Mallory Nezam: Hey, this is MADAD. It's three artists that are part of a collaborative, and we're all invested in racial justice work using art as a tool for change in St. Louis, Missouri. I'm Mallory Nezam. I'm a public artist and a cultural strategist based between Oakland, California, and St. Louis.
De Nichols: Hey, my name is De Nichols and I am a communications designer, arts organizer, lecturer, a writer, et cetera, based currently in the midst of this pandemic in Memphis, Tennessee, but always representing St. Louis, Missouri.
Damon Davis: And I am Damon Davis. I am a post-disciplinary artist and I'm just a creative problem solver. And I'm also based in St. Louis, Missouri.
Mallory Nezam: So we're going to have a free flowing conversation today. And MADAD has challenged each other to come up with a single question, one from each of us to ask to our trio. So that's the format that the conversation will take. I'll go ahead and kick it off with a question. So my question for all of us, it's kind of a two-parter and I think it's pretty simple: What is the hardest part of the work that you do and what is the most fulfilling part of the work that you do?
Nichols: Honestly, right now I think the hardest part is the balance. Balancing the interests that people have and trying to balance gratitude and that feeling of being overwhelmed. I think sometimes it is hard to not have enough time in headspace to really dive deep and focus on my own stuff, because what pays the bills is tending to the spaces, the needs, the projects and stuff of others. And so finding that balance and finding that boldness to be selfish and reclaim my space and reclaim my creative time. I think that's the challenge.
In terms of what's most fulfilling it's the connection for me, I'm a part of a few collectives and collaborative efforts, and I love working in community with others. And I really vibe all of that, like cross generative creative process that I come up with an idea you're like, "Oh yeah, that's great. But what about this?" And we just keep ping-ponging off of each other's brilliance until we have something that is magnificent. Like that is the most joyful thing. And that's also a hard thing right now in the midst of this pandemic.
Davis: I think the hardest thing has been slowing down because I run around a lot and I do a lot of traveling with the work that I do. Like De, I'm also in multiple collectives. And so I've been used to like a lot of face-to-face meetings, but also just traveling and being living out of a suitcase for the last few years. But also the most rewarding thing is that I've had to slow down and sit at home and deal with internal problems and grow because I didn't have any work to hide behind or no work that would get me out of the house. And so I had to stay here and deal with myself, which has been one of the greatest things that has happened to me this year. And it's free me up mentally and spiritually, and also creatives and new problems. But I think it's exactly what had to happen to me from my life, which is my practice and vice versa to move forward. So I think that I'm both grateful and frustrated with the same factor of having to sit down for a minute.
Mallory Nezam: I'm at my best when I'm collaborating and I'm around people. So the time alone has been really hard for me, Damon. I think the universe is telling me that I need to work with myself more, I see that it is supposed to be the blessing right now, but I'm still trying to figure out that relationship and that relationship is evolving a lot. I think one of the biggest challenges for me, which is also probably one of the more fulfilling things that kind of has both it is being in the role of the translator often, and I mean, kind of a figurative translator between worlds.
So that often looks like I can reflect on the work that we've done on the Brickline Greenway, where we're representing, we're in rooms where there are a lot of different professions and a lot of different, honestly, sometimes languages even being used and oftentimes in the role that we play, we're talking to people who are developing no more like real estate projects and then artists pretty large and activists and social workers and architects and all of these different kinds of people that play different roles that have different goals.
And at least for myself, I find that I'm often a chameleon that's kind of working and weaving together and doing this alchemy work of bringing all of these different interests together to find common ground, try to work together, to make a place better. But being in that translator role, it's hard because you cannot know everything. We do specialize in certain things, but often in rooms that... At least I seek to be in rooms that people wouldn't expect me to be in, but it comes with its own set of challenges of trying to kind of wear all the hats and play that translator role between everyone and to try to move things forward.
The most fulfilling part of the work right now, similarly is just being in a lot of rooms that I five years ago, would never have imagined I would be in and being in conversations where the artists are not often invited into and that's really hard to do, but it's also really rewarding because I feel that we can move other sectors forward and we can bring our perspective into projects. And in ways that five years ago, I wouldn't have necessarily imagined. And I think that the world's better for that. And I also really... It's really meaningful to me the tiny moments they're fulfilling when I see small transformations and individual people when I'm collaborating with them, that we're really doubtful of the role the art or cultural work can bring to something that didn't really involve artists before. And then seeing those little moments where somebody starts to get excited about the work that I do and that we do, and that actually start to lead with that work and really center in it. And in the work that they do, maybe in the next project, when I'm not even involved anymore.
Nichols: A common thread across all of our works is this tending to place in the specialization of our creativity, as it meets these intersections of injustice and problem solving and social issues. And right now the entire world is re-imagining how we not only navigate space and use it together, but in some ways through protest in activism, how we take up space. And I'm curious from the both of you with how in your head are you re-imagining the ways in which we could take up space differently, moving forward? What might be the things that we need to consider? What are the ways that space might become more energized or more dignifying of our collective humanity?
That's a hard question. It's been on the line.
Davis: Yeah, it's a big question. That's a big, big question. I can say from my personal point of view, I've been fighting for my chance to get my little visions out and my stories out. I'm reaching a point where I might be crossing over into the line of fighting for my space and to taking up too much space. And so what I'm trying to do is think about where I got privileges and it is on the metaphorical level, right? And where my space ends and when my space begins and how does, how does that echo out into the work that I do? So when you just mentioned protests and protesting, and at the age I was at, a lot of it was just straight up anger, straight up anger, and also fear, fear of what could happen to me or somebody that I love.
But as I get older, anger is still very much a part of it so is fear, but it's also... There were other people in the room, right? That had different stories and just different things going on. And if I'm fighting for space for myself from another group, then I've got to be able to not make somebody else want to fight me for the space, if that makes sense. And not replicating the trauma, that I'm fighting off in my protests and in the work that I'm doing and in hours that I'm making it. And if I think like that, then I feel like it trickles into the work and how I think about physical space and how much of our work is going to take up, or is this good for the environment and what's the footprint that I'm laying down? But I think my first thought process has to be from an internal space and how I fit into the landscape of how I'm interacting with people in society before I can make or work there that reflects what I say I'm about and what I'm trying to become, you know?
Nezam: Yeah, I think a lot about both place and space. And I was recently in a conversation with another colleague where she kind of challenged me to define them each. So, as I'm thinking about what's the difference between place and space, and for me, place is very much defined by geography and space in the way that Damon is talking about it can be immaterial, it can be energetic. It can be more about the spheres that we operate in. So I do think about both of them in my practice, like a lot of the work is placed based, and a lot of my origins are very much about directly engaging with a place defined by a geography and the people in that geography. And then there's also a lot of work around opening space, as Damon's talking about: how do we create space for other people to collaborate in this work? How do we create entry points for other artists to come into the work? How do we create space for new processes to create public projects?
I'm also really interested in questions about systems and systems change. I mean, obviously this question about place and space and the context of Monument Lab and thinking about monuments and then thinking in the future, I'm really interested in questions about who decides what makes a place and who decides how things like monuments are decided upon the processes that we use, how people are involved in that moving forward. I think that's going to be a really big shift that I would personally like to see in the coming years.
And I also, as somebody who's been pretty nomadic during COVID and the pandemic, I'm also feeling like there's going to be this sort of placelessness future where... And it makes me kind of sad because I'm so inspired by place and I feel so connected to the places to which I'm committed. But I do see that there is going to be a future in which we do have the good gap between ourselves and the places. I mean, even just thinking about everyone's going to be working remotely, like we know that that's going to happen. How is that going to change our relationship to places or for ordering everything online? How's that going to change our relation to places if we're not casually walking down the street and popping into stores here and there, and just discovering things or just bumping into people walking down the street?
I think that it's a little bit of a worry of mine, but it's also a really exciting challenge and opportunity for creative people who work with place to think about. How do we do something about that? How do we do something about the fact, the world is changing? Our relationship to place, to geography is changing, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing. It just means that we need to put intention into how we want to shape that.
Nichols: I want to continue on that sentiment about placelessness. And in my head, I think about the other end of that spectrum of place-fullness, that in the midst of not having to be anywhere, we can be everywhere. And that also relates back to what you were saying earlier, Mallory, about being a part of spaces that perhaps weren't always inviting for artists to be a part of. And what does that look like to take up space in a different way and with different types of people? I think that I also share the opportunity, your sense of seeing this as an opportunity and a challenge, because as long as we have WiFi, we can go anywhere and be anywhere and be a part of different places and spaces. And we can tour these virtual realms of things. And when I think about the spaciousness that is before us, I could see how so much could enter into our rooms of possibilities.
Thinking about virtual worlds, thinking about different types of augmentation to our current realities. Thinking about the ways that we communicate across a place, across geography. In many ways it's terrifying because what's so valuable about being in a place is that groundedness, that sense of rootedness in connection that in many ways becomes dehumanized in these platforms. So I'm very anxious about how we navigate through this, because I do think that this whole virtual communication and world building is here to stay, and at the same time knowing that we have cultural institutions that are struggling right now. Places that haven't opened their doors or had people in them for the last six, seven months. That is a detriment, that is a huge loss in terms of our sense of connectedness and what can... It makes me question, what can we do to ensure that these places aren't lost for good? Right now as an example, theaters are closing, movie theaters in particular, but we can expect that might expand into performative theaters as well.
At the same time, we see a lot of families creating their own theaters within their homes. And I think the sense of decentralizing a space, or removing the hierarchy of people having to go into a certain type of space in order to access a certain interest. That is something that fascinates me. But, of course the question is what becomes of this? And I don't know the answers of course, but I have so many curiosities and questions about it. And so I thank you all for, I don't know, pondering some of that with me as well. I knew it was a question that will stay on my mind for a while.
Davis: I got like a piggyback in question though, or a question and piggyback off of that, just the idea back to placelessness. So do you think because of how society has been originally formed as around place and proximity, and do the tribes get formed? And through those tribes, eventually we run into things like patriarchy, racism, blah, blah, blah? But in the beginning for the most part, there were people based around... that nationalism was because of where you was at. So, because of this virus, and because of the advent of technology to keep... they don't have to put you in a place. Do you think this placelessness could help us overcome many of the social ills that were created because of place, because of proximity and because of scarcity and things of that nature.
But the ideology is sold to you through where you from and what you look like. But if that doesn't matter anymore, how sturdy are those social constructs and what do we do? What is the role that we as artists or people that create things that specifically go in places like monuments, like art work? Where do we find ourselves? If that's what we watching right now?
Nichols: I actually don't think that we would lose that tribe mentality. I think in many ways the place is a microcosm of the connections that people wanted to make anyways. I think about how hateful groups will replicate themselves no matter where they are. And same with justice groups, the sense of building networks across and beyond geography. I think that is still a strong hold that the ideology will carry. I think it will just be hard to sometimes identify it because we might lose that sense of placing where the center of some of that is. Like the decentralization, I think is what starts to happen even more, which in terms of social justice makes it harder, could make it harder to find and identify where those hate groups might live. And I don't know if that's where you were taking that, but that's immediately what came to my word hate groups.
Davis: Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, yeah, that's basically what I'm saying, but I just want to see if there's hope within this isolation to give people to build something new, or where hate isn’t a thing. And that's all going on a premise that a lot of this is based on where you at. And I know there's not all like that, but is there an opening, a chink in the armor so to speak, where we talking about these ideologies, that's based around place and placement.
Nezam: I think there might be. I think I want to task artists with getting ahead of that curve. I think artists have the gift of imagining things into being, so it's a really great provocation, Damon, for creative people to ruminate on and dig into. When you asked that question, I thought a lot about while I think historically humans have built community around place and then deepened into things like tribalism and a lot of negative social practices that have developed out of that. I also think that there's something really beautiful about public convening and publicness, public space, central spaces like physical geographics, shared public spaces and shared resources that expose us to a lot more than just our tiny slice of life.
Like, even if you think about maybe a small village, I don't know, long time ago, even within that small village, you're going to be exposed to a lot of different kinds of different people, different ways of life, different preferences, different ways of wearing your clothing, different ways of talking, different kinds of music, just even in that small group. And if you only spend all your time with just your nuclear family your world would be smaller.
Nezam: So I'm a little bit concerned about losing that publicness and the way that things have become so privatized, even just like since March. So like, yeah, I can go to the conference, but I'm doing it from accessing my private access to technology, my private computer, the home that I'm in, the electricity that I source alone. Everything is so privatized and I can have access to that conference through my own privilege to have access to that conference. It's not a pool thing where we're all coming together and it's even more of an issue when we think about places like, I don't know, more physical shared spaces that everybody has access to like parks and things like that. But the less time that we're spending in those public spaces where we can pool resources and give a lot of people access that may not have access otherwise, and we're not rubbing... we're not seeing a lot of different types of life being lived in a central place. And we're like only in these private spaces where we're electing to experience specific things that we are interested in.
I think our worlds start to tighten. I'm concerned about that. And that's sort of like the way that, I think about how algorithms work on social media and they just feed you content that you want to see. It's like, well, maybe that's a really great space for artists to interrupt. So let's collaborate with tech people, but more like, I think what I'm inspired about when you asked this question and Damon is like, we have a lot to learn and we have a lot of new partners that we need to be working with. If we want to think about how do we create a healthier future in which we are not isolating ourselves, if we are in a placeless world? I don't think we can use only the tools that we have had previously. I think we are going to need to start dreaming up new tools, working with other sectors. And that makes me feel like, "Hey, there's some cool stuff we can do there." And I feel a bit hopeful about that, but we do have to imagine it because it doesn't exist yet.
Davis: Yeah. And I definitely agree with how your worldview will be tightened because of the algorithm and because of human contact deprivation, because we've seen that happen before. But I was wondering if it can have a reverse effect, if that's even, maybe that might just be a little too hopeful, especially for American society at this point.
Nezam: Well, I just think about how ever so much in digital spaces is so privatized that I can't even... I don't really have the autonomy to choose as much as I think I do. And I feel like I have more autonomy when I am moving through the physical world or places where I can say, I want to... Even just being able to be confronted by something that I didn't expect. I know I can just walk down a certain street or move through a neighborhood and engage with something that I didn't plan for. And it just feels like it's harder to just have that exposure. That maybe pushes you out of your comfort zone in a digital space.
Nichols: Yeah. When I hear you say that Mallory, it makes me think about this day when I was out with family who were visiting me in St. Louis. And we were, I think sitting on a patio, at a restaurant eating food, and all of a sudden the naked bike ride starts coming down the street. And it's just all of these naked St. Louisans of all races shapes, sizes, ages, but riding naked down the street in that sense of almost being jolted into surprise and having to have that conversation of like, "This is the one day of the year where people can feel liberated to do this." And in many ways is a unifying experience.
And the only example that I can think of where maybe sometimes that happens on the internet is say, TikTok, that if you're just swiping a 100 times, you might find something unexpected. But you're so right that on all of these other platforms, they have been designed not only to feed you this loop of information that you already are interested in and block out consenting voices, but it's also created this sense of addictiveness so that you are still swiping up on the same thing over and over and over again.
Nichols: I was in a conversation with someone who was telling me how many of these platforms had researched the addictiveness of casinos. And casinos being a space that people go to and they stay all night long, sometimes all day long, not knowing what the sense of time that's passing. And when you think about a slot machine and how you're pulling on the lever over and over again, that comes into our phones in our virtual spaces of swiping up and down over and over again, until we get the high that we want. And what's bad is that because we're constantly looking at the same content or being fed the same content, we're not necessarily getting that high. And so, it makes me think about Zoom scrolling in a lot of ways that we don't necessarily get that in real space, but there are things about real space, physical space that we are definitely losing rapidly and massively.
Davis: I can think of multiple doomsday scenarios with what we lose since we social animals from not being social. And I definitely think we as artists is going to have to redefine the space. Like, what is a meeting room? What is a meeting? What is it? I think that we are going to be at the forefront of redefining the little things that we thought were just written in stone, definitely about what it is to interact in society and what it is for you to... What society looks like? Because if we are all in little pods, are we still a society? If we not interacting with each other?
Nezam: I will say that I've had a lot of people reach out to me to help them. They're like, "Wow, meetings are so boring now." I'm like, "Meetings were always boring, but I'm glad you want to talk about it now." And they're like, "How can you, as a creative person, help us make our meetings more interesting." And I'm like, "Okay, well now I guess y'all are ready." I'm trying to do this for a while. But I think that's a good example, Damon, where there have been a handful of things that, in this pandemic, where I feel like we've had to go, "Okay, how are we going to teach kids? How are we going to work as an office? How are we going to do... How are we going to reimagine healthcare if we have to do tele-health?" There's been a lot of these just like, how, how is this possible? And right there, that question, the how, I think that artists are just always really excited about that.
I'm not scared of that question. That question is like, I like light up. I'm ready to go. And there's just so many different places where that question is going to be asked and has historically been asked and I think we can fit in anywhere where a “how” is being asked. I don't see why an artist shouldn't be involved any time that question is being asked.
Nichols: Yeah. This has been such an amazing and rich series of provocations. I love that our conversation about space in particular, place and space, extended into so many directions. And I would be curious to hear from those who listen, how we continue to create space, to have these types of conversations and think about all of these questions that you brought up, Mallory.
Nezam: And I would also want to ask our listeners where they might imagine inviting artists in, where they haven't before. What kinds of roadblocks are they hitting? What kind of imagination of blocks are they hitting? And how might they think about inviting an artist into the process?
Davis: Right on. I would also like to ask our listeners since this pandemic has rearranged your life. Where's your own personal creativity and artistry had to come alive to deal with whatever problems you didn't see coming. And how you were interacting with space and put in place in your life?
Nichols: Well, it's always a joy talking with both of you in creating with both of you. I know that our practices have shifted and morphed and deepen in so many rich ways, both individually and together. And so deeply, deeply, always gratitude to be in shared space with you both.
Davis: Definitely.
Nezam: Always makes my day better.
Davis: Agreed.
Nichols: So good.