Untitled episode

if you get to work and you find it's really hard to do your job with imagination do not worry imagination is still really new dreaming is more than 100 million years old but being able to imagine things on purpose began only like 70,000 years ago and even then the reviews were mixed Plato thought that imagination was kind of suspicious and the Bible does sort of suggest

that it is evil I read in the heist issue of business week about a certain kind of imagination creative thieves their recent hauls include 200,000 Cadbury Cream Eggs $37,000 worth of caber Parts 12240 cases of crab a 4 M long whale skull and one catalytic converter the Oscar Meer wiener mobile how are you supposed to bring imagination to work and how do you protect it from

the pressures of the marketplace we are going to try to imagine it together [Music] tonight welcome to the business week show tonight [Music] imagination there are some wonderful people who do the same thing over and over again and that can be interesting or imaginative this guest is not one of them the aster Gates is interested in cities space land planning preservation Place pragmatism value desire development

Capital collecting Blackness agency and the art World itself and that is a very long way of saying that the sculptor and performance artist artist and painter and Scholar is one of the most imaginative people working today theaster Gates welcome to the show thank you so much you have this beautiful phrase that I think of as a kind of metaphor for imagination and you talk about the

possibility of life within things how do you find that life well it's interesting so often the life is right up under our noses and what I've learned from Shintoism is that there's a there's a power there's power there's life within things wood trees water a rock right if you respect that life maybe it means that you have to work to care and to protect and preserve

that life I feel like there are moments like with the Stony Island Arts bank or or other projects that I've done where when it's dead it's a it's a reminder of the failures of culture to invest in in a thing but when it's alive it's like a testament to what's possible when Collective people believe in the power of regeneration the work that you do on the

south side of Chicago has been to find I think the the meat on the bones that you've have transformed spaces uh that were underinvested into spaces for artists to live and artists to show and places to watch movies and places to listen to music and places to show collections did you find that your imagination was um listened to and respected by others did did people disbelieve

that you you could that that you could remake these spaces this way well let's look at this over a course of years when I moved to my neighborhood in 2006 U to the Grand Crossing neighborhood things were interesting it was a normal neighborhood adjacent to the University of Chicago where I had just taken a job in 2008 the market crashed yep and the real estate values

and the kind of speculators that existed on the South Side they were no longer interested in the speculative land I slowly started trying to figure out if no one else is going to buy and protect these buildings and make sure that people on the South Side have opportunity and in my case that culture continues to live is there something that I could do to try to

acquire some of these buildings on my block so one at a time with my mom's help with Friends help with my own sweat we would acquire the building next to the building that we own and then renovate them best we could and until we found ourselves owning over the last decade a lot of buildings have they had to make a new new kind of language for

you know you're you're a developer you're an urban planner you're an artist are you inventing your own words so that you can explain what what you've done and and what you are trying to do definitely I'm I'm definitely always both inventing words and trying to resist certain labels but there were times where I had real translation issues so I would I would go to the Department

of planning City of Chicago and I would walk in and I would say I'm an artist and they would I would go to my Alderman and I would say oh I'm I'm I'm a local artist in your neighborhood and that did not get me the traction that I wanted so I had to like put on my shirt and tie change my language a little bit and

say hey I'm a developer I've invested $10 million in this neighborhood I'm interested in doing another hundred million of investment in this neighborhood and I'd like the attention of my Alderman and the commissioner of planning I I don't I don't think imagination has to be generative or productive to be worth something but when I think about your work and I think about the cafe M and

I think about your Mill you know you created like actual jobs yeah I think that falls under the rubric of like Economic Development can Economic Development be something that's imaginative instead of like destructive yeah you know dear friends of mine talk about instead of talking about money they they talk about energy what can I do to create varying kinds of good energy and and most of

the time I start with what do I want and I want to be able to get a good cup of tea in the morning I want to be able to hear great live music I want to see amazing films I want my friends who make films to feel supported in the production of their films I want to listen to house music and I want to Jack

all night you know I just locked in to my neighborhood and I'm like oh those things that I would normally try to find in another place why don't I bring them here yeah I'm going to build the amenity and if I build it for myself it means 500 people a thousand 5,000 people could could also benefit and it also means that the model for neighborhood transformation

Economic Development if you will that that model is playing itself out in real time then you know this is where I feel now as my hair whitens that there's a way in which um the work that's been accumulating there are now other people who can grab the Baton and do bigger Greater Works without at all ticking away from the beautiful energy that you're describing you know

there there is something that a little a little voice in my head of that scares me about what you're describing because it reminds me of a very old lineage neighborhoods without resources artists move in because the rents are affordable then developers come in because now the neighborhoods are a little bit cooler then rents go up they're gentrified what can you do and what have you done

on the south side to make sure that the work that you're doing and the imagination that you're bringing is going to include your neighbors and not you know eventually I guess like like Exile them yeah well right now I I feel like I'm in the middle of um living this Playbook that that I'll eventually share with others but a big part of it was the acquisition

of land and and then protecting that land so that it was always available for a mission-based activity you know Wildlife happens you know and change change happens in cities that will have 500,000 square feet worth of residential Space 2 Mill ion square feet of uh commercial and cultural space million that will protect you know when this thing is over yeah sir if if you're talking on

a scale of of millions of square feet I feel so sure that there have to be capitalists listening to this who are going to be calling you up and trying to say like you know these nonprofit Investments you're making you're a fool you should be making money from this do you get calls like that well I would I would I would go back to this this

issue of like the the life and things I think that one way of reading death is when a neighborhood has been underinvested in another way of reading death is when the fabric of the neighborhood has been forgotten and it's been replaced with gross reinvestment and Redevelopment the death of cities is not just the problem of gangs and violence the death of cities is also when we

become monotonous versions of ourselves yeah and so I think that wealth has to develop more sophisticated tools for measuring health and life and be willing to invest in ways that are more about what humans need than just about the bottom line I really like connecting the life of things with the with with the death of imagination yeah how have you learned to like protect your imagination

the life of your imagination and to keep it going imagination dies too creativity how how do you protect it and and and give it life you know when I was young and my dad would make me paint the baseboards of apartments that he was renting and it was time to turn the apartments over cuz someone had moved out and he was like whatever you do don't

get pain on my floor and so I learned to tape and I I learned to use a paintbrush so that I could fan white paint and make sure that I wouldn't mess up his walnut floors in a way my dad was inventing creativity in me uh inventing a deeper imagination by telling me to paint the baseboards the way that I protect my imagination now is by

continuing to work that that everything I do I'm trying to find good solutions for complicated problems what are you going to do next I mean what what are what are your dreams and what does your imagination tell you about what what the future and and and why you know what's what's stopping you from doing it right now well maybe this goes back to Buddhism uh I'm

thinking about how to you know it's been about 15 20 years of building and I feel like right now I'm preoccupied with how to give it all away how to how to let go of this tight hold that I've had on development and imagine it as like a kind of longterm durational performance that I've been involved in a 15 to 20 year performance of neighborhood transformation

and at the end of the performance the audience gets all the props back so I'm learning a lot from people who are who are actively trying to say I've been given too much I've figured out some things and I made a lot goodbye yeah do you have an instinct about how you're going to start how you're going to start saying good buy with gifts do you

know yet who you want to give who you want to give your first gifts to artists are there any journalists you know you'd like to give some of your records to no I'm just kidding maybe I'll keep the records we can swap records we can swap records that was aoke the as Gates it's a pleasure a pleasure for me to listen to you it's my pleasure

thanks for being here I really enjoyed that [Music] up until just a few decades ago the systems of American art had practically no room for women museums galleries auctions schools and mass media gave the distinct impression that men had a monopoly on imagination itself the guest who's sitting with me at this table played a key role in changing that chudy Chicago's painting sculpture photography needle work

much more has helped alter the shape of art itself and at 84 she is getting her first major Museum survey here in New York at a new Museum show that's just brimming with color and generosity and Imagination it's really nice to have her here Judy Chicago thank you the art world has become a big business in in the way that it wasn't when when you were

you know why because I had five Decades of working in my studio without ever thinking about the market so you you have to really understand how outside of that I've been because I had my own vision of what art can be should be I believe art is an act of generosity and that I you know I feel really bad for young artists because you know they

get swallowed up spit out like stocks on the stock exchange but you know you can stand up to that you don't have to do it your work is willing to imagine something that you know I have a hard time with which is you know not just the death of the world which is something the art does deal with but your own death I was really moved

by there's a I think it's it's called a mortality relief it's it's this bronze piece in in the um exhibit and looks almost like a like a death mask in advance but you clearly are able to imagine your your end what do you what do you think about when you think about it I wanted to be able to face the end of my life with Grace

and courage because it really isn't good to have an adversarial relationship to aging I started out exploring I know I start with research so I started looking at attitudes towards death going back in time and of course discovered that you know we are an aberration in terms of the way we shroud death hide death try to have battles with death you know when they write about

cancer after a like a battle give me a break you know Nature's going to win hearing you talk now reminds me that you know I have a relatively romantic idea of imagination especially when I'm sitting with a wonderful artist who makes work that I admire you know I guess I'm tempted to think of imagination is this very beautiful thing that could take you to very beautiful

places but but you were also willing to imagine horror and grotesquery and I think that maybe people are uncomfortable uncomfortable doing that there are a lot of people who are concerned about what's happening in our world and they need to be encouraged to look at it to think about it we are encouraging people to participate in this digital quilt that I created with DTI the uh

web 3 company and Naja one of the founders of ride and so there are a series of questions that I believe we need to answer like if patriarchy were dismantled would women and men be equal would men have permission to be gentle and vulnerable would women have permission to be strong would there be equal parenting would the Earth be protected did I think there are questions

that we need to come together and answer I mean we are so polarized now but if we don't answer those questions we're going to drive our the world to destruction Judy what you're describing when when you talk about this work is the the ability that an artist has to use her skills and to use her imagination to to pose these difficult questions to people and and

make them think about it but you know it's like Judy I'm no artist you know I don't I don't have these skills is is there something that non-artists can take from you where like you they can use what they're good at to make other people think in new ways but but for for most of us you know we're not able to to to paint and and

draw the way you can of course what we're looking at now is the push back and the effort to push back all the gains that started in the 70s it will take millions of people putting down their phones and going in the streets I don't understand why there were not millions of people in the street after the Supreme Court overturned Ro V8 not protests because just

a protest doesn't work anymore what is required is the same thing that propelled the social change move ments of the 70s which has to do with organization all the things that aren't fun to do you know developing leadership developing organizations that can take the protest and turn it into actual civil change I want to tell you something it's worth it to feel like you've made a

contribution to have the satisfaction of that I don't care what the New York Times said over the course of my career I live right by the Brooklyn Museum uh where the dinner party is the heart of this beautiful collection of feminist art this Center is named for a member of the family behind Purdue Pharma and oxycoton apart from just what everyone else says about philanthropy and

money and naming I'm just curious how how you feel about that first of all I'm going to answer you with a counter question Elizabeth sackler's establishment of the center for feminist art has allowed dozens of unknown women and feminist artists to be exhibited does she get any points for that or does her name disqualify everything she has done patronage is complicated and so is history it's

like when everybody wanted to just knock down the Confederates statues and sort of erase our past I'm like what if we let black people African-Americans come and write their stories on the statues so that we would see multiple points of view simultaneously the point of view of the oppressor the point of view of the oppressed I want to end j you with the future I'm curious

if you imagine you know what what art will look like we we're living in a strange time of artificial intelligence you know I'm wondering if you imagine that AI will demand room for itself in the art world I'm wondering if the opposite will happen and and the the the infinite possibilities of computerized art will teach us to embrace craft and imperfection my answer is going to

be really short okay many many years ago Bruce nowman and I had a conversation about we were in our 40s about how art schools were getting rid of drawing and and we agreed that when you're a young artist full of bravado and energy you can go a long way in your career but when you get into your 40s and your ideas get more complex if you

can't draw you come to a standstill and I am somebody who believes in the hand and I believe in the connection between the hand and the Heart and that's my answer well your hand and your heart and your imagination have changed other people's hearts and their imaginations I'm really glad you've been here to talk to me about it really really enjoyed it Judy Chicago thank you

very much you're very smart imagine this you've got imagination you've got a job to do you're not sure how to bring one to the other these two guests tonight have used their imagination successful successfully in completely different ways one of them has used his to transform his neighborhood inside Chicago the other one has used hers to transform herself into a Chicago and to transform art history

itself maybe you use your imagination inside the market maybe use it despite the market either way you can steal the tools of these two artists patience practice collaboration voice and fight thank you so much for watching we will see you next time when all else fails one must scream well as we look at what's happened to our world it makes me angry that more people aren't

screaming there have been times in the workplace when I've said that things were good when they weren't good sometimes because I was trying to maintain staff morale uh sometimes I was is trying to be optimistic like this is going to be good even though it's not good today and then there have been other times where I've known that the person I was talking to had such

a fragile ego and you got to be sensitive when you work with other creatives is that's enough already guys now come on come on I [Music] know this story did come around as something that's a bit different there is a dark side to it it's hard to even talk to people about these chemicals and tell them look there's a chemical that's in you that's not found

anywhere in nature this is the shadow Fleet to actually see clandestine behavior that makes you think well what else is going on