Licensing

Exploitation vs. Empathy - Part 5/6

TRANSCRIPTION: The job of an artist, I think, is to raise questions and try to answer them. And if I'm raising questions in an audience, and they're grappling with how they would answer them, I think that I'm doing my job. I never to set out to make art that was easy, or easy to understand right off the bat. I set out to ask questions. I think the great thing about working with people, is that they are real people, with real hearts and real minds. Which opens it up very, very quickly for issues of exploitation. Questions of whether or not people should be allowed to take part in these videos. Or whether I'm taking advatage of them. And what I say about it is that, "Everybody has the choice to take part in the video, and who says that we should take away the rights of anyone to choose to be part of a video." And I agree, I think there's an incredible amount of tenderness in some of the pieces. And there's a real love for experiencing things. And there's a real exploration going on. But I've heard this before, from men in particular, that they sort of cycle their feelings of how they feel about the work. And I think it's a great compliment that I can take someone on a journey like that.