Sharyll Burroughs

Guest

Jaleesa Johnston is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and independent curator. She holds a BA from Vassar College, an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, and an MA from the University of Bergen in Norway. She is the recipient of the AICAD Post-Graduate Teaching Fellowship, the Performance Works NW Alembic Artist Residency, and an Artist Trust Fellowship Award. Formerly the Head of Public Programs and Engagement in the Learning and Community Partnerships Department at the Portland Art Museum, Johnston now works as a Curatorial Coordinator for the museum’s Black Art and Experiences Initiative.

PRODUCERS: Amy and Nancy Harrington, Vikki Mee

EDITORS: Amy and Nancy Harrington 

Music: Airtone - reNovation 

Transcript

<MUSIC>

PRELUDE: Verneice Turner as Hattie McDaniel: I don't belong on this earth. I always feel out of place. Like a visitor.

(INTRO.) Sharyll Burroughs: This is The Hattie Project. I'm Sharyll Burroughs. 

My guest is Jaleesa Johnston, an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and independent curator. Her art practice explores the ruptured space between the subjectivity and objectivity of the black female body. Her curatorial practice reconsiders the residual imprint of ephemeral works and institutional spaces with a focus on black performance art.

Johnston holds a BA from Vassar College and MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. And an M. A. from the University of Bergen in Norway. She was the recipient of the ACAD Postgraduate Teaching Fellowship, the Performance Works Northwest Alembic Artist Residency, and an Artist Trust Fellowship Award. Formerly the head of Public Programs and Engagement in the Learning and Community Partnerships Department at the Portland Art Museum, Johnston now works as a curatorial coordinator, assisting with the reinstallation of galleries focused on the Black Art and Experience Initiative. 

Sharyll Burroughs: To begin, I am curious about Conduction, a methodology you discovered while exploring the work of two African American artists, Butch Morris, a composer and music conductor, and the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, who used the term in his novel “The Water Dancer.” I'd love to hear more about the meaning of Conduction and why it's a source of inspiration for you.

 Jaleesa Johnston: I was uh, in getting my master's in curatorial practice, and we had to execute a project of some kind. And for me, I knew that I wanted my project to be based in the Portland Art Museum, uh, which is where I was at the time and still am currently employed. And in particular, I was really interested in working with black artists and their visions for the museum or visions for the future of museums and essentially a future vision for artists in general, I think. There's a lot of discussion about whether or not museums are useful for artists or not, in particular black artists. And I just wanted to entertain all possible futures and really take them very seriously because without artists, we don't have art. Without art, we don't have any of the other museums or like myself, museum workers. Its artists really are foundational and their visions are really are really are foundational.

So, thinking about foundational or vision as a foundation for a pathway forward, it was recommended to me by one of my external examiners to read Ta-Nehisi Coates novel, “The Water Dancer.” And at first, I was like, how on earth is this connected to my project? But the more I kept reading the book and started thinking about this idea of Conduction in the book, the more it made sense.

In the book, Conduction is, it's non-literal way. It's a non-literal way of moving from a space of bondage to a space of freedom. And it's a non-literal way, um, that involves really engaging with intense heavy emotion. memory and really like all of the senses that go into that. It's a magical way of moving forward and it's also, um, infinite. There are infinite pathways to move from bondage to, to freedom. Like that's a very general idea of Conductions in that book. A very general description. So, I really latched on to that idea of artists visions as bridges, black artists visions as these bridges for people invested in the arts to move forward, for museums to move forward.

And maybe that forward is also a type of death, which I think is totally fine. I'm comfortable with that idea as well. It's a transformation. It's an opportunity for something new to come about. And then my tutor recommended, as I was talking about Conductions in the book, my tutor was like, “Oh, well, you should look into the work of Lawrence Butch Morris and his work around Conduction.” And I think something that Lawrence Butch Morris adds. It's, is this idea of improvisation, uh, around conducting and what it means to make something new in the moment. So not to plan it and meticulously try to control it, but to really allow yourself to be fully in the moment and see what comes and to be open to what comes. As a new pathway forward. 

And he also emphasizes like collective, everybody has to contribute what they have to build this vision. Everybody brings their story, their memory, their history. Um, and then they help add to this like collective reimagining of a different future of a different possibility. I also like the term I think in one of his interviews, he said something or he alluded to like this idea of practicing possibilities. Like, that we can continually be in a practice of thinking about new things, or like, approaching things in a different way. That it is this ongoing work. So, for me, Conductions was this really beautiful term to encapsulate what I think black artist practices do.

It is that kind of playful, imaginative thinking, but it's also engaged, or can be engaged, or willing to engage in like, a deeply or from a deeply vulnerable space and, and, and that being a way forward or one way forward. 

Sharyll Burroughs: Hattie’s, I guess artistry, I think fits into this context of conduction as a path forward, especially thinking about the adversity that she faced from birth. Her parents were formerly enslaved. They were very, very poor, hungry much of the time. Hattie was the last of ten children. She only weighed three and a half pounds when she was born. So, from an early age, the trauma of enslavement and the Civil War deeply affected her. Her father Henry fought in, uh, for the Union but was severely injured in battle. His jaw was shattered, which left a painful open wound in his mouth that wouldn't heal because he couldn't get medical treatment. So, for a large percentage of Hattie's life, she watched her father suffer as her family struggled. 

So, this idea of struggle I think it's interesting to maybe, um, I don't even know how to put it, but if we can form a Conduction and thinking about how to move out of it. Say, for instance, the struggle has defined the African American experience. I think enslavement was the origin but struggle as a construct in and of itself took root during the civil rights movement. And about a year ago I watched an interview where a black gentleman said he believes suffering is embedded into black people. And I'm wondering what you think about struggle in connection with the black experience and how conduction might fit into this way of thinking. 

Jaleesa Johnston: From a personal perspective, I'll just say I've been thinking a lot about, like, struggle or suffering. I've been thinking a lot about suffering lately, just personally in my life and that, and I can't remember where I came across this distinction. And also you and I have talked about this a number of times as well that, you know, we feel lots of emotions from like joy to pain, but suffering, but you can feel pain, but you don't necessarily have to suffer and suffering is created by all the stories and narratives, the conditions that you hold yourself within that really amplify that pain in a way that may not always be productive.

I'm not saying it's never productive. I'm trying to be very careful not to close off any corridors. It can be productive, but sometimes it's not productive. So, in that way, I, I feel like struggle, I think, is a part of life. But I think sometimes perhaps there's struggle that is not productive. An internalized struggle that we don't necessarily, or I should say for myself, I don't necessarily have to internalize that struggle.

I can approach it a little differently. When I think about Conductions and I think about, we've talked a lot about the character, Harriet Tubman, in the book. And she teaches the main character Hiram how to control his ability to conduct because he doesn't really understand it at first and she teaches him all the different elements that play a role into what it means to conduct.

To be a conductor, and one of those is, one of those elements is the intentional revisiting of memory, of really powerful, even painful memory, and she's talked about some of the memories being so bad that you just want to forget, but that It's important to never forget. When I read that, the character Harriet Tubman in the book is not a victim. Like, she's not remembering from a space of being disempowered, but rather, she remembers from a space of being empowered, from a place of being empowered. Like, those memories are important. I can use those to actually move forward. I don't have to. Those memories don't define the potential for where I can conduct but instead are just a material that I use to begin the conduction process, to begin the transformation process.

So, I think you can either let struggle trap you, or you can use it as a material to move forward in some way.

Sharyll Burroughs: I guess the contradictions of Hattie's life, because she lived a combination of things. She, she grew up in poverty, but then after being in Hollywood, she had great wealth. Feminism, misogyny, conformity, rebellion, racism, colorism. She suffered indignities from white and black people. And she put all of that into her acting. So, in thinking about what you're saying about conduction, she took that pain and adversity and put it into her work. Artists have a sense of possibility. I don't think you can be an artist without a sense of possibility because you're not forcing something to hap… well, I would say many artists don't force things to happen.

We've had this conversation many times. Some artists allow themselves, just allows the work to happen. It's not an intellectual process. I guess that's what I'm trying to say. So, Hattie sets a possibility through her artistry, her agency. And she used that agency as a transformation. Anything was possible, and she didn't allow herself to be defined, or, well, I won't say constrained. We'll talk about that in a minute. But let's just say she wouldn't allow herself to be defined by anything or anyone. And I think that's powerful to think about because if the black experience is defined by struggle and that's the narrative, then there isn't room for anything else because the expectation is that the point is to struggle as a black people. When in fact, it seems to me that conduction is an antidote to that because you have a choice. You can take that pain. And, and your point about pain is, I mean, the Dalai Lama said pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. So, you can take that pain and, uh, and, and use it as an instrument towards self-empowerment, towards agency, towards autonomy. But there has to be more of a conversation about that within the community because if the expectation is that the point is to suffer in order to represent the people, then that's a hard, I think, conversation to initiate.

Jaleesa Johnston: And I think also what you're saying was just making me think about, like, really fully embodying the fullness of humanity, I think, for, for black people. One of the things that Harriet Tubman character in the book says she does reference pain, painful memory being important. Like I think it's more of not being a she emphasizes that it's important not to be afraid to engage with the painful memories. But she also says at one point in the book that it calls up all of your emotion. Like all of the joy and all of the pain. So I think that goes back to it's the pain that is all a piece of the puzzle. It is not the puzzle. It is a piece of the puzzle. And you're really multifaceted. You have a whole spectrum of experience and emotion that you go through that's really valid and important to each other. It's all important to each other. So, I feel like just speaking to what you were saying, it's not like struggle that defines. That is limiting.

There's so much. Struggle is a component, but it's not the only component. There's a whole spectrum of experience. And I think with Hattie, and like learning more about her life when I was watching the documentary and reading the article on her, she's not afraid to embody the contradictions of being human. Because all of these, the pain and the joy are contradictory, but they exist together regardless.

Sharyll Burroughs: Yeah, and I don't think she was delusional in that she didn't understand that she wouldn't face challenges because that's what life is. It's challenging. And those challenges within all those challenges, there's a choice. You either step up or you, you, you stick your head under the covers. I've done both. I think all of us have done both, but what's interesting about the choices that she made in terms of facing her challenges, they took her places that I don't think she ever imagined she would end up. 

For instance, Sugar Hill. Hattie was the queen of a Los Angeles neighborhood called Sugar Hill. The area was integrated. There were white residents, but there were also many notable black people in the area so it was also known as the “Black Beverly Hills.” In 1945, and this is funny now. I don't think she thought it was funny when it was happening, but to think about this, the irony of this, it's quite funny. When this situation happened, she was in the middle of her big brawl with Walter White, who was the head of the NAACP. But this other situation pushed her into political activism. 

The white residents filed suit claiming blacks were legally prohibited from living in the neighborhood. It's racism, pure and simple, it's just racism. And Hattie said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, this is not happening. And she took action. She organized neighbors, she held meetings. She chose a black attorney named Lauren Miller, who, ironically, worked for the NAACP, but as an activist. Miller filed a lawsuit alleging discrimination. Now, remember, this was a very dangerous time. This was 1945. This was the height of Jim Crow. It was a very, very dangerous time for African Americans. And Los Angeles wasn't any different from Atlanta in many ways. Across Los Angeles, black families had integrated white neighborhoods. Their homes were bombed. People were put in jail. The Klan burned crosses on people's lawns. But Hattie said, we're going to stay the course, and we're going to fight. They went to court, and they won. The white people appealed. They lost. So, Lauren Miller had successfully argued that racially restrictive deeds were unconstitutional. And here is what Hattie's biographer Jill Watts said, “Hattie's lawsuit opened the door for the end of such residential segregation throughout the United States.” In other words, her unconventional route, a black woman filing suit in federal court in 1945, was the beginning of dismantling segregation nationwide, which to me sounds like the very definition of Conduction. Yes? 

Jaleesa Johnston: Yes. 

Sharyll Burroughs: Because she took adversity, she took all that memory, all of that hardship from watching her family not be included in the system. Any section of society or meaningful section of society and said, I'm not going back. We're not doing this. I'm sure it wasn't easy for her. I'm sure she didn't want to, but she said, this is unconscionable and something has to change. And she changed something not only locally, not only statewide, but nationwide.

So, what you're talking about is this ability of harnessing memory and storytelling and using it to transform in a way that's unimaginable until you do it, until it happens. So, I'm really grateful for this conversation about conduction because as I said earlier, it is an antidote. Uh, but people don't, won't know about it unless we talk about it. People won't know it's available unless we put it out there. So, I think it's very, very, very important. 

I sent you a quote, a Hattie quote. The quote is, “I don't belong on this earth. I always feel out of place. Like a visitor.” Do you have any feelings or thoughts about that? 

Jaleesa Johnston: I can't relate to that quote other than it being, like, in a very personal way, to be honest. Like, I'm trying to like to think about within the context of like my work and like Conductions and curation. But honestly, that quote for me resonates in a very personal way, just sort of feeling like, on the edge or periphery of things often. And not necessarily at the heart or, like, embedded in something.

I think, for me, one of the things, like, when I think about Hattie, and I'm just thinking that it really is just a way of saying, or, like, a way of expressing that larger vision, or a vision that's very different than the boxed vision that you're supposed to fit into. And it can feel really like alienating when you have something, something in your eye, something that you see that is just not even in the same plane as where you're supposed, you're supposed to be, or where your vision is supposed to go, or how it's supposed to fit.

But I think, again, it's just like being able to see all of these possibilities, all of these bridges, all of these pathways that other people, not that they can't see it, I think everybody's capable of seeing. It's just whether or not people are willing to let go of the vision that they have or let go of the way they think it's supposed to be or the way they were taught. It's supposed to be to look up a little bit and just see. Oh, there's a larger landscape, a larger pathway of rivers and bridges and crossings. And that it's really infinite the way that we can be and the way that we can do things. It's really never ending.

Sharyll Burroughs: And especially, I'm glad you brought up your personal experience because I am an artist myself. When I read the quote, I immediately, I guess, conceived that most people would attribute what she said to racism and being a black woman not fitting into a white world. And like you, the first place I went was, well, artists. Any artist that I think has an innate ability, has always been an artist, has always seen things differently, as you said, doesn't follow rules, doesn't want to be boxed in; you have a vision, and you do your best to conceive that vision, but then when it's offered, it's rejected.

Hattie had a vision, but her artistry was constrained. I talk about this, or, um, with my last guest a little bit about she was constrained into these boxes of mammies and cooks and maids. She felt she had something to say, but she didn't have any control as to how that message actually was received no matter what she did on set. It could be edited or the director could say, no, you can't say that or whatever. So, imagine putting your heart and soul into your work and it's repressed. And then conversely, her own culture didn't understand or didn't want what she was doing. So, when you reject somebody's art, essentially, you're rejecting them, you're rejecting the artist.

And when it happens repeatedly, it reinforces that not only does your work have no value, you have no value. And you're right, it's alienating, it's lonely.  I think you can have a sense of agency, you can, you can have a sense of self determination, you can be independent and autonomous, but it's not, you're not invincible. You're a human being, and when people say disparaging things, reject your work, it hurts your feelings, because you're a human being.

So, no wonder she felt out of place. And no wonder she felt like she was a visitor because she didn't think there was any place that she belonged to, no matter how hard she tried. So, I think, on the whole, your work with Conduction, particularly looking at it as a bridge, brings up some broader questions that I'd like to pose.

For instance, are you having a meaningful life? Is your life meaningful? Do you have a purpose? Are you being of service to others? Because it seems to me if Conduction, if you take the adversity that you've experienced and you put that into something, the Harriet Tubman analogy, I think, is still quite interesting. The way you initially described it to me was that, uh, there was a tree on the plantation called a sweet gum tree. Is that correct? 

Jaleesa Johnston: Yes. Uh, yes. She has a staff that's made from, uh, wood from the sweet gum tree. 

Sharyll Burroughs: Right. And the, the strips from the sweet gum tree that she used to make the staff, those strips were used by the plantation owner to beat her. Am I correct in that? 

Jaleesa Johnston: At some point in the book, she does talk about receiving beatings, but, but then at a different point she talks about her staff being from the tree and the tree being a symbol that reminds her of how difficult and terrible, like how she lived a very terrible life. Doing work amongst the trees and being enslaved and like being under the violence of her slave master.

Sharyll Burroughs: Okay. Well, thank you for the correction but it's still this idea of again harnessing pain harnessing memory. It's not the end of life. It's actually the beginning of living because you take that and you use it to evolve and move, move forward. And at the same time, whatever has happened to help you attain that, you help other people achieve the same thing. Or you help other people get out of terrible situations. Or, I mean, she moved north. She helped people. Uh, find their way north to, to freedom. So, I think in looking at who we are, the ways that we become who we are, is the reason that we exist. To, to reach our highest human and spiritual potential. That's why we're here. And it seems to me that Conduction also is the path to that. Because Hattie used her identity as a black woman to say, look, I'm doing it, you can do it too. To people who thought the only place they belonged was on a plantation or in a kitchen somewhere.

This was extraordinary what she accomplished. And the unconventional career as an actor that she had was also meaningful to her, to other people who watched her in movies. So, her purpose was to uphold her race and to inspire other black people to follow their dreams. And she took all of that and used that prosperity to be in service to others, to support charity causes that were important to her, to help her family, to help friends.

I mean, this was, this was monumental. And I think the narrative of her life is focused on her being the first recipient of an Academy Award or the first African American to receive an Academy Award. However, the rest of her life almost overshadowed that because she was doing something that was not normal during the era that she was popular. It wasn't normal. It's not, it wasn't normal for black people to be successful and have that success available to white audiences as well. It just wasn't happening. So, I want people to sort of focus on her entire life, not just the Academy Award. And yes, that's important, but she created a template for all of us, the way that Conductions creates a template. It's a blueprint to follow. And it just says, as you said earlier, possibilities are infinite. There, there's no…

Jaleesa Johnston: There's no one right way. So, I don't mean to interrupt, but just idea that this is the right way to do it. And that's the wrong way to do it. 

Sharyll Burroughs: Yes, thank you for that clarification. I'm wondering if you use Conduction in your personal life. I know you use it in your curatorial practice, in your art practice, but do you use it in your personal life at all? 

Jaleesa Johnston: I do. I do. I've been thinking a lot about, for me in particular, speaking of like not being trapped by pain or not allowing pain or struggle to trap you or define you, I think for me that's been, that's been one of my learning lessons. As I get older, learning how to reflect on really difficult moments, or learning how to move through really difficult moments, and not hold on to them too long, or like, yeah, just hold on to them so tightly that they burn me. But how to learn when to let go of it for a period of time, how to revisit it and not feel like trapped within it somehow. But to understand that it plays a role in building me into the person that I am.

So that's, for me, when I think about Conductions in my life, that's been my, my practice lately is finding a way to engage with the full range of emotions that I have and go through even particularly like difficult moments. So much. And allow myself to feel all the feelings that are there, but also not to trap myself in a particular narrative where I feel disempowered. It's a balancing act between not trapping yourself into feeling like you're not, you don't have agency, but also not like mowing past it with rose colored glasses. And I'm strong and this is great. It's how you sit in like the really complicated terrain of being human and feeling the pain but also knowing that you have agency and that there are possibilities that still await you.

That's been my practice lately. And I feel like that's part of the heart of Conduction, is like, sitting with the complexities of being human and allowing that to move you forward. It's not even like, in the book, it's not even like you can force the portal open necessarily, you just allow yourself to be present with the feelings and memories and emotions and then the portal presents itself. And you need water and you know, like, there's other factors, but it presents itself to you and you can move through it. So, I think that's been my practice. Like, I mean, I'm always going through that practice, but right now in particular, like, in my life right now, it's a practice that I have to like, I'm just very aware of. I'm learning a different l layer of what it means to do that in my life, for myself. 

Sharyll Burroughs: The specter of racism influenced pretty much everything Hattie did. Everything. But you said something to me that has stayed with me, and I've repeated it many times, because it was quite profound. You said, people complain about racism, no one wants to talk about what's on the other side of racism. And again, Conduction is an antidote to that, a path to finding out what does it look like on the other side of racism. And I think that's the conversation, right?

 Jaleesa Johnston: Yeah, I think racism or like any challenging thing that's happening, there's always so much effort and energy to getting rid of it, tearing it down, being obsessed with the thing, we have to get rid of it, we have to abolish it. And I'm not saying that's not an important component, but I'm like, it's interesting to me that there isn't always a lot of time that is put towards seeing what's on the other side, or imagining what's on the other side, imagining a life on the other side of that. 

Sharyll Burroughs: Well, it helps with understanding that we do have a choice. Racism hasn't gone away. People keep thinking that it's going to be worked out once white people wake up. We're waiting for something to happen. We're waiting for something to be and we can't be a free culture until white people wake up right now. We are tethered to a large group of people who have no interest within the political field of waking up at all.

And this inertia, it's almost like a bondage. We can't make any progress until the people, the perpetrators, wake up and change and do things differently. But with Conduction, there is a path and we can say, look, first of all, we have to find out who we are. And then secondly, we have to create a life that not only do we hold ourselves to a particular standard but we hold other people to a particular standard, and together, perhaps we can find a solution.The solution is the issue, not the problem per se, because people get stuck in everything's racist, everything's racist, everything's racist. But as you, as you said to me, what's on the other side? And how are we going to figure that out? It might be hard. It might even be impossible, but we have to try. But it is not dependent on waiting for perpetrators to change.

And I think that's the missing link in these conversations, because certain people don't care and are not interested. So that's my little three cents about it. 

Jaleesa Johnston: Definitely. That's, that is a really beautiful description of like, yeah, that phrase or that idea of trying to think beyond the thing that's in front of you. I mean, I always think back to like, I think about the lineage of, I exist because of the lineage of people that I come from, and they had to have had some, like, amazing imaginations to think beyond what was in front of them. You know what I mean? If that's making sense, like, to persist through something as intense as slavery or genocide or whatever adversity it is that any lineage of people undergoes to continue and persist through that so that you can exist. There's so much belief, faith, imagination that a group of people had to have during really destitute times, to be able to get through that and then get you here to get this far. And that's that same process of the faith of there's something on the other side, you know, you have to be able to see or imagine in the book.

Actually, it's funny. I was just thinking this morning. I was revisiting some quotes in the book and oh, I hope I'm not going to miss and paraphrase this, but I think it was the Harriet Tubman character that had said that she has to have a sense of what's on the other side that she's jumping to.

She doesn't just like, I'm totally paraphrasing, but essentially it was like, I don't just jump to a thing and hope I land somewhere good. There's a sense of what's on the other side. And that sense doesn't come from, I don't think my interpretation is not that it comes from having already been there, but instead it comes from faith and being able to, to, to believe in your vision of something else on the other side.

Sharyll Burroughs: And Hattie had vision. She didn't know how she was going to get there. She didn't know how she was going to get to Hollywood. She didn't know what she was going to do when she got there. I imagine that what was in her mind was, why am I doing this? I'm a black lady going to a place where there really isn't any opportunity, really. At least on the scale of white actors, let's say. There isn't much opportunity. But something within her, there was a fire within her. Her vision allowed her or, uh, inspired her to take chances. Inspired her to take chances. So, when you were saying Harriet Tubman wasn't doing the jump just for the sake of it, there was something that she knew was on the other side, I think, I think Hattie accomplished the same thing, or her process was the same way.

Because how could you know, you're taking a risk, you're taking a chance, you don't know how something's going to work out. And in Hattie's case, it did work out. It's complicated, and there were all kinds of not-so-great things that happened simultaneously. So, the fact that she did it, I think is tremendous. And, uh, this is something that should be talked about all the time.

Sources

Hattie McDaniel: Black Ambition, White Hollywood, Jill Watts

Beyond Tara: The Extraordinary Life of Hattie McDaniel  - Whoopi Goldberg produced documentary, 2001 

The Icon and the Outcast: Hattie McDaniel’s Epic Double Life, Vanity Fair, Hadley Hall Meares, 2021

hattiemcdaniel.com

Expand your mind:

Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Water Dancer
https://ta-nehisicoates.com/books/the-water-dancer/

Butch Morris
Conduction