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I'm a potter,

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which seems like a fairly humble vocation.

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I know a lot about pots.

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I've spent about 15 years making them.

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One of the things that really
excites me in my artistic practice

6
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and being trained as a potter

7
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is that you very quickly learn
how to make great things out of nothing;

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that I spent a lot of time at my wheel
with mounds of clay trying stuff;

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and that the limitations
of my capacity, my ability,

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was based on my hands and my imagination;

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that if I wanted to make
a really nice bowl

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and I didn't know how to make a foot yet,

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I would have to learn how to make a foot;

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that that process of learning
has been very, very helpful to my life.

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I feel like, as a potter,

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you also start to learn
how to shape the world.

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There have been times
in my artistic capacity

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that I wanted to reflect

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on other really important moments

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in the history of the U.S.,
the history of the world

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where tough things happened,

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but how do you talk about tough ideas

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without separating people
from that content?

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Could I use art like these old,
discontinued firehoses from Alabama,

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to talk about the complexities of a moment
of civil rights in the '60s?

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Is it possible to talk about my father
and I doing labor projects?

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My dad was a roofer, construction guy,
he owned small businesses,

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and at 80, he was ready to retire
and his tar kettle was my inheritance.

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Now, a tar kettle doesn't sound
like much of an inheritance. It wasn't.

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It was stinky and it took up
a lot of space in my studio,

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but I asked my dad if he would be willing
to make some art with me,

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if we could reimagine this kind
of nothing material

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as something very special.

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And by elevating the material
and my dad's skill,

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could we start to think about tar
just like clay, in a new way,

36
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shaping it differently,
helping us to imagine what was possible?

37
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After clay, I was then kind of turned on
to lots of different kinds of materials,

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and my studio grew a lot
because I thought, well,

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it's not really about the material,
it's about our capacity to shape things.

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I became more and more interested in ideas

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and more and more things that 
were happening just outside my studio.

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Just to give you a little bit of context,
I live in Chicago.

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I live on the South Side now.
I'm a West Sider.

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For those of you who are not Chicagoans,
that won't mean anything,

45
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but if I didn't mention
that I was a West Sider,

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there would be a lot of people
in the city that would be very upset.

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The neighborhood that I live in
is Grand Crossing.

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It's a neighborhood
that has seen better days.

49
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It is not a gated community by far.

50
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There is lots of abandonment
in my neighborhood,

51
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and while I was kind of busy
making pots and busy making art

52
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and having a good art career,

53
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there was all of this stuff
that was happening

54
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just outside my studio.

55
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All of us know about
failing housing markets

56
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and the challenges of blight,

57
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and I feel like we talk about it
with some of our cities more than others,

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but I think a lot of our
U.S. cities and beyond

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have the challenge of blight,

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abandoned buildings that people
no longer know what to do anything with.

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And so I thought, is there a way
that I could start to think

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about these buildings as an extension
or an expansion of my artistic practice?

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And that if I was thinking
along with other creatives --

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architects, engineers,
real estate finance people --

65
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that us together might be able
to kind of think

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in more complicated ways
about the reshaping of cities.

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And so I bought a building.

68
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The building was really affordable.

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We tricked it out.

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We made it as beautiful as we could
to try to just get some activity happening

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on my block.

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Once I bought the building
for about 18,000 dollars,

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I didn't have any money left.

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So I started sweeping the building
as a kind of performance.

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This is performance art,
and people would come over,

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and I would start sweeping.

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Because the broom was free
and sweeping was free.

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It worked out.

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(Laughter)

80
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But we would use the building, then,
to stage exhibitions, small dinners,

81
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and we found that that building
on my block, Dorchester --

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we now referred to the block
as Dorchester projects --

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that in a way that building
became a kind of gathering site

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for lots of different kinds of activity.

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We turned the building into
what we called now the Archive House.

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The Archive House would do
all of these amazing things.

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Very significant people
in the city and beyond

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would find themselves
in the middle of the hood.

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And that's when I felt like

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maybe there was a relationship
between my history with clay

91
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and this new thing that was
starting to develop,

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that we were slowly starting

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to reshape how people imagined
the South Side of the city.

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One house turned into a few houses,

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and we always tried to suggest

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that not only is creating
a beautiful vessel important,

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but the contents of what happens
in those buildings is also very important.

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So we were not only thinking
about development,

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but we were thinking about the program,

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thinking about the kind of connections
that could happen

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between one house and another,
between one neighbor and another.

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This building became what we call
the Listening House,

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and it has a collection of discarded books

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from the Johnson Publishing Corporation,

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and other books from an old bookstore
that was going out of business.

106
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I was actually just wanting to activate
these buildings as much as I could

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with whatever and whoever would join me.

108
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In Chicago, there's
amazing building stock.

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This building, which had been
the former crack house on the block,

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and when the building became abandoned,

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it became a great opportunity to really
imagine what else could happen there.

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So this space we converted into
what we call Black Cinema House.

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Black Cinema House was an opportunity
in the hood to screen films

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that were important and relevant
to the folk who lived around me,

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that if we wanted to show
an old Melvin Van Peebles film, we could.

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If we wanted to show "Car Wash," we could.

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That would be awesome.

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The building we soon outgrew,

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and we had to move to a larger space.

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Black Cinema House, which was made
from just a small piece of clay,

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had to grow into a much larger
piece of clay, which is now my studio.

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What I realized was that
for those of you who are zoning junkies,

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that some of the things that I was doing

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in these buildings
that had been left behind,

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they were not the uses by which
the buildings were built,

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and that there are city policies that say,

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"Hey, a house that is residential
needs to stay residential."

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But what do you do in neighborhoods when
ain't nobody interested in living there?

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That the people who have
the means to leave have already left?

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What do we do with
these abandoned buildings?

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And so I was trying
to wake them up using culture.

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We found that that
was so exciting for folk,

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and people were so responsive to the work,
that we had to then find bigger buildings.

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By the time we found bigger buildings,

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there was, in part, the resources 
necessary to think about those things.

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In this bank that we called the Arts Bank,
it was in pretty bad shape.

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There was about six feet
of standing water.

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It was a difficult project to finance,

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because banks weren't interested
in the neighborhood

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because people weren't interested
in the neighborhood

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because nothing had happened there.

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It was dirt. It was nothing.
It was nowhere.

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And so we just started imagining,
what else could happen in this building?

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(Applause)

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And so now that the rumor
of my block has spread,

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and lots of people are starting to visit,

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we've found that the bank
can now be a center

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for exhibition, archives,
music performance,

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and that there are people
who are now interested

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in being adjacent to those buildings
because we brought some heat,

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that we kind of made a fire.

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One of the archives that we'll have there
is this Johnson Publishing Corporation.

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We've also started to collect
memorabilia from American history,

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from people who live
or have lived in that neighborhood.

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Some of these images
are degraded images of black people,

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kind of histories
of very challenging content,

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and where better than a neighborhood

158
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with young people who are constantly
asking themselves about their identity

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to talk about some of the complexities

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of race and class?

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In some ways, the bank represents a hub,

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that we're trying to create a pretty 
hardcore node of cultural activity,

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and that if we could start
to make multiple hubs

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and connect some cool
green stuff around there,

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that the buildings that we've
purchased and rehabbed,

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which is now around 60 or 70 units,

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that if we could land
miniature Versailles on top of that,

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and connect these buildings
by a beautiful greenbelt --

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(Applause) --

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that this place where people
never wanted to be

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would become an important destination

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for folk from all over
the country and world.

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In some ways, it feels
very much like I'm a potter,

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that we tackle the things
that are at our wheel,

175
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we try with the skill that we have

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to think about this next bowl
that I want to make.

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And it went from a bowl to a singular
house to a block to a neighborhood

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to a cultural district
to thinking about the city,

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and at every point, there were things
that I didn't know that I had to learn.

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I've never learned so much
about zoning law in my life.

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I never thought I'd have to.

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But as a result of that, I'm finding
that there's not just room

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for my own artistic practice,

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there's room for a lot of other
artistic practices.

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So people started asking us,

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"Well, Theaster, how are you
going to go to scale?"

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and, "What's your sustainability plan?"

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(Laughter) (Applause)

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And what I found was that
I couldn't export myself,

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that what seems necessary
in cities like Akron, Ohio,

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and Detroit, Michigan, and Gary, Indiana,

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is that there are people in those places
who already believe in those places,

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that are already dying
to make those places beautiful,

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and that often, those people
who are passionate about a place

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are disconnected from the resources
necessary to make cool things happen,

196
00:11:07,450 --> 00:11:10,027
or disconnected from
a contingency of people

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that could help make things happen.

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So now, we're starting to give advice
around the country

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on how to start with what you got,

200
00:11:18,345 --> 00:11:21,140
how to start with the things
that are in front of you,

201
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how to make something out of nothing,

202
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how to reshape your world
at a wheel or at your block

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or at the scale of the city.

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Thank you so much.

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(Applause)

206
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June Cohen: Thank you. So I think
many people watching this

207
00:11:43,201 --> 00:11:46,406
will be asking themselves
the question you just raised at the end:

208
00:11:46,406 --> 00:11:48,588
How can they do this in their own city?

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You can't export yourself.

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Give us a few pages out of your playbook
about what someone who is inspired

211
00:11:53,882 --> 00:11:56,772
about their city can do
to take on projects like yours?

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00:11:56,772 --> 00:11:59,965
Theaster Gates: One of the things
I've found that's really important

213
00:11:59,965 --> 00:12:04,052
is giving thought to not just
the kind of individual project,

214
00:12:04,052 --> 00:12:06,846
like an old house,

215
00:12:06,846 --> 00:12:09,717
but what's the relationship
between an old house,

216
00:12:09,717 --> 00:12:12,875
a local school, a small bodega,

217
00:12:12,875 --> 00:12:15,871
and is there some kind of synergy
between those things?

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Can you get those folk talking?

219
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I've found that in cases
where neighborhoods have failed,

220
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they still often have a pulse.

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How do you identify the pulse
in that place, the passionate people,

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and then how do you get folk
who have been fighting,

223
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slogging for 20 years, reenergized
about the place that they live?

224
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And so someone has to do that work.

225
00:12:38,219 --> 00:12:42,492
If I were a traditional developer,
I would be talking about buildings alone,

226
00:12:42,492 --> 00:12:46,439
and then putting
a "For Lease" sign in the window.

227
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I think that you actually
have to curate more than that,

228
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that there's a way in which
you have to be mindful about,

229
00:12:51,784 --> 00:12:54,840
what are the businesses
that I want to grow here?

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And then, are there people
who live in this place

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who want to grow those businesses with me?

232
00:12:59,302 --> 00:13:02,135
Because I think it's not just
a cultural space or housing;

233
00:13:02,135 --> 00:13:05,177
there has to be the recreation
of an economic core.

234
00:13:05,177 --> 00:13:08,845
So thinking about those things
together feels right.

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JC: It's hard to get people
to create the spark again

236
00:13:11,651 --> 00:13:13,698
when people have been
slogging for 20 years.

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Are there any methods you've found
that have helped break through?

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TG: Yeah, I think that now
there are lots of examples

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of folk who are doing amazing work,

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but those methods are sometimes like,
when the media is constantly saying

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that only violent things
happen in a place,

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then based on your skill set
and the particular context,

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what are the things that you can do
in your neighborhood

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to kind of fight some of that?

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So I've found that
if you're a theater person,

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you have outdoor street theater festivals.

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In some cases, we don't have
the resources in certain neighborhoods

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to do things that are
a certain kind of splashy,

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but if we can then find ways
of making sure that people

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who are local to a place,

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plus people who could be supportive
of the things that are happening locally,

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when those people get together,

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I think really amazing things can happen.

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JC: So interesting.

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And how can you make sure
that the projects you're creating

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are actually for the disadvantaged

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and not just for the sort of
vegetarian indie movie crowd

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that might move in
to take advantage of them.

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TG: Right on. So I think this is where
it starts to get into the thick weeds.

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JC: Let's go there.
TG: Right now, Grand Crossing

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is 99 percent black, or at least living,

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and we know that maybe
who owns property in a place

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is different from who walks
the streets every day.

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So it's reasonable to say
that Grand Crossing is already

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in the process of being something
different than it is today.

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But are there ways to think about
housing trusts or land trusts

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or a mission-based development

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that starts to protect
some of the space that happens,

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because when you have
7,500 empty lots in a city,

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you want something to happen there,

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but you need entities that are not
just interested in the development piece,

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but entities that are interested
in the stabilization piece,

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and I feel like often the developer piece
is really motivated,

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but the other work of a kind
of neighborhood consciousness,

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that part doesn't live anymore.

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So how do you start to grow up
important watchdogs

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that ensure that the resources
that are made available

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to new folk that are coming in

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are also distributed to folk
who have lived in a place for a long time.

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JC: That makes so much sense.
One more question:

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You make such a compelling case for beauty
and the importance of beauty and the arts.

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There would be others who would argue
that funds would be better spent

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on basic services for the disadvantaged.

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How do you combat that viewpoint,
or come against it?

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TG: I believe that beauty 
is a basic service.

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(Applause)

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Often what I have found is that
when there are resources

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that have not been made available
to certain under-resourced cities

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or neighborhoods or communities,

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that sometimes culture is the thing
that helps to ignite,

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and that I can't do everything,

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but I think that there's a way in which
if you can start with culture

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and get people kind of
reinvested in their place,

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other kinds of adjacent
amenities start to grow,

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and then people can make a demand
that's a poetic demand,

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and the political demands that
are necessary to wake up our cities,

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they also become very poetic.

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JC: It makes perfect sense to me.

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Theaster, thank you so much
for being here with us today.

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Thank you. Theaster Gates.

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(Applause)