Mel Chin in "Consumption" - Season 1 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

MEL CHIN: It was after a big 
museum show, her first museum show,

that I was in an elevator, going 
down and the voice says, or asks,

“Mel, what do you love more 
than anything in the world?”

And I said, “Well, I love to make things 
with my hands. I just love doing that.”

The other voice says, “okay, stop.”

And I listened to that voice.

By stopping I was able to 
flow free in the world again,

not being held by some delusional 
idea of what it meant to be an artist.

And I felt free to listen to other voices, 
other ideas that were in the world.

NEWSCASTER: It happened on Detroit’s 
East side, the 2100 block of Springell.

You’re watching one of the most 
intense fires of this “Devil’s Night.”

The target—an abandoned home.

For nearly 2 ½ hours, city firefighters struggled 
with low water pressure and a roaring blaze.

CHIN: If you look at the images 
of burning homes in Detroit,

if that’s my recollection of it, I have 
to change that image of that house.

What could you do with that house? You 
have no electricity, no water, no money.

But you have these places decayed 
by fire or by abandonment.

As an artist, you go in to 
see what you can contribute.

That’s where the “Spawn” idea came around—

It stands for… a covert activity.

You take the internal organs of a place,

and you use it in a whole ‘nother 
way, rather than just reconstruction.

MAN: But it’s sad to see something 
that working and now not working.

–Can we get up the stairs this way?

–We’d be better off going up the stairs 
the front way. This has got a lot of trash.

CHIN: This project is about 
transformation on many different levels.

You’re taking what is considered 
of no value and of shame and says,

“No, it has value, but it has 
another kind of value, another life.”

Through the idea of conceptual 
art, we can do this.

It’s almost like kind of, reclaim it out 
of the fire. It’s a whole ‘nother idea.

So it’s a three-year project, 
maybe two-year project,

where you actually see a transformation over time.

–MAN: And the last I know, 
the basement was flooded.

–CHIN: Okay, so there is a basement to 
this? But we got to engineer it correctly.

So you can work on one half.

And the whole house can just swing 
aside and the basement is revealed.

Take a whole house, put it on a pivot, 
so the whole house can spin aside.

And underneath is all this activity 
in the basement of raising earthworms,

or fishing worms, Devil’s Night 
Crawlers that you can sell to

the large fishing population,
-...in a way where it could really help

transform the vision of 
Detroit in a very positive way.

My contribution is twofold— to create 
something that can be living after I’m gone,

or I’m not a part of it so it can 
be returned to the neighborhood.

And at the same time reclaim an icon 
from what it has been depicted now as.

MAN: Yo, man, you think 
it’s going to happen today?

MAN 2: I hope so.

MAN 3: Hey, guy, Gerald’s been here 
all day. Is it going to happen soon?

MAN 1: Maybe.

MAN 4: What you guys doing?

MAN 2: Well, we’re just waiting for it to happen.

MAN 4: Come on, guys, you got to make it happen.

MAN 3: Here we go.

MAN 2: Gerald, you’re the hardest 
working man around. How is it today?

MAN: Man, I am one happy ass. Big fat worms to 
sort for all those rich people’s delicate roses.

MAN: Fade in to black.

CHIN: Making art, I think, is not 
about one track, not one method,

but the diversity of mediums 
and techniques is minor.

But the diversity of ideas 
and how they survive and the

methods they are transmitted is very important.

“Knowmad” is a video game that you sit down,

and you drive through 36 tribal 
carpets that were selected

based on a mapping of tribes that exist in 
Turkey, or Anatolia, in Iran and Afghanistan.

Tribal cultures are dying, as we 
know, or as we have known them,

after existing for thousands of years.

Video game culture is thriving, overtaking 
Hollywood in terms of how much money it brings in.

Perhaps in a video game, it can drive 
you into a place, a curious place,

where you might ask the question, 
“Where did these patterns come from?”

It felt like to have the installation 
occur with the real tribal rugs

was a way of allowing peripheral 
information to float back into your head

as you would turn away from the game.

There’s a real world of rugs 
and people there as well.

That’s a prayer rug, so we want to make sure 
it’s pointing in the right direction—east.

It’s creating a layered environment.

MAN: Originally, Mel kind of 
gave us the concept of what to do

and the whole driving game aspect and stuff.

Only he really didn’t know what all 
it was going to entail. Half-way.

MAN: He gave us specific rugs 
that he wanted us to use,

and using software we developed sort 
of these abstract obstacle courses.

This gave us an opportunity to 
just sort of make these abstract,

colorful, make-believe worlds 
where there really was no rules

other than just sort of respect the symbolism

and the patterns in the carpet and 
just kind of go crazy from there.

CHIN: I wanted to limit my influence. Rather 
than saying, “It has to be this, and this,”

I said, “Sort of see this, but you 
do not have to be held to that.”

Because if we’re going to make 
art, it should be liberating.

My thoughts in the objects I 
make or have made have been a

collection of ideas that have 
come from others as well.

Part of the art is creating the 
form for the new invention to occur.

Knowmad is a digital re-weave of patterns 
that have been around for thousands of years

that we may know nothing about.

But perhaps in a video game, 
we might have that, again,

the desire to respect what they might 
have been, more than just decoration.

Because they are about people.

“Revival field” is a simple sculpture 
that has this poetic premise.

In Michaelangelo’s days, he 
would have a block of marble,

and he would have an image in his 
mind, incredible images in his mind,

and he would take the chisel and carve away 
until we see something as remarkable as “David.”

In our contemporary times, 
our materials have changed.

Our materials are still 
marble, but they also can be…

stuff that we’ve never dreamed of using.

In this case, toxic earth.

It is the sculpturing of an 
ecology from one near death,

or one that is decayed or 
dead, into one that is living.

NARRATOR: The diversity of life has 
been deeply affected by industry.

The smelting of metals, such as zinc, cadmium, 
lead, and copper, produces particulates,

sometimes invisible to the eye, 
which contaminate the environment.

These metal particulates weaken 
and destroy many forms of life.

Long after the smelting is complete, 
pollution remains in the soil.

There have been no viable 
solutions to this problem,

until the “Revival Field'' project, 
which proved an existing theory.

Special plants called hyperaccumulators 
are introduced into the barren landscape.

The metal in the soil would kill most plants,

but the hyperaccumulators thrive, pulling 
the metals into their stems and shoots.

When the plants mature, they are harvested.

The plants are then burned in reclaiming furnaces.

This process yields metal purer than 
high-grade ore, which can be resold.

The continuation of this process cleans the soil 
and allows life to return to the environment.

This renewed ecology is the 
completion of a work of art.

CHIN: I don’t go about trying to make 
a science/art project or anything,

or political project. I think it has 
to be driven by some kind of poetry.

That poetry of plants having the capacity 
to transform a system was amazing enough,

and it was also driven by pragmatism.

I think you have to have both. It has 
a little red cast in it, at the base.

But I don’t know if that is…

In this world, there are cultures 
dying… and some cultures thriving.

There are soils that are dead that can 
be reborn with the help of a work of art.

There are neighborhoods, they tell us, that 
are dying… but instead they are inspiring.

We assume that we are living 
in a culture of consumption…

that tells us what to eat and what to dear.

But it’s not all that. Art for the 21st 
century is the same as it’s always been—

it is never the same.

MAN:

You know, normally I like to use artificial.

But if I’m going after that big lunker, or that 
ornery wall-eyed pike up here in the great lake,

I like to use the biggest, 
baddest worm of them all—

Devil’s Nightcrawlers, direct from Detroit City.

These worms will drive you crazy 
with all the fish you gonna catch.

See what I mean? Devil’s 
Nightcrawlers, the Motown worm.

Guaranteed to catch you mo’ fish, give 
you mo’ action than any worm around.

Devil’s Nightcrawlers, 
home-grown in East Side Detroit.