Friends,
When the artist Kevin Beasley discovered a cotton gin in Alabama, he restored it, surrounded it with microphones and enclosed it in a soundproof glass box. That's what you see above. What you don't see is what he created in the other room.
The sound of the cotton gin was transferred by the microphones through speakers, where for the whole run of the show the artists collaborated with musicians to remix the whirring sounds of the engine into new music. What was an engine of enslavement became an instrument for music, lectures, and community. Through the artist and artwork, a history of oppression becomes a dance party.
“Okay, history is there,” he's said, “it’s in the work. It’s there but now let’s take that and do something with it. Let’s affect change. Let’s present something. Let’s generate something.”
In the selections below, Kevin Beasley talks more about his thinking behind the art project with Mark Bradford (another artist to be inspired by), specifically how material holds history and sound shapes our imaginations. Can art really be a “radical tool of spiritual transcendence?” Turning a rusty cotton gin into a dance party seems like a resounding yes.
Take care,
Michael
Selections from “In Conversation: Kevin Beasley and Mark Bradford”
Materials are always an expanding aspect of my practice because as much as I enjoy the technical understanding of how these things come together, I am constantly questioning what can be a viable material to use, to explore the ideas I am engaging with. Materials sometimes drive an artwork and at other times they are the byproduct of an experience I’ve had that either left me vulnerable, or left me unable to express something about that experience with words.
For example, seeing a cotton field for the very first time in my life left me speechless, not just because of slavery and the American cotton field, but also because of its materiality—its transformation, yet its essential quality. A cotton blanket isn’t that far removed from a raw cotton boll—there is actually very little noticeable processing. That direct transformation is very important because at its core, it is unlike anything else.
There are no substitutes when you consider the entire life of the material. So I am constantly thinking about how I get to an understanding of my surroundings (people, places, and such) in all of their nuances...It’s myriad; I become overwhelmed by the varying levels of emphasis placed on subjects, context, and how much that can fluctuate in the process, but I’m constantly trying to develop and refine my approach. Something that worked for me in the studio a year or two ago just may not now because my thinking and knowledge on what certain materials evolves.
I’ve played drums since I was thirteen, and I have some basic sheet music reading ability, but for the longest time, I’d always kept my music separate from art. The lines began to blur while I was in graduate school, specifically because of my increasing interest in vinyl and mixing. Mixing was really the “aha” moment because I’d never thought about how tactile, how physical, and how transformable sound and music could be through vinyl.
Once I’d invested a bit of my student loan money into some DJ equipment, it all became another set of sculptural tools. I saw them in the same way I viewed any of my other tools and materials, except instead of plaster, resin, or clothing, it was recordings and the sound waves of various frequencies. What I had worked so hard to keep separate for the sake of some kind of purity became the very thing I needed to break down and mix up. So in one way, my practice is invested in the discovery of these connective aspects of materiality.
I’ve become especially interested in recorded sound because it provides us with a mark of time, like an etching in a wall or an ancient relief. It becomes materially significant because it describes the condition of a space through other means than our sense of seeing, which we rely on so heavily to navigate the world. I just can’t continue to move through society without asking questions about what I’m hearing, what is being said, the noise of the world.
I could go on forever about it, but I will say this: the immediate urgency I find in sound—even more so when it comes from a physical object such as vinyl—is the necessity to listen and give it time and space. It’s so much about observation and actually submitting to what is being projected and that is a very vulnerable and revealing space to commit to, because you open yourself up to hearing something you may not understand or agree with. If there was more of an emphasis focused listening, I think we could begin to understand more nuance in our daily encounters, effectively refining our relationships with one another and the world we inhabit.
“Freedom Train” by Langston Hughes I read in the papers about the Freedom Train. I heard on the radio about the Freedom Train. I seen folks talkin' about the Freedom Train. Lord, I been a-waitin' for the Freedom Train! Down South in Dixie only train I see's Got a Jim Crow car set aside for me. I hope there ain't no Jim Crow on the Freedom Train, No back door entrance to the Freedom Train, No signs FOR COLORED on the Freedom Train, No WHITE FOLKS ONLY on the Freedom Train. I'm gonna check up on this Freedom Train. Who is the engineer on the Freedom Train? Can a coal black man drive the Freedom Train? Or am I still a porter on the Freedom Train? Is there ballot boxes on the Freedom Train? Do colored folks vote on the Freedom Train? When it stops in Mississippi, will it be made plain Everybody's got a right to board the Freedom Train? Somebody tell me about this Freedom Train! The Birmingham station's marked COLORED and WHITE. The white folks go left, The colored go right— They even got a segregated lane. Is that the way to get aboard the Freedom Train? I got to know about this Freedom Train! If my children ask me, Daddy, please explain Why there's Jim Crow stations for the Freedom Train What shall I tell my children?....You tell me— cause freedom ain't freedom when a man ain't free. But maybe they explains it on the Freedom Train. When that train goes steamin' through South Caroline, Will them Greenville lynchers pay it any mind? Or will that twelve man jury what let 'em loose, Turn their heads and spit tobacco juice? Wonder will they spit on the Freedom Train? When my old mother in Atlanta, 83 and black, Gets in line to see the Freedom, Will some white man yell, Get Back! A Negro's got not business on the Freedom Track! Mister, I thought it were the Freedom Train! Her grandson's name was Jimmy. He died at Anzio. He died for real. It warn't no show. The freedom that they carryin' on this Freedom Train, Is it for real—or just a show again? Jimmy wants to know about this Freedom Train. Will his Freedom Train come zoomin' down the track Gleamin' in the sunlight for white and black? Not stoppin' at no stations marked COLORED nor WHITE, Just stoppin' in the fields in the broad daylight, Stoppin' in the country in the wide open air, Where there never was no Jim Crow signs nowhere, No Welcomin' Commmittees, nor politicians of note, No Mayors and such for which colored can't vote, And nary a sign of a color line— For the Freedom Train will be yours and mine! Then maybe from their graves in Anzio, The G.I.'s who fought will say, We wanted it so! Black men and white men will say, Ain't it fine? At home they got a train that yours and mine! Then I'll shout, Glory for the Freedom Train! I'll holler, Blow your whistle, Freedom Train! Thank God-A-Mighty! Here's the Freedom Train! Get on board our Freedom Train!
The history of the Freedom Train—a 1960s train tour of historic American documents
Poetry as a spiritual practice
An interview with Keith LaMar—a jazz poet on Ohio death row—on music and spiritual freedom