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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in Soho. Thank you for sharing part of your day with us whether you're listening on the radio, live streaming or On Demand, I am grateful you're here. I'm grateful to everyone who submitted an entry to our public song project. We'll hear the winners on tomorrow's show and listen to some music. Now on today's show, we'll wrap up our Black Art History Month series with Nicola Vassell, one of the only black female gallery owners in New York City.

She came to the US from Jamaica at just 17 and worked her way up through the art world. We'll hear her story and what she has planned for 2023. The Oscar-nominated film Argentina 1985 revisits a milestone trial that held that country's military dictatorship accountable. We'll speak with the director Santiago Mitre and Luis Moreno Ocampo, one of the real-life lawyers involved in that prosecution. We'll go inside the battle for power and control of Paramount global the media empire founded by the late Sumner Redstone.

We'll speak with James B. Stewart and Rachel Abrams, the author of The New York Times best-seller Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a media empire, and the Redstone Family. That is our plan today. Let's get this started with a powerful book that combines art and poetry. It's called Redaction.

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A new book out today combines visual art and poetry to expose the warps in our criminal justice system and the work that amplifies the humanity of millions of people incarcerated in this country. Redaction is a collaborative project between visual artists MacArthur Genius recipient and Oscar nominee filmmaker Titus Kaphar, and poet, author, and lawyer Reginald Dwayne Betts, who was also a MacArthur Genius recipient. The book is a continuation of an exhibition which first showed at MoMA PS1 in 2019.

The book features poetry made of redacted court materials accompanied by sketches of faces and images of artwork that disrupt the presentation of iconic imagery about American history. The title page of the book Redaction reads a journey through words and images meant to trouble a poet and a painter refusing to let them blackhole this process. Redaction is out today. With me now are Titus Kaphar. Titus, welcome to the show.

Titus Kaphar: Thank you so much. It's an honor to be here.

Alison Stewart: And Dwayne Betts, welcome back to the show.

Dwayne Betts: Thank you. It's also an honor to be here.

Alison Stewart: The book was inspired by this collaborative exhibition at MoMA PS1 in 2019. Probably some of the folks in our audience have seen it. Titus, what was the original mission of the exhibition, and to what extent has that mission changed or morphed as it evolved into this book?

Titus Kaphar: I don't think that we set out to have-

Alison Stewart: Ooh, Titus, we have a bad connection with you. I'm going to let our control room work on that. Dwayne, you're going to be up next. How does the book build on the exhibition while we figure out Titus's audio?

Dwayne Betts: It's interesting because I know what he was about to say because we talked about this a lot, and is one version of it [inaudible 00:03:28] think about the book, the exhibition, but the reality is that the exhibition made us realize that what we were doing was creating art and hoping to bring people in the art spaces that they don't typically go to.

We started with this exhibit, and we figured the best thing to do alternatively was what does it mean to make a book that would be the third exhibit of redaction so that literally you could bring into your home and exhibit that typically, you have to go to the MoMA PS1 or some other art gallery to checkout. That's what we did. We made a book that was in and of itself, a beautiful object that captures all of the prints, but also gives a reflection on our past and our present work as artists.

Alison Stewart: Titus, do we have you? Oh, we're still working on it. I'm going to continue with you, Dwayne. I'm going to ask you actually to read one of the poems. The book explains the traps and hazards of the criminal justice system as a whole, but specifically cash bail, and how it harms poor and marginalized people. Dwayne, would you read the poem in the middle of Alabama, and explain how you came to the poem?

Dwayne Betts: Yes. In the middle of Alabama, people versus the city of Montgomery, the plaintiffs impoverished jail about a city unable to pay traffic tickets, pay or sent jail. $50 per day plaintiffs unable to pay each sent to jail till they could work off debts $25 per day cleaning the city, scrubbing feces, and blowing from jail floors. The treatment reveals the city against his porous. Jail and people if they [unintelligible 00:05:29]

plaintiff seek fundamental rights. They suffered the city's unlawful.

Alison Stewart: For people who are listening to that, and they hear the pauses would you explain what the poem actually looks like on the page?

Dwayne Betts: Yes. I think this is going to be perfect for Titus to come in because the poem on the page, I took these complaints, these class action lawsuits, and I started to complain into a poetic complaint. It's the voice of one, but it's really the voice of many because it's actually there's been a lot of people have suffered the same harm, and they are suing. What happens is when you look at on page you see these redacted lines. Instead of using Redaction to hide the truth, I use Redaction to reveal the truth, to reveal the true essence of a complaint. [unintelligible 00:06:20] etchings complete the circle. You can actually see the reflection of [unintelligible 00:06:26] and the stories that connect our communities together and come out of this particular trauma.

Alison Stewart: Titus, do you want to weigh in?

Titus Kaphar: [chuckles] Can you hear me now?

Alison Stewart: You sound great now.

Titus Kaphar: Oh, that's great. That's great. Technology doesn't like me as much as canvas and paint. I was actually going to speak to my relationship with Dwayne a little bit when you ask specifically about what got us here, why we chose to do it this way. Dwayne and I became friends and this collaboration evolved out of that friendship. It evolved out of our experiences in our life, our experiences as fathers, and our experience in the criminal justice system with our loved ones.

Particularly the images that you're talking about we put as Dwayne said, multiple faces one on top of each other to speak to this idea that this is not one story. This is a collective story. This is multiple stories. On the other hand, the thing that we want to make sure that folks recognize and feel and experience maybe from this book is that it is actually about hope. These things that we are having conversations about that we are exploring, we are also actively working towards justice in the world so that this doesn't have to be some depressing observation of how horrible the world is. We know that we understand those moments. Our purpose, our goal if there is one in this way, is that people receive this as hope.

Alison Stewart: One of the really beautiful things and this is one of those moments when I wish I was on TV, but I'm going to do my best to describe it is that the poems that Dwayne has made out of these complaints are on I think it's like vellum. It's almost on tracing paper, and then you can see the sketches, the faces that you created Titus, underneath the words emerging out underneath the words. Can you tell us a little bit about that choice, it's very moving.

Titus Kaphar: That section that you're talking about is really about helping understand the process. Each one of these pieces that we made comes from four separate prints. It comes from the legal document, and that's printed, then there's the redaction of that legal document and then that's printed, then there is the portrait that I make and then there's another portrait put on top of that. That order shifts sometimes depending on the piece, but every individual piece is actually four different moments of printing. The vellum allows you to see each one of those moments separately so that by the time you get to the end of those four pages, you can see what it took to get to the result you're staring at.

Alison Stewart: Dwayne, I'm curious as you were looking at the various complaints, and the redactions I can understand where you could find some poetry and I'm curious if your legal training ever overlaps with this.

Dwayne Betts: Yes. I understood what a class action lawsuit was. That automatically had me thinking as poet a class action lawsuit is when you try to speak not just to one but for many. That's what a poem is trying to do essentially. Then also even understanding that me to be able to understand the document and able to understand the way in which sometimes when you make legal challenges for some really profound injustice, the challenge itself gets boiled down to interpreting a statute.

Sometimes what gets lost in thinking about the legal aspect of the work is the heart and the absurdity of some of these situations. You lock somebody up because they can't pay bail and then you tell them they're going to serve 40 days in jail but while they serve 40 days they lose their jobs or they'll [unintelligible 00:10:39] their families. Sometimes we had these conversations about criminal justice reform, criminal justice issues, Riker's prisons all across this country, and those conversations get siloed in a way that don't also reflect the way in which we're trying to live our lives, be fathers, be friends, be within community.

What this book does both through the art and through the other poems is I think reminder reader that listen the landscape of the suffering is the landscape of our lives. It's not just siloed to the experience of being a prison, it is also connected to these people who we have did these portraits of within the other poems is aspects of their life that's reflected because I do believe that poetry has the ability for one and not in terms of me being that one but the muse being the one to speak for many. I think in the same way the Titus is art does the exact same thing. It lets you think about yourself in different frames that allows you to understand your own humanity but also allows you to understand aspects of people's lives that you might not see.

Alison Stewart: My guests are Dwayne Betts and Titus Kaphar. We are talking about their new book Redaction which combines Kaphar's art and Betts's Poetry. The book is out today. There's another poem. I can read it or you can read it on 144. Dwayne, what do you think?

Dwayne Betts: Oh, I love to hear other people read my poem.

Alison Stewart: Here I go.

Titus Kaphar: I knew that was coming.

Alison Stewart: Here it is. There is the dream and then there is a moment when morning comes with a combination of colors that have never existed before. The vernacular calls this dawn, our first light, our sun up, daybreak break of day, cock row, aurora. There are so many words for this particular beauty, and no one dare call it fleeting. This beginning, this kind of horse we ride into what we hope will happen. This strange and wild thing that gallops us to our life.

Titus Kaphar: Obviously we hang out a lot, our kids go to the same school. He's in my studio pretty regularly. It's when other people realize, read his poetry, I realize, oh yes, that's right. This dude is a genius. I forgot about that.

Alison Stewart: He's just my guy. I'm in the whoa.

Dwayne Betts: Even when you look at that yes people can't see it at home which is why they have to purchase the book. I reminded folks [unintelligible 00:13:17] the book is like the Joy of encyclopedia. Remember when you were kid and you would get that all and one encyclopedia and every page was a discovery? The beautiful thing about this is I deeply do believe that every page is a discovery. Titus, you know the work on the other side is one of your historical pieces and it's a sculpture really that's in wood and it has-- I think this is Washington and it has a Black man that was fighting ostensibly in a civil war for his freedom.

It's that juxtaposition I think that reminds us that there's a dream and it is this moment that we're moving towards. I think what the art is trying to do with the poem is to remind us that you can't get fixated on whatever the figure is that you choose to remind you of how tragic some of our beginnings were. You can't let go of the site that like within that tragedy was the kernel that gets us to where we are today.

Alison Stewart: Yes. Titus so interested in your process, in your practice when you're thinking about the juxtaposition of iconic imagery about our history, how do you go about choosing? Does the meuse come to you and you just know, do you actually think like, "Okay, I'm going to start with George Washington's profile and go from there?"

Titus Kaphar: Yes, the particular painting you're talking about it's a conversation with the Revolutionary War conversation with the Civil War George Washington. A lot of this stuff happens organically. I feel compelled to make one particular painting and then I feel compelled to make another particular painting. I have several paintings sitting around the studio, and I'll wait for those paintings to begin to have a conversation with one another.

If it's a conversation I'm interested in, I jump into the conversation, get in where I can fit in, and the things construct. I feel like in the world of the painting you have control in some ways in the world of painting and the world of art you are God but the artwork has free will. It can go left, it can go right, it can do these different kinds of things and you have to respond to that. You have to be willing to go with it. That's really my process. Very rarely does it happen that I sit down and go, "Okay, I'm going to do X, then Y then Z."

I find that when I try to be a dictator when I dictate to the work, this is what's going to happen. I find myself most disappointed in what I've made when I go through it that way. When I keep myself open to the magic of discovery during the process that's when the magic happens.

Alison Stewart: If artists often have to keep themselves open it does make you vulnerable. It makes you emotionally vulnerable to the work, to the feelings that come up. Dwayne, how do you protect yourself personally when you are dealing with really difficult subject matter and having to be really honest and raw about it?

Dwayne Betts: Yes. I don't necessarily know if the creation of art is where you go to protect yourself beyond this belief. Beyond this fundamental belief that cooking is very, very dangerous, you could say I once almost cut my finger off trying to chop scallions to make dinner for my family. The thing that nourishes you could also lead to disaster and yet you cook for your family because you want to make this meal that you'll share and it's a bit of joy in that. You go through the process even risking failure with this deep belief that at the end it's going to sustain you and even a bad meal sustained you.

I remember cutting my finger in some ways more than a lot of the meals I had that year because it was preparing for like a holiday and I was doing something that was fancy and the way that my folks showed up for me and just-- because I was crying. I was like man my finger's gone. My wife was like, "You're not lefthanded, you're right handed." I think art is the same thing though. [unintelligible 00:17:37] and sometimes they take me places that I don't want to go but when I remember that the art is supposed to have some sustaining force I find that I'm often I'm unintentionally turning it into a place that reminds me why these things matter.

The art itself is a way of sustaining me because it reminds me that even from tragedy you get stories that are deeply meaningful. Even when the work is dark because you can't run away from how dark this one thing that you need to say is when it's something that sustains you in that work because the reality is I think about being a writer as being a witness, as being a person that's there to tell the truth but you can only tell that truth if you survive. It's some honor and recognizing that your gift is to be able to keep telling the story.

Alison Stewart: Yes. Titus, I was thinking about you. As I was asking the question I was thinking about your film Shut Up and Paint, which was on the shortlist for best documentary show at the Oscars this year and it examines your relationship with the art world and activism and near the end of it. It's a really interesting show if anyone hasn't seen it. In the end, you're painting with white paint and there's so much emotion in the way that you are using that paintbrush on that canvas. You're clearly having a moment. Are those moments cathartic for you or did that moment ever scare you because you really are in it in that moment working on this piece?

Titus Kaphar: Yes, I think there's a little bit of both of those things in that. There is a catharsis to the process for sure. There is struggle in the process for sure. There is fear in the process for sure. I think at a certain point in your practice you have figured out strategies for getting through the fear, for getting beyond the point of can I do this? Can I do this? Will this work? For me, in my practice, I've come to realize that I have to get really, really close to failure in order to get to something special. In some cases, I go over that line. In some cases I decide I'm going to cut a hole in a painting and it's just a hole in the painting.

It hasn't transcended. It is not profound. It is just a hole. Then other times you remove something physical from a space. This goes back to redaction. There's a concept in itself. You remove something and it makes you question why it's gone. It makes you think about who had the power to remove that. It makes you dig into these ideas of absence and presence in a way that is expressive and powerful and does transcend the work itself. The idea is that it shouldn't just be about this brushstroke or that brushstroke. It should be collectively coming together to create something more articulate, more eloquent.

Alison Stewart: It's a beautiful book and hopefully you will have questions for yourself and about the way our systems work in this country. The name of the book is Redaction. It is by Titus Kaphar and Reginald Dwayne Betts. Thank you so much for joining us on publication day.

Titus Kaphar: Thank you.

 

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