Today, we're outside of Indy Reads Bookstore in Indianapolis
to meet with Jace Clayton, who's in town
as an artist in residence with the organization We Are City.
Jace is well known for his work as DJ Rupture,
but he now works across disciplines
to make music, create installations and events,
and even design software.
He's performed all over the world,
and with many impressive people, focusing on how sound,
memory, and technology collide in public spaces.
He's based in New York, but right now, he's here.
So let's go see him.
Hello.
I'm Jace Clayton, and this is my art assignment.
Actually, on my very first mixed tape,
called "Gold Teeth Thief," put out in 2001,
there's this one section where the beat stops
and the rapper's saying something,
and then he says, stop.
And I hold the record for a few seconds.
So the pause becomes uncomfortable.
And then the beat returns.
And so that was sort of riffing off my name, is DJ Rupture.
And I was kind of interested in thinking
of if people are gonna be dancing,
there are moments when people can stop dancing.
And especially, in a DJ context, where it's always
like the beat must go on, the beat must go on,
there's something very-- in a way,
it's like the one thing you can't do the club
is have silence.
So then it becomes this very radical gesture
that slowly throws people off.
And there are all sorts of ways to use that.
Especially today, especially online,
when so many things happen so quickly,
and when people are often always on,
there's this sense that there is no dead time.
You should always be doing something.
And i think that quiet lets you take a step back from that
and kind of put yourself in a different time frame, which
is very important to think about what's
happening in the present.
I was living in Barcelona for a while,
and I would just love walking-- I would walk everywhere.
But I would love walking along the quietest routes
I could at night.
Somehow, it just made everything seem more special.
It's almost like looking through-- suddenly,
like you're wearing special glasses,
and you can see these little details
which you wouldn't otherwise.
So the assignment is to walk outside of your home
and walk outside of wherever you live
and continue walking until you find
the quietest place in your neighborhood, in your zone,
the quietest place outside in public space.
And then once you get there, absorb it a little bit.
And then maybe share photo or share
a brief video with where you are and what it looks like.
So this assignment reminded me of when electricity goes out
in your house and you suddenly realize
that there is this like constant hum to modern life
that's gone away.
Yeah.
I love that moment.
Yeah.
With this piece, I'm really tempted to talk about silence
in art, particularly John Cage's "4'33"," don't you think?
Yeah.
That was this piece where John Cage
had a performer or performers go onstage and make
no sound for four minutes and 33 seconds, right?
That's the one.
It's talked about all the time in art.
And it's really great.
But I don't think it's the best point of comparison
for this assignment.
So what are you gonna go with?
I think we're gonna go a little farther back in time
and think about French poet Charles Baudelaire's
idea of the flaneur.
Oh, I know the flaneur, because when you talk about poetry,
I actually know what you're talking about.
SARAH GREEN: When Paris was a newly industrialized
and rebuilt city, Baudelaire imagined two types of people.
The flaneur was a kind of gentleman dandy-type figure
who strolled about the busy streets
with relative aimlessness, taking
in the spectacle of the moment, at once a part of the city
and aloof from it.
This idle spectator was in opposition
to Baudelaire's idea of the thoroughly modern man, whom
he described as such.
Away he goes, hurrying, ceaselessly journeying
across the great human desert.
He has an aim loftier than that of a mere flaneur,
an aim more general, something other
than the fugitive pleasure of circumstance.
He is looking for that quality which you must
allow me to call modernity.
Baudelaire defined modernity as the ephemeral,
the fleeting, the contingent.
And being modern required one to adopt a certain attitude,
finding something eternal or meaningful
within the present moment.
Jace's assignment asks you to be a kind of anti-flaneur,
navigating your environment with the express goal of moving away
from the stimuli of the city.
It is perhaps in this denial of spectatorship
that we can begin to search for the meaning of modernity
in our own time.
Usually, when people move around, and especially go
for walks, they're walking towards beautiful things,
like fantastic photo vistas or whatever.
I'm actually really interested in seeing
the sort of boring side of quiet places,
the way in which quiet places can be very, very mundane.
There's something very reassuring in all of that.
Maybe it's just an empty field.
Maybe it's the lot of warehouses at night, places like that.
It's this whole sort of different and non-spectacular
view of things.
Doing this assignment at home, I think you instantly
have an idea of where your neighborhood is
gonna be the quietest.
Maybe it's-- you could walk out in the woods or something.
And so in a way, it's going to be-- hopefully,
it'll still put you on a path you wouldn't otherwise go on.
But there's less surprises.
But if you're some place you don't know,
then it really is you're walking around and literally
being guided by your ears.
In my initial conception, it's alone.
But it's not meant to be some sort of like monkish separation
thing.
It's more about a walk guided by listening.
And so in that case, as long as your companion doesn't talk
to loud, then it'll be perfect.
So now, we're gonna go try to find our quietest place.
We're in a really loud area next to a highway.
But now, we're gonna take a walk guided by listening.
This is Mark, our director.
He's gonna help me out.
OK.
So this is the quietest place I could find.
Now, I'm challenging Mark to find somewhere quieter.
[WIND CHIMES]
[SILENT]
So that was Mark and my quietest place.
And now, we want you to find yours.
Now, but before we go, Jace asked one of his friends
to find his quietest place.
We asked some of our friends as well.
So we wanted to share those with you.
Thanks again for watching "The Art Assignment."
And don't break the law.
Don't break the law.
I'm on vacation in Sedona.
I don't know where I am anymore, but there's that.
Well, it was quiet.
[HELICOPTER]
Now, there's a helicopter.
So this week's art assignment was to walk to a quiet place.
And in true Los Angeles fashion, I
am driving, because that's how hard it
is to find a quiet place.
Like in many parts of LA, there are little nooks and crannies
of quiet and peace.
And we're gonna take you into one of our favorite ones
right now.
It looks like we're in someone's private space,
but we're actually not.
It's this whole little extension of [INAUDIBLE].
There's amazing chocolate in like a hat in here.
Yeah.
It's not very quiet.
It's really loud on this street.
Too many buses.
Surprisingly, I think a party store is the quietest place
that we can find within walking distance.
So the very first idea for an art assignment,
which was half tongue in cheek and half not,
was walk around your city until you're mugged.
Yeah, so don't do that without signing this waiver form.