I'm a potter, which seems like a fairly humble vocation. I know a lot about pots. I've spent about 15 years making them. One of the things that really excites me in my artistic practice and being trained as a potter is that you very quickly learn how to make great things out of nothing; that I spent a lot of time at my wheel with mounds of clay trying stuff; and that the limitations of my capacity, my ability, was based on my hands and my imagination; that if I wanted to make a really nice bowl and I didn't know how to make a foot yet, I would have to learn how to make a foot; that that process of learning has been very, very helpful to my life. I feel like, as a potter, you also start to learn how to shape the world.
我是一名陶艺家。 听起来不是什么了不起的职业。 我对于各种陶器了如指掌, 我在这一行干了差不多15年。 在我艺术实践的历程中, 有一件事儿很让我为之兴奋, 正是这件事儿让我成为一名陶艺师。 那就是:你能够快速地学到, 怎样从无到有地做出很棒的作品; 这使我日复一日地在转轮上 用黏土制作着各种试作品; 我能力与才华的唯一限制, 就是我的双手和想象力; 如果我想做一个漂亮的碗, 但我甚至连碗的底座怎么做都还不知道, 那我就得去学习如何制作底座; 这种学习的过程, 对我的人生来说大有裨益。 我认为,作为一名陶艺家, 你也要逐渐学着 去塑造我们的世界。
There have been times in my artistic capacity that I wanted to reflect on other really important moments in the history of the U.S., the history of the world where tough things happened, but how do you talk about tough ideas without separating people from that content? Could I use art like these old, discontinued firehoses from Alabama, to talk about the complexities of a moment of civil rights in the '60s? Is it possible to talk about my father and I doing labor projects? My dad was a roofer, construction guy, he owned small businesses, and at 80, he was ready to retire and his tar kettle was my inheritance. Now, a tar kettle doesn't sound like much of an inheritance. It wasn't. It was stinky and it took up a lot of space in my studio, but I asked my dad if he would be willing to make some art with me, if we could reimagine this kind of nothing material as something very special. And by elevating the material and my dad's skill, could we start to think about tar just like clay, in a new way, shaping it differently, helping us to imagine what was possible?
很多时候,我希望通过我的艺术创作 去反映出另外一些 非常重要的时刻。 在美国历史、世界历史里 那些艰苦的年代。 但你怎么能在脱离实物的情况下, 去和人谈论那些困难的话题呢? 我能否使用这些来自 阿拉巴马州的一些老旧废弃的消防管, 来表现上世纪60年代人权运动的复杂性? 能否让我谈谈父亲和我所做的一些项目? 我的父亲是一名屋顶工,建筑工人。他的生意不大。 在他80岁的时候,他准备退休了。 于是我继承了他留下的沥青锅。 如今,沥青锅听起来真不像 一个像样的传家品,它确实不是。 它会散发出阵阵恶臭,并且挤占了我工作室的许多空间。 但是,我曾询问父亲是否愿意 与我合作,创造一些艺术作品, 如果我们能够重塑 这块看似无用的材料, 把它变成很特别的东西。 并且通过材质的提升 和我父亲娴熟的技术, 我们能否以新的方式, 把沥青当成黏土, 用另外的方式去塑造它, 帮我们发现新的可能性?
After clay, I was then kind of turned on to lots of different kinds of materials, and my studio grew a lot because I thought, well, it's not really about the material, it's about our capacity to shape things. I became more and more interested in ideas and more and more things that were happening just outside my studio. Just to give you a little bit of context, I live in Chicago. I live on the South Side now. I'm a West Sider. For those of you who are not Chicagoans, that won't mean anything, but if I didn't mention that I was a West Sider, there would be a lot of people in the city that would be very upset.
在黏土之后,我开始 尝试使用各种不同的材料, 我的工作室也在日益扩大,因为我觉得 这不仅仅关乎材料的选用, 更是关于我们塑造事物的能力。 我对于「创意」越来越感兴趣, 也越来越多地在工作室之外进行创作。 先给大家提供一些背景,我居住在芝加哥。 我现在住在南边。 但我是西边的人。 如果你不是芝加哥人, 这些信息对你可能没什么意义。 但是,如果我不提及我是西边的人, 这个城市里的很多人可能会很不高兴。
The neighborhood that I live in is Grand Crossing. It's a neighborhood that has seen better days. It is not a gated community by far. There is lots of abandonment in my neighborhood, and while I was kind of busy making pots and busy making art and having a good art career, there was all of this stuff that was happening just outside my studio. All of us know about failing housing markets and the challenges of blight, and I feel like we talk about it with some of our cities more than others, but I think a lot of our U.S. cities and beyond have the challenge of blight, abandoned buildings that people no longer know what to do anything with. And so I thought, is there a way that I could start to think about these buildings as an extension or an expansion of my artistic practice? And that if I was thinking along with other creatives -- architects, engineers, real estate finance people -- that us together might be able to kind of think in more complicated ways about the reshaping of cities.
我居住在芝加哥的 “Grand Crossing”街区。 那是一个美景不再的社区。 它完全不是个高级社区。 我们附近有很多废弃建筑物, 当我忙于制作我的器皿、忙于创造 和享受艺术的时候, 这一切都在周围发生着 就在我的工作室之外。 我们都了解房地产市场的低迷, 和它面临的衰落的挑战, 我们时常谈论自己的城市,而不是别的, 但是我常思考美国的城市, 以及别的国家的城市 都面临着日益衰落的挑战。 人们不知道该如何处置这些被废弃的建筑。 因此,我开始设想, 是否有一种方式能使我 把这些建筑,作为我 艺术实践的延伸与扩展呢? 如果我能和其他创意人士一起协同思考—— 建筑家、工程师、房地产和金融人士—— 这样我们可能一起想出 更多元的方式,去重塑我们的城市。
And so I bought a building. The building was really affordable. We tricked it out. We made it as beautiful as we could to try to just get some activity happening on my block. Once I bought the building for about 18,000 dollars, I didn't have any money left. So I started sweeping the building as a kind of performance. This is performance art, and people would come over, and I would start sweeping. Because the broom was free and sweeping was free. It worked out. (Laughter) But we would use the building, then, to stage exhibitions, small dinners, and we found that that building on my block, Dorchester -- we now referred to the block as Dorchester projects -- that in a way that building became a kind of gathering site for lots of different kinds of activity. We turned the building into what we called now the Archive House. The Archive House would do all of these amazing things. Very significant people in the city and beyond would find themselves in the middle of the hood. And that's when I felt like maybe there was a relationship between my history with clay and this new thing that was starting to develop, that we were slowly starting to reshape how people imagined the South Side of the city.
所以我买下了一栋建筑物。 这栋建筑非常便宜。 我们给它精心打扮了一番。 我们想尽办法把它弄得有吸引力, 让更多的活动发生在我的街区。 我花1万8千美元买下这栋房子之后, 就没剩什么钱了。 所以我开始打扫这幢房子 并将其作为一种表演。 这是一种行为艺术, 其他人也可以参与进来, 我就这样开始打扫。 但是因为扫帚是免费的, 打扫也是免费(自由)的。 它就这么奏效了。 (笑) 我们接下来用这个房子 举办了一些展览和小型餐会, 我发现这栋建筑——我们给它 取名叫多切斯特(Dorchester)计划 ——开始成为街区里的 一个人群聚集的场所。 各类活动都在这里举办。 后来我们改造并给这栋房子命名「资料馆」。 资料馆有许多惊人的功用。 许多来自城里城外的达官贵人 都会跑到这里来。 这时候我会觉得 也许我做陶土的经历, 和这里正在发生的新鲜事 有着某种特殊的联系。 我们逐渐开始 重塑人们心中的芝加哥南区。
One house turned into a few houses, and we always tried to suggest that not only is creating a beautiful vessel important, but the contents of what happens in those buildings is also very important. So we were not only thinking about development, but we were thinking about the program, thinking about the kind of connections that could happen between one house and another, between one neighbor and another. This building became what we call the Listening House, and it has a collection of discarded books from the Johnson Publishing Corporation, and other books from an old bookstore that was going out of business. I was actually just wanting to activate these buildings as much as I could with whatever and whoever would join me.
从一栋房子到很多房子, 我们不断地试图强调: 重要的不仅是造出一些好看的容器, 而是在这些建筑里,会发生什么? 所以我们不只是关注它的建造, 我们还要思考它的整个程序, 考虑在这栋房子和那栋房子之间、 在这个社区和那个社区之间, 可能发生什么样的联结。 这座建筑被我们做成了“聆听屋”, 这里收集了许多废弃的书籍 它们都来自于Johnson出版社, 还有一些其他的书, 来自一些快要倒闭的旧书店。 我其实就是想要和任何愿意 参与的人一起,用各种方式 尽量激发这些建筑的活力。
In Chicago, there's amazing building stock. This building, which had been the former crack house on the block, and when the building became abandoned, it became a great opportunity to really imagine what else could happen there. So this space we converted into what we call Black Cinema House. Black Cinema House was an opportunity in the hood to screen films that were important and relevant to the folk who lived around me, that if we wanted to show an old Melvin Van Peebles film, we could. If we wanted to show "Car Wash," we could. That would be awesome. The building we soon outgrew, and we had to move to a larger space. Black Cinema House, which was made from just a small piece of clay, had to grow into a much larger piece of clay, which is now my studio.
在芝加哥,有许多令人惊叹的建筑。 这座建筑过去是这一带的吸毒屋, 当它逐渐被遗弃的时候, 也为我们提供了绝佳的机会去设想: 这儿还能发生些什么不一样的事? 所以我们将这片空间改造为 一幢名叫"黑色影院"的房子。 黑色影院为邻居们 提供了很好的观影机会, 这对于居住在周围的人来说 十分重要,也与他们密切相关。 假如我想要和大家分享Melvin Van Peebles 的老电影,我能在这里放映。 假如我想要放映《洗车场》, 我也能在这儿做到。 真是太棒了。 这些建筑很快就不够用了, 我们不得不搬去更大的地方。 黑色电影屋的构想一开始 仅仅来自于一小块黏土(的创意), (这个创意)不断的成长壮大, 最终成为了我的工作室。
What I realized was that for those of you who are zoning junkies, that some of the things that I was doing in these buildings that had been left behind, they were not the uses by which the buildings were built, and that there are city policies that say, "Hey, a house that is residential needs to stay residential." But what do you do in neighborhoods when ain't nobody interested in living there? That the people who have the means to leave have already left? What do we do with these abandoned buildings? And so I was trying to wake them up using culture.
我意识到,对于那些 热衷于给建筑分类的人来说, 我所做的这些工作 ——在废弃建筑中做的事, 并不是那些建筑原本的用途。 一些城市的法规中声明: ”嘿,房子应该保持它作为住宅的特性” 但是如果都没人愿意住在 这些无聊建筑里了怎么办? 能搬走的人都已经搬走了。 我们该如何处理这些废弃的建筑? 于是我开始尝试用文化来唤醒它们。
We found that that was so exciting for folk, and people were so responsive to the work, that we had to then find bigger buildings. By the time we found bigger buildings, there was, in part, the resources necessary to think about those things. In this bank that we called the Arts Bank, it was in pretty bad shape. There was about six feet of standing water. It was a difficult project to finance, because banks weren't interested in the neighborhood because people weren't interested in the neighborhood because nothing had happened there. It was dirt. It was nothing. It was nowhere. And so we just started imagining, what else could happen in this building? (Applause)
我发现大家对于这事很兴奋, 人们对我们的工作反响热烈, 我们不得不搬去更大的建筑。 当我们找到更大建筑的时候, 某种程度上,我们就有了 一些资源来满足更多需求。 我们管这个银行叫「艺术银行」, 它已经十分破败。 里面大约有六英尺的积水。 这个项目很难筹到资金, 因为邻居们对银行没有什么兴趣, 当然,人们也对自身所处的社区毫无兴趣, 因为那儿没有什么有趣的事发生。 这里很脏,什么也没有, 简直什么都不是。 于是我们开始想象, 这个建筑里能发生些什么? (掌声)
And so now that the rumor of my block has spread, and lots of people are starting to visit, we've found that the bank can now be a center for exhibition, archives, music performance, and that there are people who are now interested in being adjacent to those buildings because we brought some heat, that we kind of made a fire.
于是有关这幢建筑的传闻 迅速在我的街区传开了, 许多人来这里参观, 我们觉得,现在可以将 这个地方作为社区的中心 用来做展览,放置档案资料, 以及举办音乐表演等, 一些人开始对住在周围产生兴趣, 这是因为我们为它带来了一点温度, 我们创造了一个火种。
One of the archives that we'll have there is this Johnson Publishing Corporation. We've also started to collect memorabilia from American history, from people who live or have lived in that neighborhood. Some of these images are degraded images of black people, kind of histories of very challenging content, and where better than a neighborhood with young people who are constantly asking themselves about their identity to talk about some of the complexities of race and class?
我们的一些藏品来自于Johnson出版社。 我们也开始收集一些 与美国历史有关的纪念物品, 它们来自曾经或现在居住在这里的邻居们。 其中有一些资料是关于歧视黑人的图片, 这些充满争议的内容所讲述的历史, 是不是要比邻里间的年轻人 不断追问其自身身份定位时, 谈论到的一些错综复杂的 种族和阶级问题,要更直观一些?
In some ways, the bank represents a hub, that we're trying to create a pretty hardcore node of cultural activity, and that if we could start to make multiple hubs and connect some cool green stuff around there, that the buildings that we've purchased and rehabbed, which is now around 60 or 70 units, that if we could land miniature Versailles on top of that, and connect these buildings by a beautiful greenbelt -- (Applause) -- that this place where people never wanted to be would become an important destination for folk from all over the country and world.
在某种程度上,这银行相当于一个枢纽, 一个我们努力去创造的, 能够承载文化活动的核心节点, 如果我们可以创造出多个枢纽, 并在周围布置上酷炫的绿色植物, 凭借我们购买和修复的这些建筑, ——现在这一大片建筑被分为了60-70个区域, 如果我们能在其上加上类似 一种微型凡尔赛宫的设计, 用美丽的绿化带连接这些建筑—— (掌声) 这些人们以前不想再待的地方, 最终会变成全国、全世界的 人们都想前往的目的地。
In some ways, it feels very much like I'm a potter, that we tackle the things that are at our wheel, we try with the skill that we have to think about this next bowl that I want to make. And it went from a bowl to a singular house to a block to a neighborhood to a cultural district to thinking about the city, and at every point, there were things that I didn't know that I had to learn. I've never learned so much about zoning law in my life. I never thought I'd have to. But as a result of that, I'm finding that there's not just room for my own artistic practice, there's room for a lot of other artistic practices.
有时候,我觉得自己 确实很像一个陶艺师, 我们在处理自己转轮上的事情, 我们用自己所拥有的技能 去思考下一个想要做的器皿的模样。 从一个陶罐到一幢建筑, 到一个街区、一个社区, 再到一个文化区, 直至整个城市。 在每一次尝试上,我都有 自己需要不断学习的盲区。 我原先从未学过如此之多 和区域法律有关的知识。 我也不曾设想过有一天 我会不得不面对这些知识。 最终,我发现那里不仅仅是一个 为我提供艺术实践的空间, 他是一个可以提供 许许多多不同艺术实践的场域。
So people started asking us, "Well, Theaster, how are you going to go to scale?" and, "What's your sustainability plan?"
于是就有朋友开始问我: “那么,西亚斯特,你打算怎么扩大规模呢?” 以及“你的战略规划是什么呢?”
(Laughter) (Applause)
(笑)(掌声)
And what I found was that I couldn't export myself, that what seems necessary in cities like Akron, Ohio, and Detroit, Michigan, and Gary, Indiana, is that there are people in those places who already believe in those places, that are already dying to make those places beautiful, and that often, those people who are passionate about a place are disconnected from the resources necessary to make cool things happen, or disconnected from a contingency of people that could help make things happen. So now, we're starting to give advice around the country on how to start with what you got, how to start with the things that are in front of you, how to make something out of nothing, how to reshape your world at a wheel or at your block or at the scale of the city.
我发现我无法「输出」我自己, 对俄亥俄州的阿克伦市来说, 什么是必不可少的? 对密歇根州的底特律市呢? 还有印第安纳州的盖瑞市? 这些地方的人里,是否已经 有人对他们的社区怀有信心? 是否已经有人在竭力使其变得更美好? 这些对自己生活的地方充满激情的人, 往往缺乏必要的资源去做那些很酷的事, 或者缺乏一些人脉 来帮他们创造出美好的事物。 所以现在,我们开始 为全国提供一些建议, 教他们如何利用 现有的资源开始行动, 如何解决面前最紧要的问题, 如何从无到有做出成果, 如何在你的转轮上、或你住的街区里、 或者在整个城市范围内 重塑这个世界。
Thank you so much.
非常感谢。
(Applause)
(掌声)
June Cohen: Thank you. So I think many people watching this will be asking themselves the question you just raised at the end: How can they do this in their own city? You can't export yourself. Give us a few pages out of your playbook about what someone who is inspired about their city can do to take on projects like yours?
June Cohen: 谢谢,我想 许多人在看这一段的时候, 会问自己,你在最后提出的那个问题: “他们该怎么在自己的城市做这些?” 你无法「输出」自己。 (他们不能重复你的做法) 能否从你的剧本里提供几页建议,给那些 渴望在自己城市里 发起类似项目的人?
Theaster Gates: One of the things I've found that's really important is giving thought to not just the kind of individual project, like an old house, but what's the relationship between an old house, a local school, a small bodega, and is there some kind of synergy between those things? Can you get those folk talking? I've found that in cases where neighborhoods have failed, they still often have a pulse. How do you identify the pulse in that place, the passionate people, and then how do you get folk who have been fighting, slogging for 20 years, reenergized about the place that they live? And so someone has to do that work. If I were a traditional developer, I would be talking about buildings alone, and then putting a "For Lease" sign in the window. I think that you actually have to curate more than that, that there's a way in which you have to be mindful about, what are the businesses that I want to grow here? And then, are there people who live in this place who want to grow those businesses with me? Because I think it's not just a cultural space or housing; there has to be the recreation of an economic core. So thinking about those things together feels right.
西亚斯特·盖茨:我发现 其中一件真的很重要的事 就是不要只考虑到单独的项目, 例如一幢旧房子。 而更应该着眼于 不同建筑之间的相互关系, 一座当地的学校、一家小酒窖, 他们之间是否存在着某种协同关系? 你能否让它们彼此交流起来? 我发现一个社区即使废弃了, 它们也仍然拥有脉搏。 人们是怎样找出一个地方的脉搏的? 找出那些仍有热情的人们? 以及你如何找到那些,二十年来 一直在努力复苏社区的人? 总要有人去整合这些资源。 如果我是一个传统的开发商, 我就只会关注于建筑本身。 然后在玻璃窗上放一块“出租”的牌子。 我想,其实大家需要做得比这更多一些, 你们需要留心思考一种发展路径。 我希望能在这里发展些什么? 然后,居住在这个地方的人们 是否愿意和我一道 去经营和扩大这个事? 因为我觉得这不仅仅是一个文化空间或是住宅; 它自身要有一个重塑的经济内核。 所以把所有这些一起考虑进去会更好。
JC: It's hard to get people to create the spark again when people have been slogging for 20 years. Are there any methods you've found that have helped break through?
JC:再度点燃人们的激情是非常困难的, 尤其在他们已经走了差不多20年的弯路之后。 你有什么方法可以帮助他们进行突破吗?
TG: Yeah, I think that now there are lots of examples of folk who are doing amazing work, but those methods are sometimes like, when the media is constantly saying that only violent things happen in a place, then based on your skill set and the particular context, what are the things that you can do in your neighborhood to kind of fight some of that? So I've found that if you're a theater person, you have outdoor street theater festivals. In some cases, we don't have the resources in certain neighborhoods to do things that are a certain kind of splashy, but if we can then find ways of making sure that people who are local to a place, plus people who could be supportive of the things that are happening locally, when those people get together, I think really amazing things can happen.
TG:是的,我觉得现在已经有非常多的例子, 关于人们所做的一些令人惊讶的工作。 但是说到方法,其实有点像… 假设当媒体在不断的说 暴力事件总是发生在某处, 那么,基于你自己的能力和具体的情况, 你能在你的社区做些什么 去以某种方式对抗它? 所以,我想 如果你是一名戏剧工作者, 你办了一个户外的街头戏剧节(来呼吁这个事情)。 有时,我们在社区里 没有足够的资源 去使得这件事足够的引人注目, 但是,如果我们能 找到正确的方法来 让当地的居民 以及那些支持当地活动的人们, 当这些人同心协力, 我想一定会有很多惊人的事情发生。
JC: So interesting. And how can you make sure that the projects you're creating are actually for the disadvantaged and not just for the sort of vegetarian indie movie crowd that might move in to take advantage of them.
JC: 很有趣。 但是你是如何确保你所做的项目 都是为了帮助处于弱势的人, 而不是为一些,为了这些好处 专门搬家到这个社区的人。
TG: Right on. So I think this is where it starts to get into the thick weeds.
TG:你说得对,这也是 我们现在感到棘手的地方。
JC: Let's go there. TG: Right now, Grand Crossing is 99 percent black, or at least living, and we know that maybe who owns property in a place is different from who walks the streets every day. So it's reasonable to say that Grand Crossing is already in the process of being something different than it is today. But are there ways to think about housing trusts or land trusts or a mission-based development that starts to protect some of the space that happens, because when you have 7,500 empty lots in a city, you want something to happen there, but you need entities that are not just interested in the development piece, but entities that are interested in the stabilization piece, and I feel like often the developer piece is really motivated, but the other work of a kind of neighborhood consciousness, that part doesn't live anymore. So how do you start to grow up important watchdogs that ensure that the resources that are made available to new folk that are coming in are also distributed to folk who have lived in a place for a long time.
JC: 那就说说吧。 TG:目前,”Grand Crossing“街区里99%的 居民都是黑人,至少住在那里的人里是这样。 我们知道,也许那些拥有财富的人们 与整天在街上走来走去的人是不同的。 所以我们有理由说 ”Grand Crossing"正处在 一个变革的过程中。 但是能不能考虑 住房信托或土地信托呢? 或是以任务为基础的发展? 通过这些方式来保护那里的一些地方? 因为当你的城市有7500块空地时, 你就会想要在那里发展点什么, 但你需要的不是那些对开发地产有兴趣的单位, 而是那些对区域稳定有兴趣的单位。 我觉得大家往往富有「开发」的积极性, 却对剩下的工作,比如邻里意识, 毫不关心。 所以,你该考虑怎样 培养重要的监督者, 来确保,资源不完全是 方便了那些新搬进来的住户, 而是同时也为原有的 长期住户带来了好处。
JC: That makes so much sense. One more question: You make such a compelling case for beauty and the importance of beauty and the arts. There would be others who would argue that funds would be better spent on basic services for the disadvantaged. How do you combat that viewpoint, or come against it?
JC: 很有道理。 最后一个问题: 你对美和艺术的重要性 提出了许多令人信服的理由。 但有些人会质疑说,把有限资金用在 提升弱势群体的基础服务上会更好。 你如何对抗或反抗这种观点?
TG: I believe that beauty is a basic service. (Applause) Often what I have found is that when there are resources that have not been made available to certain under-resourced cities or neighborhoods or communities, that sometimes culture is the thing that helps to ignite, and that I can't do everything, but I think that there's a way in which if you can start with culture and get people kind of reinvested in their place, other kinds of adjacent amenities start to grow, and then people can make a demand that's a poetic demand, and the political demands that are necessary to wake up our cities, they also become very poetic.
TG: 我认为,「美」就是一种基础服务。 (掌声) 我常见到的情况是 当有些资源没有被用在 特定的缺乏资源的城市 或邻里、或社区时, 这种时候,「文化」正是 可以帮助点燃(资源流动趋势)的东西, 我无法做完所有的事, 但我觉得,如果你能 从文化开始突破, 让人们愿意重新投资自己所在的地方, 那么这附近的很多基础设施 也会相应地成长起来。 这时候人们就会产生更多高雅的需求, 以及必要的政治诉求, 去唤醒我们的城市。 这些城市也会变的很有诗意。
JC: It makes perfect sense to me. Theaster, thank you so much for being here with us today. Thank you. Theaster Gates.
JC: 这对我而言真是大有裨益。 西亚斯特,非常感谢你今天的到来。 谢谢!西亚斯特·盖茨。
(Applause)
(掌声)