133 - Theaster Gates — Keeping the South Side

The Kitchen Sisters Present

The Kitchen Sisters & Radiotopia

Society & Culture

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 14 January 2020

⏱️ 16 minutes

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Summary

The Archive House, The Listening House, The Stony Island Arts Bank, The Dorchester Projects. Theaster Gates is a keeper of Greater Grand Crossing, his neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. He first encountered creativity in the music of Black churches on his journey to becoming an urban planner, potter, and artist. Gates creates sculptures with clay, tar, and renovated buildings, transforming the raw material of urban neighborhoods into radically reimagined vessels of opportunity for and of the community. Gates resurrects old dilapidated neighborhood buildings, transforming them into living archives, institutes of music, culture, film and gathering, preserving and renewing neighborhoods that have been ignored, overlooked and underserved. The proceeds of these unusual, imaginative endeavors are used to finance the rehabilitation of entire city blocks and the communities that inhabit them.

This story was produced by Alyia Renee Yates in collaboration with The Kitchen Sisters.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Radio Tophia, welcome to the Kitchen Sisters Present.
0:04.0	From PRX.
0:05.0	We're the Kitchen Sisters, Davia Nelson and Nicki Silva.
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0:50.4	there's some great music people in this collaboration.
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1:00.0	with your friends.
1:00.8	Today the kitchen system with your friends. Today, the Kitchen Sisters present Theaster Gates, keeping the South Side.
1:10.2	When we want to revisit the past and immerse ourselves in a time long gone, you can bet we're probably at the museum on discount Wednesday waiting through each and every exhibit aimlessly.
1:22.0	But those curated moments are chosen and tend not to reflect the
1:25.9	person who admires it, let alone the place it resides in. But Potter, Visual Artists, Archivists, and Neighborhood Visionary, Theaster Gates, believes that there
1:37.4	are different ways of culture keeping.
1:39.9	Why can't the neighborhood that raised me be kept and preserved by me?
1:44.4	Using once abandoned buildings and found objects,
1:47.7	the Aster Gates and his team of artists show us what it takes to keep Chicago history in the Dorchester projects. Oh, who am I? Well my name is
1:58.0	Leer Renee Yates in collaboration with the Kitchen Sisters and I will be your reporter for today.
	...

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