't saying that it was just like, white people who go along with the status quo, I think most people go along with the status quo and connecting with people who can actually see very much that they could be the next Mike Brown or the next Walter Scott, you know, that actually, those people can make society change and so when I did this project, the online possibility of freedom in a country founded on slavery and genocide, there were 200 kids from a Bed-Stuy high school that came out and they changed the performance because they weren't cynical people from the art world who would have said, oh, this is just art, they knew that this actually mattered to them and it connected that past to the present so it does come back to you whether it's through art or for some other stuff and just struggle with people over, you know, getting deeply into why they think what they think, they actually know a lot about the world and some of the youth I worked with in Bed-Stuy and sort of Brownsville and East New York, some of them didn't wanna hear about it but then after, come back next week and the week after that and the week after that and the week after that and then Trayvon Martin gets killed and they're like, oh wait, this, I could have been, that could have been me and so I'm gonna actually start making work about this so it comes back to you, you actually can play, but the people who actually see that the world doesn't have to be this way and are willing to actually struggle with their friends, their colleagues, those people are, you know, those are freedom fighters so you should be a freedom fighter, you should be an emancipator of humanity and actually, you know, coming back to what we need to get free, we actually need revolution and I would say you should connect with that, we could talk more, there's a website, revcom, r-e-v-c-o-m dot u-s that actually breaks down a lot of this stuff and connect people with that and it's gonna be a struggle and it's not, and sometimes people will be with you one day and they won't be with you the next and then you'll pull them back and they'll get with you and you gotta actually not move back off that, you gotta say I'm down for, I wanna get to a different world and I'm gonna actually struggle with my friends, my family, my colleagues, my comrades to actually get to the world that we would all want to live in. Okay, on that note, I think that's all the time we have so I wanna thank Damon Tatiana Dredd for this wonderful conversation. Please continue to have this conversation.