I am delighted to call upon the Chancellor to confer an honorary
doctorate of University of the Arts London upon Theaster Gates Julia
how you guys doing? Good because I... I get a little bit nervous I was wondering
if you guys would help me a little bit? And there's been so much talking I think
you guys must be bored as sh*t so if you would...if you all would
just chant with me the word art starting very low and getting really loud can you
do that with me?
art
just feel so good. Doesn't that feel good? Can turn my hat now. Lost my cape it's just
too much you know these formalisms are so much it's constant compromise between
my personal fashion, the cultural rules they bear down on my soul
qualifying me. Making me noticeable. There's so much I want to say to you
guys in my three-and-a-half minutes
but I'm dramatic so I'm wasting time
what do I want to say? I understand how complicated it is to graduate with a
degree that the world thinks doesn't matter. It's like 'you're a what?' 'I'm a
poet'. 'Oh so what does that mean?' 'Well I write you know and I think about writing
and I read other poems, other people's poems'. you know say 'okay what are you?'
'I'm a I'm a fashion major but I really love bowties and I Botox and so my work
is about the relationship between lips and upper apparel'.
and I'm here to tell you that my history with organized education is as
complicated as yours. I too am not sure what I learned
But I think part of the reason that they're giving me this honorary degree
is because despite my formal knowing, I look good and I'm really popular.
Let's talk about that for a second. Let's talk about what it means to have ambition.
To feel courageous at a young age. To feel victorious. To feel like you can do
anything at the same time that one might feel defeated and confused and not so
sure about your place in the world that these things feel like they're competing
all the time. One, I can do anything. Two, the world is
not interested in the things that I could do. And I think for me that the
challenge has been how do I continue to find a center when there's all these
confusing tension ridden feelings that I have? When I think about my artistic
practice I'm convinced that so much of it is fueled by something external.
External like I want people to love what I do. I want people to love me. I want
people to be in conversation with the ideas that I think are important. I want
I want I want people people people. And then there are these times
where the things that I do feel super internal like I was put on this earth to
do a set of things and I want to do them really really well. Sometimes the things
that I feel purpose to do may not be so interesting to the rest of the world
so then what's what's the catch? What's the compromise?
Right before coming down here I decided to write a speech.
I didn't get very far.
I had three minutes between putting my robe on and meeting Grayson Perry which
is so awesome but I wrote a few words to make to make us to love and I wanted to just
you know just mention what I feel quite passionate about which is this
idea of taking the world of nothingness and doing something with it or a world
where it seems like nothing is moving forward or nothing as possible or I'm
looking at nothing and helping others see all of the rich possibility and
nothing. whether that's plastic dirt called clay
that becomes a really beautiful object in its future or a dilapidated building
or a brother/sister that is struggling to find a job we're able to kind of find
new ways for that person to find employment that all those things
constitute a way of understanding a world of nothing and turning it into
something. I feel like making is about believing my ability your ability to say
I'm gonna start a thing and finish or I'm gonna start a thing because I feel
passionate about it even though the people around me don't really care.
That the interventions that we make in the world matter whether they matter to
others at all. So how do you stimulate a life of things mattering you know and
it's not things that are like gonna appear on the front cover of Frieze or
Architectural Digest. They're the things that happen late at night or early in
the morning the ways that we talk to ourselves through the things that we
write and make and joke about at the dinner table to make us to grow. I think
that for a long time if we were to look at an artist career or the moment when
it seems great opportunities happen the part that I'm often interested in is
what was happening before the big break and in my case I was a fifteen-year
potter happily going to my pottery studio every
day working on the lightness of my bowl, a more beautiful more elegant Japanese
foot, a lid that would fit my teapot making perfect holes so that my
tea leaves wouldn't go out of my tea spout. That I was so happy being a
craftsman in the absence of light. At the same time that I was taking those 15
years to learn how to make I feel like I was learning all these other things that
had nothing to do with being a superstar potter. They had to do with learning
about other people's culture, understanding the relationship between
Korea and Japan through a series of vessels from the 14th 15th and 16th
century. Learning about my relationship between Mississippi and the continent of
Africa by seeing beautiful jugs made in the south and wondering how those jugs
were related to the West African coast. It was about listening and learning. It
was about touching things and touching touching people.
It was about loving things in the absence of light and then when the
light came which was 10 years later than some of my friends who were already art
world darlings, I had something to say.
I had read a couple books but I spent time
in the shed working on myself. To make is to challenge. I live across the pond. It's
a very interesting moment, the world. It's a very very interesting moment where it feels
more important now than ever to have a position and when one sees catastrophe
sees disaster. When one sees bad politics that a person would feel not only do I
have the right to be a maker, I have a right to be a citizen. I have a right to
protest. I have a right to convene. I have the right to express and that these
functions of artistic practice sometimes gives us the the capacity to say things
in new ways that the political world and the social world needs to hear. I've
never felt more confident that to be an artist is one of the greatest vocations
in the world and that you guys have the capacity to dream and make and fight and
this world needs you now more than it's ever needed in a creative class
Given that, get to f*cking work and I thought I would just offer you guys
since the vice-chancellor has said that I'd do all these things that I don't
really know if I do any of them very well, I thought I would at least offer
you guys the song that I sing to myself late at night before I go to bed.
' Guide my hands, guide my hands. Guide my hands, guide my hands.
While I'm on this
tedious journey, guide my hands, guide my hands'.
I love you all.