The Community Builder: In Conversation with Theaster Gates c/o The Aspen Institute
Key Takeaways
On interdisciplinary ideas:
“Instead of being just committed to clay as an object, I would commit to ideas. And that from the idea, really the material was like whatever I know how to do with my hands in service to the ideas.”
On taking up space and using place as an artistic practice:
“These moments were a regime of artistic practice that was changing and people had to like make a manifesto, and they were like ‘yo the world is messed up, I can’t just make a pots anymore, the world requires…’ and as a result Fluxus is born or Situationists are born. Or like the French middle class they’d decide in addition to these things we just need to occupy and interrupt the city. Those movements were very exciting to me. That there were people taking over the city and talking about spectacle as a form of artistic practice.”
On systems-making:
“You read about Bauhaus and you realize it’s both craft, and conceptual practices, and systems making, and a kind of connection between the school and the industry; and that that felt like it constituted a perfect circle to me.”
“Pretty quickly I found myself interested in something bigger than clay but also bigger than what we think the boundaries of art should be.”
On fundamentals of a more healthy neighborhood:
People have access to more affordable housing.
There are cultural spaces that live on the block.
There are people that are intentional about trying to re-network neighbor to neighbor positive action.