WEBVTT

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Good evening again.

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You've multiplied.

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[LAUGHTER]

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It's an honor to be
here, and thank you

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for that lovely introduction
and thank you for having me.

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I am going to
organize this reading

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around the artwork in
Citizen, and which means I'm

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going to start with the cover.

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David Hammons did
this piece in 1993

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after the beating
of Rodney King.

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It's called In the Hood.

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And I wanted to start
there because many

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thought that this piece
referred to Trayvon Martin

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when they saw it.

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And the fact that it was
done so many years before

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speaks to the fact that
because we are just

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getting the videos now doesn't
mean that this hasn't been

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going on and on and on and on
backwards for as long as on

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can be understood.

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David Hammons is
influenced by Duchamp.

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He likes to say that he's
the CEO of the DOC, Duchamp

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Outpatient Clinic.

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And those of you who know
Duchamp, he did the urinal.

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It's a question of taking
ready mades, things

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already in the
culture and moving it

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into the space of
art as a critique.

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And that seemed to speak to the
exercise in a sense of Citizen

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overall project.

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But I also want us to look at
some of Hammons other work.

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So that's David Hammons there.

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Maybe we could go down on
the lights a little bit.

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That's Hammons holding
snowballs that he

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sold on the side of the road.

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I like to think of
it as giving others

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a chance to feel whiteness
melting their hands.

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And this is another
canonical piece as he did.

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It doesn't really show
you the entire thing.

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If you saw these pieces when
they were first displayed,

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they had the bejeweled
basketball hoop

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at the height of the
ceiling to symbolize

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the unattainable
aspect of this--

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that the basketball court
became for inner city youths,

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a way that aspirationally live.

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And so he put it at a height
that was not attainable.

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That's Hammons inside
his own piece called

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Concerto in Black and Blue.

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If you had gone
to see this piece,

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you would have entered
a room this size that

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was completely dark.

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When you walked
into the space, they

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gave you a blue flashlight,
and that flashlight

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allowed you to see what was
immediately in front of you,

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but to have no sense of
what was coming towards you

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and where the walls
of the rooms was.

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And it seemed to
me a good metaphor

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for thinking about
race in America,

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and there is a piece
in Citizen that

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is an expresses poem, a poem
written off of a piece of art.

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And so that piece
appears in the book.

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