‘It’s a Summoning’: Watch Kara Walker and Jason Moran Discuss How Their Musical Collaboration Gives Vent to a History of Struggle and Celebration

Earlier this month, Kara Walker debuted her commission for the
Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, a masterful
re-imagining of the opulent fountains outside of Buckingham Palace
that explores the colonial relationship between Europe, Africa, and
America. The work, titled Fons
Americanus, uses water to evoke associations with
the slippage of time and memory, and also the literal method of
transporting enslaved African peoples.

This spectacular work develops themes that the artist has been
working on for years. Back in 2018, Walker created a calliope (a
steam-powered organ-style instrument) for the Prospect.4 Triennial
in New Orleans, installing it inside of a large parade wagon as a
way to evoke both the history of Louisiana’s riverboats and the
rise of Industrial Revolution-era machines like the cotton gin. It
is programmed to play songs representing “Black protest and
celebration.”

The wagon is decorated with Walker’s signature silhouette
cut-outs, in this case specifically conceived as a response to
encountering Algiers Point, a former holding site for slaves in
Mississippi. When Walker visited it for the first time, she was
appalled at the lackluster memorial denoting the place’s history.
She dubbed her own work Katastwóf Karavan, from
the Haitian word that translates to “catastrophe.”

Before presenting the work at Prospect, Walker sat down with
artist-musician Jason Moran, who she brought in to play her
calliope, for Art21’s “Extended Play” series.

“I wanted to really create this
paradoxical space where the ingenuity of American manufacturing—the
same genius that brought us chattel slavery—could then become the
mechanics through which those voices that were suppressed reemerge
for all time,” Walker explains.

It was important for her that the
wagon not be a stationary object. “It always needs to be
activated,” she tells Art21, nodding to Moran, who is a jazz
musician and composer.

Moran, who had only played such
an instrument once in his life, described the whistling sound of the instrument
as a “summoning, sending out of a signal… whether it’s a distress
signal, or like ‘let’s celebrate together.’”

Jason Moran’s first museum show is currently on view now at the
Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. For one day only on October 12, he will be
reunited with Walker’s calliope.

Watch the video, which originally appeared as part of
Art21’s Extended
Play series, below. Kara Walker’s
“Katastwóf Karavan” with Jason Moran is at
the Whitney Museum, Saturday October 12, 1-6:30
p.m.; “Kara Walker: Fons Americanus” is on view in
Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall through April 5, 2020. 

This is an installment of “Art on Video,” a collaboration
between artnet News and Art21 that brings you clips of newsmaking
artists. A new season of the nonprofit Art21’s
flagship Art in the Twenty-First
Century television series is available now on PBS. Catch
all episodes of New York Close
Up and Extended Play and
learn about the organization’s education programs
at Art21.org.

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History of Struggle and Celebration appeared first on artnet
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