(lively music)

(bass plays)

- I've always resisted the idea

that somehow my practice is archival.

It's about using the material
that's available to me,

and that material is
incredibly rich material.

(upbeat music)

It's not archival to me any
more than the fact that,

you know, when a composer
sits down to make a new piece,

the notes are there.

(upbeat music)

Beethoven, Bach, Cecil
Taylor, Duke Ellington,

they're not creating new notes,

you know what I mean?

They're sequencing the notes.

(upbeat music continues)

Do they just amplify the same frequency?

It just got louder.
(upbeat music)

You know, is it a counterpoint
to that frequency?

At its core,

it's just about how do you
make a thing of beauty?

(upbeat music)

And a thing of beauty to me is a thing

that you wanna look at.

And then in conjunction with that,

maybe you do other things like say,

"Hey, Black people are human beings too."

(upbeat music continues)

(birds chirp)
(traffic passes)

A lot of what I do is just

a kinda structured free association.

"Mickey Mouse was a Scorpio",

it's Mickey Mouse and Damballah

and even though they
couldn't be more different

on a certain material
level, one is an animation,

the other is a photograph
of a witch doctor.

But when you see those two,

it's very clear you're looking at

the same entity in two
different iterations.

That's a fundamental
thing I'm interested in.

Like, that's sort of very specific

and local big bang that
happens when you put one,

I would argue, Black being
next to another Black being.

Like, what is engendered by that?

(intense music)
(background chatter)

Even the films or the videos
are just extensions of that.

It's like, what happens when you do that?

- I know that every person
walking this planet.

- [Arthur] And then you do it again.

- Came from a womb and
because I have one of those.

- [Arthur] You know,
you have one big bang,

you put it next to another big bang

and then another big bang,

then another big bang.

- Bitch, I'm a mother, no drama.

The fact that y'all
think that being a woman

is about cosmetics lets me know

that y'all don't know the
hell y'all talking to.

(tranquil music)

- And the picture unit is just another way

to sequence images.
(tranquil music)

You know, I call it a maze,

but it's less of a maze
than a kind of guided tour.

You know, with a certain possibility of

insights into relationships

that wouldn't necessarily
be available to you.

(intense music)

As you physically move through it,

you know, if you go forward a step,

you're gonna see another thing

and people just say like,
they saw this gruesome image,

and they just like put their head down

and just moved forward,

but only to be confronted
with another gruesome image,

you know what I mean?

And the thing about it is like,

they are quote unquote gruesome
images in it, for sure.

You see this gruesome scene,

then you see an image with a Black woman

with a piece of wood in her hand.

Like, what's the relationship?

(intense music)

What's the nature of,

you know, absorbing or
being subjected to violence?

(intense music)

Every time I open this shit up,

it's just like that is a thing.

So now I'm trying to figure
out what to do with it.

I think it's in here.

It may not be in here, but let me see.

I think I put it in here.

That's "Apex".

Now I just basically had a
file that had stuff in it,

and then at some point I
started putting it in order

and I would just do this
while I was talking about it.

And then at some point like,

oh, let's just put it on a timeline

so you don't have to click,

you know what I mean?

(electric music)

"Apex" is about a rock band in the future.

The story happens during
the course of the world

as we know it coming to an end.

(electric music)

The so-called fine art space,

it's mostly interesting
because it's so flexible,

like in terms of what it
is, you know what I mean?

I can't imagine another space

that's better in terms of playing
with these sorts of ideas.

(soft music)

I studied architecture
at Howard University.

Realized pretty much two years in

that I was ambivalent about that

because it was hard for me to imagine

what it was gonna look
like on a day to day.

But my interests very quickly

were consolidated around the idea

that I think initially I understood

as being related to architecture.

You know, and it would be something like,

if Kind of Blue was a house,
what would it look like?

Or if Electro Ladyland was a house,

what would it look like?

Using Black music as a preeminent example,

of Black aesthetics in action.

What I've come to understand is that

that impulse to demonstrate the breadth

and complexity of transposing

Black aesthetics to anything you do

is what I was kind of interested in.

If you look at where
Afro-American culture is strong,

it is in the spaces of
immaterial expressivity.

You know, music, dance, things like that,

things that you could do on your body.

♪ This is a God dream ♪

♪ This is a God dream ♪

♪ We on an ultra light beam ♪

♪ We on an ultra light beam ♪

- Black people wore raw materials

so the whole notion of making things,

meaning being able to utilize material

wasn't so straightforward.

Black people remake things
by using them differently

than they were intended.

The appropriation thing

allowed me to maneuver
in a way that made sense

for me as a Black person, given my,

as I pointed out,

relationship to material.

Taking this and putting it next to that

it is like saying I don't
have to have material.

I don't have to make material.

I don't have to make
anything to make something.

- Yeah, no, I got you, bro.
- I'm about to break away.

- No, no, no, I just wanted
to come get some love.

That looks great.

- Yeah, it's a, again,

it's a artifact for my alternate universe

because she never had a record, you know.

It's just a still from a video, man.

- [Officer] Turn away.

Walk backwards, keep
your hands up in the air.

Keep going.

- [Officer 2] Come on back, come on back.

Keep walking backwards.

Keep walking backwards.

- As I like to say,

we are the canaries in the mine shaft

of Western civilization.

Nobody wants to be where we are.

Nobody wants to be Black.

But at the same time,

when they see Black people,
almost paradoxically,

we also exist as a kind of
emblem of the possibility

of transcending profound constraints.

You know what I mean?

Like everybody has their foot on our neck,

but we constantly stand.

(electric music)

So given we've come through it

and it's generated this
thing we call Blackness,

Black music, Black
dance, Black life force,

all these kinds of things,

how do we mine that?
(electronic music)

It's less that the playing field
is uneven for Black people.

It's more like the playing field

is just more complex for Black people.

You know what I mean?

That's an opportunity to
contend with a landscape

that's more interesting
than a flat landscape.

(mid tempo music)

(piano music)

It is not about, it's a handicap.

It's not a handicap.

It's an opportunity to,

it's so funny, it's like
opportunity to levitate.

(slow piano music)

♪ Oh (indistinct) ♪

♪ When you hit that fog ♪

♪ And it'll start for y'all ♪

♪ You say that I know we'll all do well ♪

(slow music)