In this week's episode of Meet Me at the Chazen, host Gianofer Fields talks with re:mancipation artists who designed oklads, an Eastern European religious art form, to venerate Black icons of Wisconsin. As they worked on an oklad for Dr. James Cameron, the late civil rights leader who survived a lynching as a youth, they felt the spiritual light of his story moving through them.
Meet Me at the Chazen is a podcast about the the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Chazen Museum of Art, the largest collecting museum in the Big Ten. As we report what’s happening here, we'll also explore what it means to be an art museum at a public university and how art museums can help enrich and strengthen the communities they serve. Meet Me at the Chazen theme and incidental music is “Swinging at the Pluto Lounge,” composed and performed by Marvin Tate and friends, and is used with permission of the artists.
We'd love to connect - find us on Facebook and Instagram!
In this week's episode of Meet Me at the Chazen, host Gianofer Fields talks with re:mancipation artists who designed oklads, an Eastern European religious art form, to venerate Black icons of Wisconsin. As they worked on an oklad for Dr. James Cameron, the late civil rights leader who survived a lynching as a youth, they felt the spiritual light of his story moving through them.
Meet Me at the Chazen is a podcast about the the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Chazen Museum of Art, the largest collecting museum in the Big Ten. As we report what’s happening here, we'll also explore what it means to be an art museum at a public university and how art museums can help enrich and strengthen the communities they serve. Meet Me at the Chazen theme and incidental music is “Swinging at the Pluto Lounge,” composed and performed by Marvin Tate and friends, and is used with permission of the artists.
We'd love to connect - find us on Facebook and Instagram!
Gianofer Fields 00:05
Meet Me at the Chazen. I'm your host, Gianofer Fields. As we come to the end of the re:mancipation exhibition, it's crystal clear that none of it would have been possible without the interpersonal connections of the members of the MASK Consortium and Studio Sanford Biggers. Inspired by Russian iconography, the oklads, designed by Arjuna Routte-Prieur, are embellished by his mother, and now familiar voice, Lynore Routte. They are made from many layers of laser-cut wood, painted gold, and adorned with jewels, beads, and stones. There are several on display, and at the center of each as a single or multiple portrait of notable Wisconsin African Americans. We were standing in the Rowland Gallery talking about the work when we were joined by Mark and Alicia Hines.
Arjuna Routte-Prieur 00:56
You know, being an artist, you're always looking at your work. And it's kind of sometimes can be like a continuing process of creativity. So you're looking at what you've done, process wise, and if I want to say if like, Oh, what, what would I continue doing, but you just kind of looking at how, you know, when you look at anybody's art, like, I'm looking at it as if it's a piece of work in a museum, you know, not necessarily looking at it, like, you know, this is, look at what have I done? I have that too. But right now, I'm seeing it as a piece of work in a museum and liking what I see.
Gianofer Fields 01:47
When do you let it hit your heart? When do you let it in? Because you've got your arms folded, you look very studious. You could be in a classroom right now looking at, listening to a lecture, when are you going? When if ever? And you maybe you don't have to, or there's no answer for this, when does it hit your heart?
Arjuna Routte-Prieur 02:05
Well, my heart's always present with absorbing artwork and stuff. Processing artwork is ebbs and flows to it, there's different things happening at different moments. And, you know, 10 minutes from now you're gonna have a different reaction to seeing artwork, but the heart is always present. And, obviously, you know, the first impact is like, um, you know, you feel it really intensely. And then you just continue to process it. And, yeah, I don't know.
Gianofer Fields 02:41
It's like that, it for me looking at this and looking at your face, and seeing how everybody's reaction to it. Like, there's all this, again, DNA in the work, there's all this history, this, this is like, this is in a way older than you, but all you.
Arjuna Routte-Prieur 03:01
A lot of making this stuff, because it has so much behind it, you kind of have to, because if you're considering all those things, you can freeze up a little bit. So there were moments where I wasn't realizing what I was doing, I was just kind of working and putting these faces. And then towards the end of the project, all of this emotional stuff started coming up when I'm actually placing the faces in the right, you know, respective places. And I'm like, Oh, wow, this is, this is really powerful. This is what me and Mark have been setting up and providing the structure and the ideas, and then kind of letting me have free reign for design, which is kind of a new experience, especially working with, you know, collaborations, which was fantastic. I really did feel free to do whatever I was feeling. And then kind of later on refining to make it make sense. So, oh, yeah, during the process, you, parts of your brain and memory and history, go away for a minute, so you can get the work done, and at the same time, feel it. When you're thinking of all the stuff as you're doing it can it can confuse you because it's a lot of emotional things. These are very serious, powerful stories that these folks are experiencing.
Gianofer Fields 04:35
Describe them for me, because we've been talking about them sort of in our round, but I want you to get into the meat of them for me, please and describe them.
Arjuna Routte-Prieur 04:42
Yeah. What do you mean like ...
Gianofer Fields 04:45
Describe them in a physical sense. So the audience can have an idea of what we're looking at, but also in the sense of from the perspective of someone who has so much, each layer it's like a relationship. Each layer is sort of When I look at these, I see all the layers with the MASK Consortium and Sanford, Studio Sanford Biggers, I see all these experiences, and I see all these layers, but an audience is like, what the hell is she talking about?
Arjuna Routte-Prieur 05:12
I think it ties back to their thing of like, you can't believe that you were part of it, because they, they kind of exist. They were meant to exist as they are. So you know, you go to historical museums, or you see ancient artwork. And, of course, you do think about the artists, but you're really thinking about the art, and you're seeing and experiencing the art. So that's why I'm seeing it. And then I go through the layers of like, oh, yeah, right. I worked on it, Mark worked on it, my mom, Sanford, it's like, I Yeah. Most importantly, though, what I'm feeling when I see it, it's layered, no pun intended, it is totally layered. You know, James Cameron, for example, is he has such an intense story, and a very transcendent way that he handled his story, and how he kind of brought light after what happened with, you know, with him, and transformed and transmuted the energy and so what we kind of attempted to do is depict that there's a lot of golden light, because these are quite literally painted golden, you know, my mom did her adornment. She was, you know, feeling spiritual energy coming from his mind and the rays which she was kind of explaining the rays, she felt like was representing his I don't know, his his spiritual light, and his direction from from spirit guiding him and all these, you know, she was really, here do you want to talk?
Lynore Routte 06:56
The spiritual light, the rays that are coming from, you know, like, most of this kind of religious iconography, the halo, the light that's surrounding one's head, felt like it was downloaded information, that he was in a conversation with his Higher Self, the higher deity. So it felt like instructions. And I felt like I was hearing the direction that he was given that he was receiving and he was in a conversation. And normally, I'm heavy-handed with embellishing. This, I was kind of kind of sparse with, because ... specific, maybe that's the right word. Thank you. Yeah, it was specific as I go, I can't put anything here. Because there's some of the information that he was being given. That's not my business. It's no one else's business. So it just doesn't appear. But the pieces that he actually enacted that we can witness are represented by the jadite and different stones. And then the sparkly ones were maybe how it appeared to other people like the presentation was attractive. Those were, those were bits of information I felt he was being given. And then the things that are blank spaces, what he was asking or what he was relaying of his experiences, none of our business, only business that we get from this man is what he actually said and what he wrote. I wasn't paying attention to him because I was paying attention to the capes. And Arjuna kept saying, 'James Cameron's story is incredible. And you should really know it.' And didn't he wind up that he's a Pisces, too? We were like ...
Gianofer Fields 08:41
Wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Okay. All right.
Arjuna Routte-Prieur 08:45
There's a lot of there's a lot of overlap. Yeah, it's layered. That's, that's kind of it's hard to when you're asking this question. It's hard to say everything because there's a lot, you could make connections to the Jesus story, quite literally, you know, his story is, is quite literally, he was the kind of the last surviving person in his friends group. And when intense tragedy happens and you remain open to light, transformative things happen. And he's kind of, he's, he's done that. You hear him talk and you read like what he's said. And he's like, he's a vessel. You know. It's, it's really, really intense. And so I think we tried to express the light that's kind of exuding from him. And what what you would have to do when you're remaining open through those tragedies, and, you know, I don't know if I'm making sense.
Gianofer Fields 09:51
We can all make some sense. Alicia, didn't you do some other you did the writing for this too? Yes?
Alicia Hines 09:56
Not for these, but for some of the pieces. I tend to write, or edit the cards that accompany the pieces, because, as we know, oftentimes vital information about the piece or how it got there, or the hands, the labor that went into it, is lost. And so I kind of have an eye toward that when I'm looking at pieces. And while I didn't write anything specifically for this, whenever we are putting anything out as MASK, it goes through my eye, and just to make sure that we are inclusive, that we're not, that we're clear. If there's one thing that we can't stand it's jargon. But we realize that like language is powerful, and subtle. It's a subtle weapon.
Mark Hines 11:01
I'm just pausing for a second because Alicia says, it's not entirely accurate, when she says I didn't write anything. For this exhibition, what will be a more accurate way to depict it is Janine is the curator, and is responsible as the institutional voice for the representations of the objects. Janine, the interplay between MASK and the Chazen was one where we were constantly checking them about descriptions of objects primarily because that was one of the sources of the problem. When we came to experience Gallery IV, where the Emancipation Group was, there was no proper description for the work itself, nor any of the portraits that were in the gallery. And when we started to investigate, well, what information do you have? What's the provenance for some of these pieces? The provenance and the description that the Chazen provided was, let's say, less than complete. And it wasn't until the MASK team started to really investigate, well, really, who are these people? Who are they, and our round of information, really stood it as a counter to what the Chazen had for years been representing who these people were and, and the objects themselves. And Alicia was one of the primary entities producing the counter content to four ultimately, that when you're reading now, the descriptions on the afford these portraits, that is an interplay that's between MASK and the Chazen, going back and forth, and ultimately trying to get it right. And I think we've done a great job in sort of representing sort of how it should be. Alicia, plays, has played, a particular role in that dynamic.
Alicia Hines 13:03
You know, I go to museums, I go to museums all over the world. I'm one of those people who is weird about that, like, and I read every card and I like, think about, oh, is this great the way they set this up? Or how do I feel when I walk into this room? Like that's what I do when I go to museums. So I really proud of the work that we've all done here because I feel it is an intervention not just in an art space, but in the museum space and how we think about how things get presented, why we see things the way we see them. How much of that is no accident? And how much of it is right? How much of it is, you know synchronistic, how much of it is just anachronistic. Well, what happened here? And then here we are, I think, yeah ...
Mark Hines 13:57
So the descriptions for these portraits represent that push and pull. By the time we're working on this work here, that tension really wasn't necessary. I think that the institution had grown on several levels. So there was a competency about execution here that wove in Janine's leadership, her experience with MASK, and simultaneously Kacie Lucchini Butcher's work with Sifting & Reckoning, which is the previous exhibition that was here. Many of the discoveries around who are these black folks that were in and around University of Madison, over the course of its development. And what is Blackness here and what is Black experience here? This is information curated by someone else at the at the university that we were able to integrate and actually empowered some of the design here. And I did want to touch back on the design first because you asked the question, yeah, but we kind of started to deep dive ...
Arjuna Routte-Prieur 15:08
Just want to check something real quick. Mark made this beat is playing in the background. Just saying this whole process is it's a artists collective, and we're always creating. And then we figure out where we're gonna put that art. But Mark did this beat, this beat is crazy. Yeah.
Lynore Routte 15:27
Every time we hear this beat, Arjuna says to me, you know, Mark made this beat ...
Arjuna Routte-Prieur 15:32
Mark's like one of the best producers ever.
Lynore Routte 15:36
Like, no exaggeration, every single ...
Gianofer Fields 15:39
You act surprised?
Arjuna Routte-Prieur 15:41
Because I think it needs to be said again. He's humble about it. But somebody, he's nasty with it. Every time I pull up to the crib, you got the NS-10s. And he goes crazy. See these guys my whole life?
Gianofer Fields 15:54
This is what happens. This, you are a product of all this creativity and all this love, in an arena where you're allowed to be creative and have love and still be told to go sit down and be quiet when you act up. I mean, it's just like this all this sort of like ...
Arjuna Routte-Prieur 16:16
I wouldn't say I've ever gotten, go down, sit down, be quiet.
Gianofer Fields 16:24
Sit down and think about what you were doing?
Arjuna Routte-Prieur 16:26
It's more like might want to check what you just said homie like an endo. Like, dude, like roast me or something? Like, that's how you're gonna, you know? So that's how you're gonna talk? When I was little that'd be ..
Lynore Routte 16:38
The question was always when I was younger, I was slick talking like the rest of us. I'd say 'you need to think about restructuring that sentence. Think about who you're speaking to and what your legacy is with that sentence.' He was like three. 'Do you know who I am? I'm your mom. And I gave birth to you, think about that sentence again.' He would take a couple of minutes. And sometimes he goes 'I think I like that sentence.'
Arjuna Routte-Prieur 17:06
I gotta change it up. Eventually, yes, he would get go to go sit down. Shut up. But there was a process before.
Lynore Routte 17:16
And I'm glad I stuck with the process. Because eventually he would think about it. And he goes, Oh, I don't think I'd want to say that. Okay, so that what will be the sentence, okay, 'I didn't appreciate having to eat that thing I didn't want to eat.' Or 'I would like it if you would listen to how I feel about that.' Perfect. You can disagree with me, you're a human being, just the tone and the tone.
Arjuna Routte-Prieur 17:41
And being around all these folks definitely. is like, so I grew up around beats. And you know, my uncle's, my mom, my pops, everybody's been at the epicenter of hip-hop, and punk and all this, these, this music stuff. And so it's regular regular. So I'm hearing his beat. I'm like, Yeah, Mark, cooked this up. Like, that's like, yeah, and it's like music, it's visuals, it's writing. And so it's it's constant. So it's really like a cultural thing that's like, this is what the towns people do. We make art and create stuff constantly. So I don't know.
Mark Hines 18:18
Well, that hip-hop spirit is, is also structured, what structures and informs this oklad response. And what I want to do is, I want to answer your question about well, what do we see here, but I want to do it as it relates to all of them all for them and then you could deep dive into any of them. I think I'm what I'm giving you as the iconography, the Rosetta Stone if you will, around how to nobody, by the way, has really heard ... we've, the three of us have traded some of this, but I don't I don't think most folks will know this. Here we go. Okay.
So go the oklads once again. It's originally a Russian spiritual art work form, primarily to, to deify saints, religious figures and or focus on Jesus Christ and and his mother so that and they are there have many have been made. They're usually a painting covered by a gold, a very ornate gold top, which leaves a section open and allows you to see part of the painting behind it. And the covering, the oklad, itself actually extends the story usually with the, between the carving and the jewelry that's emblazoned on it. So this is something that Sanford, when we when we came to the Chazen to initially just look at the whole collection for inspiration for the project, Sanford, Sanford, saw some oklads hanging and was like, I love these. How many do you have? Amy and Kate brought all of them out. We looked at them, we scanned them. So when I say hip-hop, scanning that's sampling for us, it's visual sampling. So, Sanford's inspiration of those, we sampled them in the first place that's like digging, digging in the crates, finding that, that little part of the record, that loop. And we knew we wanted to do something with that. And it sat for a while while we were working on the project. But when we knew we needed to tell this story of Blackness moving from ancient Africa, and get somewhere here to get folks to resonate with it as a local story, how does this relate to me though, then we needed to talk about Black people here. And I think this struggle for appreciating respecting and uplifting Black folks is what created the opportunity for Stanford and I using the oklad itself as a vehicle to say, these are these are really important Black folks who have made a contribution you probably don't even know about, and we're going to take an opportunity to lift them really to the status that they should already have been respected on. So the oklad was going to be our vehicle for that.
Now, the original plan was to take oklads that we liked from the Chazen, pop out the pictures of Jesus, stick in the people that we wanted to put in there. That was the plan, simple!
Gianofer Fields 18:26
I don't see a problem with that. [laughter]
Mark Hines 19:52
Right? Right? Straightforward! So look, there are lots of things that MASK has, has suggested that have made the Chazen his team's eyes pop off their their skulls. That was one of them. I remember, Amy and Kate's face both shocked, I didn't really get what it was at the time. But the things that were articulated back by their team were well, there's conservation concerns, first of all, which would really apply, which would relate to exposing these metals and these forms, to interact with other unknown things. And while that puts the actual artifacts themselves at risk, second being well, we're concerned about how religious artifacts, when used in this way, might offend people who have a belief that's consistent with what this artifact intends to present. No. So I, I thought, frankly, the second one, while it's considerate for art's sake, that wasn't the one that I was, that wasn't the line that was respecting it was the conservation line, which we push so many boundaries with the Chazen. And if it's around the preservation of the art, that's not really a fair line to push. And I felt like with so many other things that we pushed for and actually won, this wasn't going to be a reasonable thing, we probably wouldn't win that.
And I think when you are presented with challenges and constraints that can create great art. So we accept the challenge of not being able to use the original oklads, to clear a sample. There it is, there it is. So we're like, no problem. We'll make our own.
Alicia Hines 23:24
We'll play it, replay it ourselves.
Mark Hines 23:26
Right? Okay, so this is where the design of these comes from what we know is, okay, these are religious, we're going to lift these folks up. But this is also about Blackness. So how do we have this thing that sort of this a European influence in this artifact, and infuse it with Blackness? Well, the first thing was to go to Black spirituality and how we visually represent things in some of our diasporas. So, what you'll see in you've heard the, the layer talk so far, but you'll see across each of them, their sacred geometry, which you'll which you see often in Islamic artwork. And here we are layering these forms that sacred geometry is essentially a combination of pure mathematics, how they manifest into shapes in the physical world, and how that represents the actual generative force of the universe. And so we felt by pulling from Black spirituallism, African spiritualism as the fundamental basis of these oklads, that already starts to set them into a different, different tonality. So the layers of sacred geometry that you're seeing, there are seven of them in each of these.
Gianofer Fields 25:01
And what's the, is there a significance to seven?
Mark Hines 25:03
Yes, of course there is. I'm not going to tell you what that significance is. That's that's the path that each of us has to go now search and say why seven? And what are the what do these layers represent? But seven appears in many biblical faith contexts as a significant number. And usually in layer us represents a path steps that you have to climb in order to achieve some something. So the seven layers that are in that compose each of these oklads represent the spiritual development, of the folks that witnessed or had the the challenges that they had to overcome. But that seven, you'll have to, there's more than that. It's embedded.
Arjuna Routte-Prieur 25:58
That's quite literally like the startup process that me and Mark were going through, that's an example of things that we would talk about and figure out, like, Okay, how many layers? What are the layers representing? What does this shape? How does it relate to all these things, that's literally the process that we would bounce back and forth and figure out, but I thought that was just important. Specifically, like process-wise.
Mark Hines 26:23
Yeah, because the first part of this there wasn't, you have to remove all of the halos. So that's another piece of iconography we'll talk about but remove the halos, remove the jewelry, all that and just look at the patterns that are overlaying each other, because they themselves evoke a level of consciousness if you're paying attention to them, staring into them. Yeah. And that's, that was my first part of the algorithm. So when I told you, we were going to come up with a workflow, the workflow was like, Look, these are the rules that make these things work, they all have to have them. But after we decide what the rules are, I want you to make all the rest on your own. That's the prompt. So seven layers, one of the things you, sacred geometry in each of those layers, to start to tell the story that supports the character that's going to be the centerpiece of it. And then what you find in the original oklads often are the presentation of layered halos. The halo obviously distinguish the particular person if it's a group, or who the focal point is, as having some connectivity to the spiritual world. So seven layers, got to have a halo, and we also want this additional ethereal layer of adornment, which will invoke yet another part of spiritual consciousness. So those are the functional components that operate in each one of them. But using those constraints, there is an individual story that each one tells and how those elements support that one. So since we started with James Cameron, I'll just talk about that one really quickly because it was the first one that we worked on together. And then the rest were, I think, developed heavily by Arjuna and, and ultimately Lynore. But this one is the key to all of them. And so you'll see that well, first of all, James Cameron, the story is, James Cameron is a survivor of lynching. His two friends were lynched and did not survive and they were hung to death. James Cameron was about to be strung up on the same tree that his teenage friends were murdered on by a mob, and the rope broke and other people who knew him as a boy in town, other white folks who knew him in town, intervened between him in the crowd and essentially dragged him back to jail where he was dragged out of to be hung. So he was on the brink of losing his life at the hands of a lynch mob. And this halo first of all, represents that noose. This is the the noose that he hung from which actually then becomes the vehicle for his spiritual connectivity.
Arjuna Routte-Prieur 29:33
That's the transformational, like the cross like Jesus. The cross is where Jesus died. But it's become a Christian symbol for that light. It's bearing the cross that kind of it's a what Mark was saying, but that's what I was trying to say earlier. Yeah.
Mark Hines 29:51
So with with if we see Lynore's additional adornment here is just evoking this idea of a rope. But this rope, although it's the means of him of his death, potentially, it's actually the moment where he's having this conversation with God and receiving this information to what Lenore said, and her own because I learned about this from Lynore, telling me what she was doing to this. What she was describing before are these dots and dashes that she was getting from the universe, and deciding what needs to be placed. But each one of them essentially think about the spiritual Morse code dots and dashes each one of them being some information, the conversation between James Cameron and God when he's in the state of am I going to die at the hands of this lynch mob, and ultimately further to be saved from it. His position to ultimately forgive this community of that tried to kill him at forgive and create the American Black Holocaust Museum, which tells of his story and many other lynchings. That's how all the layers and pieces that need to fit in the oklad work to support James James Cameron's particular story. So I'm now going to hit up ...
Gianofer Fields 31:20
Lynore, is it a flow, is it a transformative state? Or your hands being, I don't care if it sounds, because it is, are your hands being moved by something outside of you?
Lynore Routte 31:33
For this one, absolutely. I was like, I don't even understand why I'm having to hear all this. This is unbelievable. I had to stop a few times to pay attention that I was putting my hands in the right place. And I wasn't being you know, putting my personality in it. So I felt very physically engaged, but emotionally completely somewhere else. It was a separation like, this is work. You could look at it later.
Gianofer Fields 32:00
did you have to protect yourself so a certain extent from it?
Lynore Routte 32:02
Not protecting, minding my business. I've been reading Tarot for 30 some odd years. And one of the reasons I was so good at it right out the gate is I didn't understand it. The person who gave me my first deck and said, What do you think of these images? I had no learning about it, so to speak. So it's all intuitive. So I said, Oh, I think this, this and that. And she said that was perfect. And she was already reading for 40 years before that. So she said do you want to learn I'm like, sure she is don't learn too much. Right? Just keep keep your nose out of it. Keep your heart open, you let the heart speak, right? So you're not using your brain too much rain is to help you pick up the card and flip it and to look at the colors and and then the heart is saying is interpreting it. So this was like making a tarot card. It was like a real-time experience, like when you see very advanced tarot decks, every color and form within it has some kind of subconscious signaling, you can't understand it like, Oh, this is measured that much. No. It's just it's like, like a little flashlight in your brain. And then your brain sends it to your subconscious. And then you feel something. And that's what this was, I'm like, I was really not present. I was not present. And then after was done, I look at it the next day, I'm like, oh my goodness, there's a lot of space that needs to be filled. My logical brain is like I should do more work. Like I, the first piece I did was Vel's. And it was very dense, because I didn't know I was doing any other pieces. So Vel was very like, I'm going to put the tiniest little beads on the face of the earth in here one at a time and just taking my time. And then this one was like boom, you don't have much time, but you don't need it. This is information, it will sink into people's subconscious. And they'll get the message that he was, his life was, his life was a message through his behavior through his forgiveness, who forgives like that. Right?
Arjuna Routte-Prieur 34:06
I think she worded and Mark was wording what I was when you first asked me my reaction to these pieces, what they said is kind of reflective of what I'm seeing, like, it's hard to word. When when you come across sacred artwork in general and of any culture, time or history. It kind of gives you a sense of silence. And you feel these things and it's not necessarily easy to word, but when it's effective, it does it kind of leaves you silent. And that's also connected to the creative process. So like the experiential process and the creative process kind of leaves you in a silent way. And I think that words how that happened, what they said, kind of expresses that
Alicia Hines 34:58
For me, that hip-hop part of it, I just think about, you know, getting the materials and what's in the trunk of my car and who got the glue and kind of go drive and pick up Arjuna and get them here. That's the, that's the hip hop part of it for me, like I think about all the things and the people moving and to get to get to that, and then to see it. See that transformation, see that process is just really, really incredible.
Lynore Routte 35:33
I don't usually have this much chain around. my really good friend of Nona, she's in thrift shops, FaceTiming me, she was like, Is this the right chain? I mean, she was like,
Alicia Hines 35:44
Like, that's the kind of stuff I see when I see I'm like, I see your friend. Andre, I see like ...
Arjuna Routte-Prieur 35:50
He's a mystery operation. You don't know how it's how did this thing appear? never figured it out. Are you responsible for it?
Lynore Routte 35:58
She was, in the first shop, a table full of chains, which ones do you like? And then she's discussing, I'll say discussing, instead of putting the the beats on the lady behind the counter says you really think this is worth $3? No, no, you can do better than that. Pricewise, we're doing work here. And she needs these chains. And it was like, she's a warrior. And she, I would not have been able to do this in any kind of timely manner without her help. And she didn't even know really what I was doing. And I told her what I was supposed to be doing. And she's like, I'm on it. I have bags of chains. She was on it.
Arjuna Routte-Prieur 36:40
We should talk about Vel for a second.
Gianofer Fields 36:42
Well, I just want to say one thing. Before we go. Before we leave Mr. Cameron, it said, how wonderful for him to be so supported. Like, in saving his life and remembering his life, how wonderful for him to be so supported, and to be speaking to so many people on so many different levels, there was a time in his life where this wouldn't have happened, we wouldn't have been able to all stand together in this institution to have any kind of compensation, and certainly not be this close to anything. I mean, so for for us to be able to do this and honor him and be present with him in this moment. I think he's looking directly at us. He's, he's looking for us. And it feels like in his face, he's found us like he's he's found us and he though, there's this, often when I'm in galleries and I look at things, it becomes, at first I'm there to see it, but then I sort of experience it, and then I want to see what's happening from from the work's perspective, from his perspective. And without sounding like too grandiose, it really does feel like like that, that necklace like those beads. It's not it's connected, but it's still expanding. Like he's like he's now breathing life into what they, when they tried to take that breath away from him?
Arjuna Routte-Prieur 38:06
Well, I feel like you know, people are kind of I don't know how to describe it. He feels present for sure. And I guess that's kind of what we're talking about spiritual energy emanating, that this maybe could be a conduit to that. It's a little, what do you call it, um, a portal?
Gianofer Fields 38:33
Yeah it's like energy can neither be created nor destroyed. So Right. It's just constantly this flow. And that it could be flowing in a way that's not critical. That's not right, suffocating, minding your business, letting him speak.
Lynore Routte 38:50
Oh, my goodness, mind your businesses, is the biggest thing minding my opinion, is probably more succinct. This is my business, my business is being quiet, and listening to what I have to listen to, so things come through without my opinion, my opinion is is skewed by all the crap that I'm dealing with in my real life and what I've experienced and what I've witnessed other people, I didn't need to bring that because then that's not respectful of the energy that's supposed to come through.
Arjuna Routte-Prieur 39:18
You could say it's like I'm the less that the short side not being able to see forest for the trees kind of thing. So like, yeah, you have a small view that can't really see as far and it has its little opinions. And then you have a bigger guidance or a bigger part of yourself that is the listening and in the creative thing. So yeah, like it sounds like just putting that little, that little voice to like in its place that we're aware of recognizing where it is placed.
Lynore Routte 39:58
Exactly that because it will try to take over. Then you get ego I don't want to talk about politics. Yeah, you want you want to little tiny thing that wants to be the king of the universe to be quiet. So that the larger presence that it truly is right? can get a message across that neat that's for more than you and more than the circle of people around you. This is for some people that I'll never meet. Right? That's what I bring. This is what I try to bring all the time. It's not trite is what I'm here for right? This amazing gentleman came here to bring his light information to the world to trigger it and other people. I got triggered. That's my visual making a visual presentation of what I felt the message was.
Gianofer Fields 41:01
You've been listening to Meet Me at the Chazen. Our guests were Arjuna Routte-Prieur, Lenore Routte, Alicia Hines, and Mark Hines, members of MASK Consortium and major contributors to the re:mancipation exhibition at UW-Madison's Chazen Museum of Art. Meet Me at the Chazen is production of Chazen Museum of Art on the campus of UW-Madison in Madison, Wisconsin. For more information about the museum's its collections and exhibitions, visit chazen.wisc.edu. I'm your host, Gianofer Fields. Thank you for listening.