1 00:00:25,310 --> 00:00:30,059 ♪ ♪ 2 00:00:36,780 --> 00:00:38,289 I come from a pretty traditional 3 00:00:38,289 --> 00:00:40,745 sculpture background in the sense that I spent four years 4 00:00:40,745 --> 00:00:43,345 in art school, literally just making things. 5 00:00:45,540 --> 00:00:47,116 You know, to hand-make something mean 6 00:00:47,116 --> 00:00:48,293 you're going to process it. 7 00:00:48,293 --> 00:00:49,672 Like, it comes into your head, 8 00:00:49,672 --> 00:00:51,080 and then it moves through your body, 9 00:00:51,261 --> 00:00:53,236 and then it gets pushed back 10 00:00:53,236 --> 00:00:54,497 out into the world. 11 00:00:55,000 --> 00:00:58,077 [sewing machine whirring] 12 00:00:59,810 --> 00:01:04,380 I'm interested in how objects reflect cultural moments. 13 00:01:05,700 --> 00:01:10,042 And I think I'm trying to figure out, you know, why we value what we value. 14 00:01:10,146 --> 00:01:11,358 [electronic music] 15 00:01:12,472 --> 00:01:14,871 So with the "Counterfeit Crochet Project," 16 00:01:14,871 --> 00:01:17,470 I invited crochet crafters from all over the world 17 00:01:17,600 --> 00:01:21,618 to join me in bootlegging designer handbags. 18 00:01:23,352 --> 00:01:27,530 The invitation was to choose a designer handbag that you would like to own, 19 00:01:27,530 --> 00:01:31,370 but couldn't afford, download an image from it online 20 00:01:31,960 --> 00:01:35,231 and then using your own crochet crafting skills, hand-make it. 21 00:01:37,928 --> 00:01:43,821 And interestingly, it touched a nerve, and, you know, lots of people started to join up, 22 00:01:43,821 --> 00:01:47,365 and then send me photographs of themselves with their handmade bags. 23 00:01:51,110 --> 00:01:54,960 It was fun and lighthearted, but invariably what would happen was, you know, 24 00:01:54,960 --> 00:01:57,899 we would have these really great discussions about everything from the 25 00:01:57,899 --> 00:02:02,537 hierarchy of the fashion system to you know, global counterfeiting schemes. 26 00:02:05,270 --> 00:02:08,819 I think one of the reasons I got interested in this idea of like bootlegs 27 00:02:08,819 --> 00:02:12,239 or counterfeits is actually, it's an extension from this idea that there is 28 00:02:12,239 --> 00:02:16,046 an authentic, and you know from a very personal standpoint 29 00:02:16,046 --> 00:02:20,681 I was really curious about what it meant to be an authentic, um, Filipino. 30 00:02:23,995 --> 00:02:26,459 I was thinking a lot about historical 31 00:02:26,459 --> 00:02:29,459 ethnographic photography 32 00:02:29,600 --> 00:02:33,369 Specifically, um, images I'd seen taken in the Philippines. 33 00:02:33,654 --> 00:02:36,146 ♪ ♪ 34 00:02:38,095 --> 00:02:42,414 So the whole series is made in Omaha Nebraska, which I think is hilarious 35 00:02:43,694 --> 00:02:46,668 And I had gone to the shopping malls, 36 00:02:46,823 --> 00:02:51,671 and using my credit card, purchased mass-consumer goods, 37 00:02:51,878 --> 00:02:54,660 took them back to my studio, and then styled them. 38 00:02:57,000 --> 00:03:02,057 And then returned them all to the department stores for full store credit. 39 00:03:04,295 --> 00:03:09,690 So it was kind of this way of thinking about what we wanna consume in those images, 40 00:03:10,208 --> 00:03:12,793 partaking in it, but then also denying it. 41 00:03:16,319 --> 00:03:18,795 This is something that, um... 42 00:03:18,795 --> 00:03:22,374 It's a portrait of my mother and myself, 43 00:03:22,814 --> 00:03:28,843 um, not long after we moved to, the U.S. from the Philippines. 44 00:03:29,355 --> 00:03:32,757 And then for my birthday, she decided to take me to Disneyland. 45 00:03:33,145 --> 00:03:34,828 And so this photograph is actually, 46 00:03:34,828 --> 00:03:38,570 I think, in the Frontierland, where you can pay to have your portrait 47 00:03:38,570 --> 00:03:41,073 taken after you put on all these western costumes. 48 00:03:42,420 --> 00:03:47,204 I think, you know, at the time we were trying on these fictional identities of 49 00:03:47,204 --> 00:03:51,276 what it might have looked like to be a new American. 50 00:03:52,260 --> 00:03:54,280 Also, I mean, it's an amazing portrait. 51 00:03:54,280 --> 00:03:57,809 Like, my mom is 22 years old here, and she looks beautiful, 52 00:03:57,809 --> 00:04:00,072 and I'm this angry little four year old. 53 00:04:00,709 --> 00:04:01,748 [Laughs] 54 00:04:07,625 --> 00:04:15,000 - [singing "El Breve Espacio En Que No Estás"] 55 00:04:17,160 --> 00:04:20,585 The title of my next exhibition is called "Citizens" 56 00:04:22,680 --> 00:04:25,607 I think there's always been embedded politics in my work, 57 00:04:25,607 --> 00:04:28,100 whether it's issues of colonialism or capitalism 58 00:04:28,981 --> 00:04:31,740 but given recent politics I've been 59 00:04:31,740 --> 00:04:35,793 really trying to figure out how to actually put it more at the forefront. 60 00:04:35,793 --> 00:04:36,863 - Ready to fight? 61 00:04:36,863 --> 00:04:37,828 Crowd: Damn Right! 62 00:04:37,828 --> 00:04:38,675 - Are you ready to fight? 63 00:04:38,675 --> 00:04:39,615 Crowd: Damn Right! 64 00:04:39,900 --> 00:04:44,129 The Bay Area has been a real flash point for a lot of recent protests and so I 65 00:04:44,129 --> 00:04:46,341 and so I feel like I've been in the middle of it. 66 00:04:47,506 --> 00:04:51,113 You know, you watch the news, you watch images flashing by, 67 00:04:51,113 --> 00:04:53,167 and you're kind of trying to process it all. 68 00:04:53,832 --> 00:04:57,266 - We need to figure out how wide the actual banner is. 69 00:04:57,628 --> 00:05:00,983 And I was noticing that this one particular banner kept popping up. 70 00:05:01,941 --> 00:05:03,865 And depending on how it was held up, 71 00:05:03,865 --> 00:05:08,277 or how it was being displayed you could or in some cases could not read the text 72 00:05:09,131 --> 00:05:10,317 - Cool. - All right. 73 00:05:10,317 --> 00:05:13,077 And so I downloaded those images, 74 00:05:13,077 --> 00:05:15,582 and then, you know, traced it on the computer, 75 00:05:16,099 --> 00:05:19,143 projected it onto a larger piece of fabric, 76 00:05:19,713 --> 00:05:21,200 and then hand sewed it. 77 00:05:22,805 --> 00:05:26,533 It says "Become Ungovernable," and it's kind of, you know, 78 00:05:26,533 --> 00:05:29,535 I feel like the banner itself is becoming ungovernable. 79 00:05:29,535 --> 00:05:32,214 Like, it's got loose ends, it's got, you know, 80 00:05:32,214 --> 00:05:35,348 the text itself is kind of, like, falling off the page, um so it's trying to kind of embody that 81 00:05:35,348 --> 00:05:38,947 um, so it's kitrying to kind of embody that, 82 00:05:38,947 --> 00:05:41,230 that inability to be controlled. 83 00:05:43,979 --> 00:05:46,795 One of the problems, I think, with slogans 84 00:05:46,795 --> 00:05:51,254 is that people think they already know what the slogan means, 85 00:05:51,927 --> 00:05:54,120 and so you can either shut off to it, 86 00:05:54,120 --> 00:05:56,543 or you can, you know, nod your head in agreement. 87 00:05:58,492 --> 00:06:01,118 So when I was using these images of protests, 88 00:06:01,118 --> 00:06:05,000 I was more interested in actually how they're filtered 89 00:06:05,000 --> 00:06:06,301 through media channels. 90 00:06:08,100 --> 00:06:11,100 [Sewing machine whirring] 91 00:06:16,080 --> 00:06:18,964 In a lot of my projects, I'm really interested in this connection between 92 00:06:18,964 --> 00:06:20,628 the analog and the digital 93 00:06:24,043 --> 00:06:29,690 So, I decided to create this huge hand sewn quilted checkerboard background 94 00:06:30,084 --> 00:06:30,584 [mouse clicks] 95 00:06:32,212 --> 00:06:35,493 And it resembles a Photoshop transparency background 96 00:06:37,020 --> 00:06:39,626 When you cut out an image in Photoshop, 97 00:06:39,626 --> 00:06:43,126 Photoshop will put in this like really weird you know, checkerboard pattern. 98 00:06:45,000 --> 00:06:47,520 It's actually to point out this idea that, 99 00:06:47,520 --> 00:06:50,000 you know, digital culture is not neutral 100 00:06:50,337 --> 00:06:52,595 that simply because there's a computer 101 00:06:52,595 --> 00:06:55,530 involved doesn't mean that there isn't human labor 102 00:06:55,659 --> 00:06:57,939 ♪ ♪ 103 00:07:04,512 --> 00:07:06,908 Um, hmm. 104 00:07:07,126 --> 00:07:08,817 Yeah, let me go hand that to you. 105 00:07:09,108 --> 00:07:12,139 Yeah, I think we could try something like this. 106 00:07:12,631 --> 00:07:14,450 I feel like I'm constantly making things. 107 00:07:14,864 --> 00:07:18,400 And I do feel like I have this ratio that I've worked out 108 00:07:18,581 --> 00:07:22,184 where I call it the sort of 80/20 ratio, 109 00:07:22,365 --> 00:07:25,970 where 80% of what I make is kind of crap, 110 00:07:25,970 --> 00:07:29,380 but somehow I have to produce it to get to the 20%, 111 00:07:29,689 --> 00:07:30,979 which is successful. 112 00:07:30,979 --> 00:07:33,523 [laughs] It's kind of like rubble, 113 00:07:33,523 --> 00:07:35,523 but not really. [chuckles] 114 00:07:36,720 --> 00:07:38,767 - Did you all buy the fabric this color? 115 00:07:39,138 --> 00:07:43,237 - Yeah, so this is, um, chroma key fabric, the green screen. 116 00:07:43,237 --> 00:07:46,500 I've been gravitating to working with chroma key 117 00:07:46,681 --> 00:07:49,831 which is this awful, acid color. 118 00:07:52,057 --> 00:07:57,180 I'm standing in front of a green chroma key screen. Anything that you photograph 119 00:07:57,180 --> 00:08:00,418 or shoot in front of this screen, you can put in any type of backdrop, 120 00:08:00,418 --> 00:08:02,410 you can create a fantasy scene. 121 00:08:10,000 --> 00:08:11,010 [laughter] 122 00:08:11,626 --> 00:08:14,687 [camera shutter snaps] 123 00:08:16,800 --> 00:08:21,580 And so, thinking about both politics and social strife 124 00:08:21,580 --> 00:08:25,543 and everything that's kind of permeated and saturated everything, 125 00:08:25,698 --> 00:08:27,427 you know, now it's just this kind of 126 00:08:27,427 --> 00:08:29,763 constant in our backgrounds. 127 00:08:35,873 --> 00:08:40,919 You know, what does that mean to then use chroma key as the literal subject 128 00:08:40,919 --> 00:08:42,742 instead of ignoring it? 129 00:08:44,218 --> 00:08:46,218 ♪ ♪ 130 00:08:52,693 --> 00:08:55,583 - All right. Wanna grab that one, Durham? 131 00:08:56,982 --> 00:09:01,251 So, I became a U.S. citizen when I was 26 years old. Despite having lived here 132 00:09:01,251 --> 00:09:04,724 since I was three , I had to kind of make that decision, 133 00:09:04,724 --> 00:09:08,545 and then go through the process of the citizenship test. 134 00:09:09,296 --> 00:09:10,429 - All right, I am an.. 135 00:09:12,757 --> 00:09:17,437 I was thinking a lot about a 1942 photograph taken by Dorothea Lange. 136 00:09:18,240 --> 00:09:21,884 and she had taken a photograph of an Oakland store front 137 00:09:21,884 --> 00:09:25,000 where a Japanese American had a business there, 138 00:09:25,000 --> 00:09:29,019 and upon the notification for Japanese internment 139 00:09:29,407 --> 00:09:33,793 he had put up a sign in the window that just proclaimed "I am an American." 140 00:09:33,793 --> 00:09:36,296 - Um, let's do the scrunching. 141 00:09:36,296 --> 00:09:39,767 The idea that citizenship can be given and also taken away 142 00:09:39,767 --> 00:09:41,709 was something that really interested me. 143 00:09:42,745 --> 00:09:46,027 because I do feel like there's been a lot of Reckoning with people having to 144 00:09:46,027 --> 00:09:48,598 struggle with what it means to be an American today. 145 00:09:48,598 --> 00:09:50,108 Like, what do we stand for? 146 00:09:51,498 --> 00:09:53,221 What can we become? 147 00:09:53,221 --> 00:09:54,376 [cell phone snaps] 148 00:10:02,941 --> 00:10:06,967 My current studio is located in a really industrial part of the Bay 149 00:10:09,209 --> 00:10:11,560 It overlooks San Francisco, actually. 150 00:10:11,560 --> 00:10:14,830 So, just looking out over the water, you can see it at a distance. 151 00:10:16,357 --> 00:10:18,429 You know, I grew up in that city, 152 00:10:19,620 --> 00:10:22,555 I relocated to Oakland four years ago, 153 00:10:22,555 --> 00:10:25,643 because I couldn't afford to stay in San Francisco anymore. 154 00:10:27,300 --> 00:10:33,668 You know, the Bay area can be a really wonderful kind of fermenting space for 155 00:10:33,668 --> 00:10:35,331 for artists. 156 00:10:36,781 --> 00:10:39,240 Not because it's easy to live here, 157 00:10:39,732 --> 00:10:41,751 'cause it's not easy to live here, 158 00:10:42,942 --> 00:10:46,144 but there are ways that artists can create community 159 00:10:46,144 --> 00:10:47,759 and spaces for themselves here. 160 00:10:52,200 --> 00:10:56,613 If we're to look at the complexity of our contemporary culture, 161 00:10:56,820 --> 00:10:58,512 our political moment, 162 00:10:58,823 --> 00:11:00,414 you know, our lived realities, 163 00:11:00,414 --> 00:11:03,140 I want my work to be as 164 00:11:03,140 --> 00:11:05,465 complicated as well. 165 00:11:05,465 --> 00:11:08,096 That there isn't just one way to look at it, you know, 166 00:11:08,096 --> 00:11:11,153 that depending on your perspective you'll see it a different way 167 00:11:12,095 --> 00:11:14,626 And I also want it to inhabit contradictions. 168 00:11:14,859 --> 00:11:16,859 - All right. Fierce 169 00:11:19,604 --> 00:11:22,179 And so, you know, looking at images of protests, 170 00:11:22,775 --> 00:11:25,372 we created these composite characters. 171 00:11:26,459 --> 00:11:28,064 And so they're fictions. 172 00:11:30,540 --> 00:11:33,859 Black-clad individuals are usually associated with, 173 00:11:33,859 --> 00:11:36,124 you know, a kind of very direct action. 174 00:11:37,393 --> 00:11:40,325 Is it a character that one finds problematic, 175 00:11:40,325 --> 00:11:44,115 or is it something that might elicit even you know, some empathy? 176 00:11:45,849 --> 00:11:51,783 There's a portrait of someone covered in a very sheer gray-and-white checkerboard pattern. 177 00:11:53,155 --> 00:11:56,696 The portrait is of a person who is undocumented. 178 00:11:58,255 --> 00:12:00,450 It's a difficult thing for me to talk about, actually, 179 00:12:00,450 --> 00:12:06,455 because given the state of our contemporary political situation, 180 00:12:06,455 --> 00:12:10,690 you know, that person could be taken at any minute. 181 00:12:13,019 --> 00:12:17,525 Depending on how you read that image it's about either the removal 182 00:12:18,146 --> 00:12:20,599 or about their protection. 183 00:12:41,002 --> 00:12:43,709 One really important possibility for art 184 00:12:43,709 --> 00:12:47,075 is that it is a recording device, you know. 185 00:12:47,075 --> 00:12:48,598 I mean, it's a subjective one, 186 00:12:48,702 --> 00:12:54,774 but it's a device, that, somehow through an individual or a group of individuals 187 00:12:54,774 --> 00:12:57,629 processes a situation in the world, 188 00:12:57,629 --> 00:13:00,155 and then creates a subjective viewpoint of that. 189 00:13:02,304 --> 00:13:03,843 As evidence. 190 00:13:10,779 --> 00:13:14,378 I do not think at all that my work, in and of itself, 191 00:13:14,378 --> 00:13:16,090 is actually going to change the system 192 00:13:18,656 --> 00:13:23,530 What I'm interested in though, is somehow reflecting a possibility. 193 00:13:32,749 --> 00:13:38,122 What I'm doing is kind of like absorbing and processing the world around me, 194 00:13:38,122 --> 00:13:41,403 and it's becoming political. 195 00:13:42,490 --> 00:13:45,152 I don't think I have a choice anymore. 196 00:13:46,334 --> 00:13:48,209 It's just my reality. 197 00:13:58,923 --> 00:14:00,898 To learn more about Art21 and our 198 00:14:00,898 --> 00:14:07,620 educational resources please visit us online at pbs.org/art21 199 00:14:11,835 --> 00:14:16,313 Art in the Twenty-First Century Season 9 is available on DVD 200 00:14:17,012 --> 00:14:23,783 To order, visit shop.pbs.org or call 1-800 play PBS 201 00:14:24,672 --> 00:14:29,147 This program is also available for download on iTunes.