PBS高端访谈:种族身份的诸多问题(在线收听

JUDY WOODRUFF: Tonight's Brief But Spectacular features artist Delano Dunn. His work explore questions of racial identity.

DELANO DUNN, Artist: I grew up in Los Angeles, California, so South Central L.A., which is a block of about 24 neighborhoods. When I was a young kid, the neighborhood was fantastic. You know, I would play outside on the streets with most of my friends. But, as I got older, got into my teens, things got rough. The riots happened. The gang wars sort of sparked, so it became a neighborhood where you couldn't walk down the street. It became very rough. Everything about the neighborhood that I grew up in, the friends that I had, the experiences of being a black student in a predominantly white high school and elementary school, all of those things come into the work. My work is not happy work. It's very difficult work. It's very powerful work, I like to think. So I make stuff very colorful. I make it bright. I make it look like a piece of candy, so that you want to come up and unwrap it. And when you do and you put it in your mouth, it tastes like salt. As a kid, we didn't talk much about the civil rights movement in the house. I was more interested in space, in space exploration. As I got older, I started to realize really what was probably more important to my life.

PROTESTERS: Freedom, freedom, freedom.

DELANO DUNN: And I started to want to have a reconciliation. You're taught in school that these two events are happening not at the same time, even though they actually are. And the goal was to build a new history that showed these two events happening concurrently, and these two groups of people working together to develop a cohesive idea of the American dream. 1961 is significant because, in my research, it was the first time I found these remarkable connections. So you have got Freedom Riders driving down on May 4 to desegregate interstate travel. And the next day, one of the Mercury astronauts goes up. I remember sitting in the library at the time coming to that conclusion, and it just kind of blew my mind, that these things were happening within hours and days of each other. Growing up and not really seeing any black astronauts, to have this opportunity to make a world where you have African-Americans and these astronauts working together, and blending the lines that maybe, you know, African-Americans were part of these Mercury missions, made me kind of giddy, and I decided to go see what I could do with it. I grew up in a family that was mostly women. I was raised by my mom, my aunt, and my grandmother. And I wanted to make work that talked about the contribution that women have had in history, whether it be African-American civil rights movement, whether it be the space race. My daughter's name is Violet, and she's 6. It's a rough world out there, and particularly for women and particularly for women of color. And so when I make work, I think a lot about her. I make sure that I have images of women in the work and that these women are not seen through the male gaze and that they're depicted in positions of power and strength. And that is the main impact of the work these days, is her. My name is Delano Dunn. And this is my Brief But Spectacular take on exploring the world through my art.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And you can watch additional Brief But Spectacular episodes on our Web site, PBS.org/NewsHour/Brief.

朱迪·伍德拉夫:今晚《简短而精彩》的主角是艺术家德拉诺·邓恩。他的作品探索了种族身份的诸多问题。

德拉诺·邓恩,艺术家:我在加州洛杉矶的中那不长大,这里有24个居民区。我还小的时候,我所在的街区特别棒。我可以在外面的街上跟朋友们玩耍。但随着我年龄的增长,我成为了一名青少年,我的境遇变得艰难起来,因为暴动发生了。当时的团伙组织了暴动,所以我们就没法在街上玩了。生活变得苦了起来。我在这个街区长大,在这里结交了一些朋友,我是我们小学和高中里为数不多的黑人,这些都对我的工作产生了影响。我做的工作让我感到不开心。工作内容很难,强度很大。我喜欢思考。我做了色彩斑斓的东西,颜色光亮的东西。我故意把这些东西做成像糖果的样子,这样人们才会想要打开来看。而真地打开来看并放入口中的时候,口感却像盐。我还小的时候,我们不会在家谈论人权运动的事儿。我对空间和太空探索更感兴趣。随着年龄的增长,我真正开始意识到对我的生活来说更重要的是什么。

抗议者:自由!自由!自由!

德拉诺·邓恩:我开始想要和解了。在学校里,老师都告诉我们说这两样东西是不能兼得的,虽然这两样东西实际上是同时存在的。目标是构建新的历史,展示出同时发生的2件事。这两群人一起努力,想出有凝聚力的点子,关于美国梦的点子。1961年很重要,因为这是我第一次通过研究发现了他们之间惊人的联系。这一年的5月4日,自由乘车运动者为了废止种族分离,在州内乘车周游。第二天,水星计划的宇航员升空了。我记得我得出结论的时候正坐在实验室里,突然想到这两样东西是时时刻刻同在的。我长大的过程中没有真正地见过黑人宇航员,也未曾有机会创建一个世界——非裔美国宇航员和这些宇航员并肩作战,也未曾有机会让非裔美国宇航员加入水星计划中,这让我感到发狂,于是我决定看看自己能做些什么。我家里人大多是女性。母亲和祖母将我养大。我希望我的作品能探讨女性在历史上的贡献,不管是在非裔美国民权运动里,还是在太空竞赛中。我女儿名叫比奥莱特,今年6岁。外面的世界很艰难,尤其是对女性,甚至是有色人种的女性来说。所以我在做作品的时候,想了很多关于女儿的事情。我确保作品中有女性的图像出现,而且不是以男性视角的女性样子,而是描绘女性的力量。女性是近来影响我工作的主要因素。我是德拉诺·邓恩。这是我本期的分享——通过艺术来探索世界。

朱迪·伍德拉夫:其他期的内容可在PBS.org/NewsHour/Brief上观看。

  原文地址:http://www.tingroom.com/lesson/pbs/sh/502950.html