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Unknown
Only a couple months down. I think I recognize.
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Rob Lee
A welcome to the truth in his art. I am your host, Rob Leith, and I am thrilled to introduce my next guest, a visual artist, researcher and archivist. His practice combines photography, text, video and installation to craft an archive that intertwines mythological historical and societal dimensions. His work has been showcased internationally, including exhibitions at Schomburg Center of Research in Black Culture and the Langston Hughes Library.
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Rob Lee
Please welcome Joseph Cochran, the second. Welcome to the podcast.
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Joseph Cochran
Oh, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here and a pleasure to be talking with you.
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Rob Lee
100%. I mean, it's you know, we were chatting a little bit before we got into this and the actual real thing sort of the the pre you know, how I've been looking at the interviews like you go into a restaurant, right? Mm hmm. This is like we're having sort of the, you know, the talk before we get our water, before we actually.
00;01;06;25 - 00;01;22;00
Rob Lee
So the way I want to break this down is I got like, questions and they broken out in like three different sections, right? Mm hmm. Appetizer sort of questions the main course and then, you know, desserts and maybe, like, post drinks and things of that nature. So that's the way I like to go.
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Joseph Cochran
Got, got the tipsy drinks at the end. I like that.
00;01;26;04 - 00;01;52;07
Rob Lee
The flaming bows, if you will. A little Simpsons reference there. So, you know, again, thank you for coming on. And I want to start off with sort of the in the beginning question. What were some of those like early experiences, early like influences that, you know, kind of, you know, touched on maybe your perspective and how you approach the creative work that you're doing today, whether it's your creative sensibilities, which is things that stuck out creatively for you.
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Rob Lee
Think back to being a young person for sure.
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Joseph Cochran
Well, I will begin with the past of, you know, I was I was raised. So I'm from East Harlem. I'm originally also known as Spanish Harlem El Barrio to some. And, you know, I was raised in I was raised as a single child. But I have siblings. I was raised as a single child. In my early formative years by my grandmother and my grandmother, you know, she was a sort of it's been about 20 years now.
00;02;31;07 - 00;03;09;16
Joseph Cochran
I've been trying to find the words to describe her, but she was, for lack of a better phrase, an interesting person who, for all of her faults, had many positives. And and she was adamant from a young age, from from from from as early as I can remember, that I was like, I hate using this word, but destined to, like, do something with myself, you know, which I think is really just like that old adage of like the black woman making sure that, like, their child knows that they have to be whoever they want to.
00;03;09;17 - 00;03;35;05
Joseph Cochran
They want to be in this world and helping them self-actualize. Right. So very early on, you know, my grandmother had to get home from school and my grandmother would just like give me second school like anything that I wanted to know, anything that I asked about. She would do her best to answer. We would do funny pop culture things like watch Jeopardy every night and shit like that.
00;03;35;05 - 00;03;59;04
Joseph Cochran
You know? But most importantly, and this is one of my fondest memories, she had this huge bookshelf just full of botanicals with all these history books, all these all kinds of like tones. Right. And I would like I would just, like, read, like, shuffle through these things, like they were fiction. And and I would just ask her, like, wow, this, you know, for example, this French Revolution thing sounds crazy.
00;03;59;04 - 00;04;20;24
Joseph Cochran
Like, you know, what movie is this or whatever. And then she'd tell me, No, this is history. And then explain to me what it means and things like that. Yeah. Also. And I guess that speaks to my like, visual development. She was really, really into film and she would take me to movies, She would take me to see movies all the time.
00;04;20;26 - 00;04;50;10
Joseph Cochran
And, you know, not just like pop culture films, which I'm a big, big fan of, but like, you know, early like, I mean, like nineties Miyazaki films and like, and like, you know, cute, like, screenings of Stanley Kubrick films and stuff like that. So, you know, I remember seeing like Dr. Strangelove and I was like seven years old and not getting anything in the film, but loving it, you know, like my eyes just peeled to to the screen.
00;04;50;17 - 00;05;15;20
Joseph Cochran
And, and I think from very early on I told myself, oh, man, you know, I'm going to grow up one day and like, be a filmmaker. I'm going to, like, make films, will make movies. You know, I wanna make like Space Odyssey 2001, A Space Odyssey one day or whatever. And so that's one thing. Also, my community, you know, I was heavily, you know, from playing baseball to just being outside in general.
00;05;15;20 - 00;06;07;09
Joseph Cochran
You know, I was always just observing my environment and, you know, overhearing or directly hearing stories from people. And that kind of created a certain a certain some, how should I say, a certain sensibility when it comes to storytelling that I think I still have today, which is more or less stream of consciousness, the way that I we photo narratives is more or less like stream of consciousness and, you know, more dependent on the feel of of the information being posited to someone than than it is the even in some cases, the empirical, you know, even in some cases the the anthropological, if you will, you know.
00;06;07;12 - 00;06;30;25
Joseph Cochran
So that's so that's like that's the positive side. I would say the negatives is, you know, my my grandmother, she was very she was a very sick woman when I or even before I was born, she was very sick, mentally sick. She had a breakdown when I was about nine years old for mental for full mental breakdown. She was cause she's been schizophrenic.
00;06;30;25 - 00;06;59;10
Joseph Cochran
She was schizophrenic her entire life by most of her life. And and unfortunately, when she had a breakdown, I was I was also there. And our neighbors called the police, who then basically took me away and put me into the foster care system. And and from the foster and from there on, I spent I was nine years old when I went in.
00;06;59;13 - 00;07;25;04
Joseph Cochran
I spent about a year or two, almost two years in group homes before before I was placed with a family, a young a young family in Brownsville, Brooklyn, who would later adopt me when I was 17 years old. And, you know, all through my adolescence, I, I had just intense emotional problems, intense problems of violence. You know, I was what you would define as a at risk youth.
00;07;25;06 - 00;07;56;13
Joseph Cochran
And also, I had these temporal tendencies. If you will, where I would run away, I would disappear sometimes for weeks. You know, I would you know, sometimes sleeping on a friend's couch would be more preferable to me sleeping at home, you know? And it wasn't really because of any, like, um, abuse or things said to me, even though those things were going on, it was more so I had this because of what happened at the age of nine.
00;07;56;13 - 00;08;24;23
Joseph Cochran
I had this real like psychological need for freedom, you know, to just like because you know, what people don't understand about being in the foster care system is that when you're in the system, it's it's not the same as being in jail, but it's relative to being in jail. You can't leave the state. You can't like you have no self-determination, not only because you're a child, but because you are more or less the responsibility of the state.
00;08;24;26 - 00;09;16;14
Joseph Cochran
Yeah, which which which I did not understand early on in my life. But, you know, as I aged and learned more of the system, I realized that response ability of the state basically means a state unto, you know, and, and, and that kind of stuff is not kosher for me. So, so, you know, plowing ahead when I so after after I was in the system, I spent about three or four years just in self-destruction, just like the crime to to rapid drug use to, you know, being being tourists with a with multiple people that I was dating, so on and so forth.
00;09;16;17 - 00;09;48;07
Joseph Cochran
You know, I was I was really harming myself in my mind. You know, I got the opportunity to you know, I got the opportunity to leave New York City when I was about 21 years old. And this is after a near-death experience that is documented in The New York Times. It's just all around. You know, me and some friends, we almost died in a home invasion and and, you know, again, like all these things that happened up to this point, and I was very burnt out.
00;09;48;08 - 00;10;21;05
Joseph Cochran
I was very just like emotionally exhausted. You know, and on some level, physically exhausted. And and I and I got the opportunity to leave. I moved to South New Jersey for a bit where I worked in casinos and and lived in a marina, which was a I never experienced anything like this in my life, then moved to Philly for a little bit and and, and during this time, I had began to pick up the camera, you know, like from from my youth.
00;10;21;08 - 00;10;46;08
Joseph Cochran
Up until this moment, I have been keeping a journal, I've been writing poetry, all kinds of stuff. You know, I think when the home invasion happened, I had written about 300 to 350 poems that I had in the book that was that was all lost during this, um, home invasion. And and I was trying to rebuild that archive while I was in New Jersey based on new experiences.
00;10;46;08 - 00;11;05;14
Joseph Cochran
But I was having I was talking to a friend and I was having issues, remembering the things that I was writing about. And my friend who at the time was a photographer, he said, Hey, hey, you know, I got the student camera like this Pentax K 1000. Might you just take it and like, see what you do with it?
00;11;05;16 - 00;11;23;06
Joseph Cochran
And, and I was like, I don't know, I'm going to do it this shit, but whatever. I took it home and it just sat on my nightstand for like six months until one day coming out of coming out of work one day after working the graveyard shift at this at this damn casino, I'm like, Oh, you know, I'm not sleepy.
00;11;23;06 - 00;11;44;27
Joseph Cochran
I'll take it out, make some pictures. You know, I shot my first, like, two rolls down, developed. She was on Skype. I mean, if anyone remembers Skype, I was on Skype with my friend and I show him the the images and he's like, well, you know, like two thirds of these to me are good. I think you should just stop what you're doing and like that.
00;11;44;29 - 00;12;03;15
Joseph Cochran
And I was like, Well, fuck you don't gaslight me. I'm not doing this, you know? But I see all that. And I'm a very stubborn person. I see all that. And then like, was still just making the pictures and eventually I came up to him like, Hey, you know, here's like 300 pictures. What do you what do you think of his, you know, a like, all right, yeah.
00;12;03;15 - 00;12;21;01
Joseph Cochran
You know, I've got this opportunity for you. You know, I just I just did. I just designed the school in China. You should. You know, I got a lot of cachet in China, you know? I mean, with this with this developer, you know, I could get you a job here. So I was like, Wow, you just move to China and just, like, work 20 something hours a week.
00;12;21;01 - 00;12;53;20
Joseph Cochran
I make pictures and I was just like, no, like, I didn't know shit about China past Tiananmen Square, you know? And I'm like, Hell no, like you crazy. Like, I'm American, I'm black, this and anything but. But then a lot of real life should happen. You know, my grandmother, who I adored very much, she passed away, you know, which ended 50, 50 something years of pain for her, which I was happy about, you know?
00;12;53;22 - 00;13;15;15
Joseph Cochran
And then my cousin and this is the one that really killed that really, like, killed me, my cousin, my cousin Antoine. Peace be upon him. He passed away and he was only 33 years old when he passed away. And and I couldn't get it out of I mean, I had seen many of my friends had passed away. I seen many I've seen people die.
00;13;15;15 - 00;13;43;28
Joseph Cochran
You know, all these things that I've seen. Death has been ever present in my life, metaphorically and literally. But I couldn't get it out of my head. This man dying, because for all of his good qualities, for all the things that he was about, she died, he passed away. And no one spoke about his death. One, there was no real remembrance of his death.
00;13;44;00 - 00;14;10;05
Joseph Cochran
You know, it was almost as if he didn't He never existed. And and I was and maybe this is selfish of me, but I was determined to be remembered. I was determined to make sure that my history, my personal history would be would be indexed, you know, to use like biblical terms. I mean, like, what is a gospel is just really like a written account of someone who has already existed.
00;14;10;07 - 00;14;36;09
Joseph Cochran
And I saw the power of of that kind of narratives in photography very early on. And, and yeah, like those experiences all together, I was like, well, this is, you know, I've lived so many lives already died, I didn't die. I did not get to document what is the next like is unlucky 50 years going to bring you know and yeah I don't know if that completely answers your question.
00;14;36;09 - 00;14;38;02
Joseph Cochran
No, no, no, no.
00;14;38;04 - 00;14;49;08
Rob Lee
One thank you for for really opening up and sharing there and yeah I think it not only answers sort of that introductory question with answers like three other ones.
00;14;49;08 - 00;14;51;25
Joseph Cochran
So I like when people.
00;14;51;25 - 00;15;14;08
Rob Lee
Are overachieving, it's just like I, you know, make my job easy. But also let me give you a, you know, a chance to kind of like catch your breath there. They think, you know, it's it's it's important to really be able to share and document things that have happened in a certain period. You know, that's really some of the considerations I make when I'm doing this.
00;15;14;10 - 00;15;36;05
Rob Lee
You know, you're in a place you see attention happening to a place. You see people coming and going, whether it's through sort of the mortal coil or through locality to just like leave in a place you want to be at a catcher. What was this place like? Right. And via the stories of the people that are living there, not in this sort of editorialize sort of way that is like this is the narrative that I want to do.
00;15;36;05 - 00;16;09;24
Rob Lee
I try to be as neutral as possible. It's like what's real? And I think it's something about doing that for a place, but something about doing that for ourselves and really being able to document it. So in this sort of question, would you how would you describe your work in sort of this journal, not that journalism approach, but sort of maybe the the journaling concept of really the document, sort of your story as it's happening played a role into you pursuing the work that you're pursuing currently.
00;16;09;27 - 00;16;55;08
Joseph Cochran
So I would describe my work as the as the exploration or analysis of advanced industrial societies. Their systems and how we fit in there. And and what does that. And what that means is that, you know, specifically in the context of of my experience, I tried to look at the pernicious effects of systemic injustices, you know, and and show how systems cause and how some systems cause instability, which in effect caused change.
00;16;55;10 - 00;17;31;06
Joseph Cochran
And to achieve this, I do this through a mixture of what you call, like journaling, you know, photographic journaling. I use documentary photography techniques and abstract imaging, you know, and then along with the text and video components and things like that, you know, so I think that's the best summation of the work. If I, if I had to if it was just me and you shooting the shit at a bar, I would I would just I would just say I like to take pictures.
00;17;31;09 - 00;17;41;10
Joseph Cochran
I it it's, it's before I was doing it, I was cursing people out and punching people in the streets. I don't I no longer do that.
00;17;41;13 - 00;18;07;05
Rob Lee
But yeah, I like I like it in both ways. It's funny, like when you have to start thinking through things. And with the number of interviews I've done, I ask artists now I'm like, Yo, can you tell me what you do? But I'll give me the artist statement. You know, I have to do it that way. And even when I'm describing this, I was, you know, telling you a little bit earlier about, you know, some of the ways folks ask you to do it because they want you to be a brand that fits into certain buckets.
00;18;07;07 - 00;18;18;15
Rob Lee
I'm like, look, I talk to people who are interesting and I get them and some my goofy questions, and that's really what it is. And I make myself seem more interesting. You know, I can like, reference you in conversation.
00;18;18;18 - 00;18;54;00
Joseph Cochran
Right? No, no, no, exactly. But I mean and I mean, that's it, right? Like, you know, you know it like making this work cause I'm like imaging. I mean, I always like, like I always have this, like, Jay on line in my head where he says, and I'm paraphrasing here maybe, but he says, you know, your record, I recall, you know, I've really been there before, you know, And and I didn't realize how important that was until I had started living in Brussels, Brussels, Belgium.
00;18;54;06 - 00;19;15;25
Joseph Cochran
And and I was at my friend's school, the e core research graphic or ERG, which is a French art school in Brussels. I was in Italy. It was like me, him and his anthropology teacher just hanging out and we had been having conversation for a while or whatever, and she's like, Yo, like, show me your record. Like, let me see the word cello, too.
00;19;15;25 - 00;19;33;12
Joseph Cochran
She was like, Man, like, I was, you know, I showed all this shit at the end of it. I'm like, Yeah, I don't really know what the fuck I'm doing here, but, you know, doing something, I think. And, and she's like, Listen, you are a cartographer in New ways of seeing it for your people. And she was like, I don't mean black people.
00;19;33;13 - 00;20;26;16
Joseph Cochran
She's like, I mean your people, whoever you are, who are, you know, and, and that showed me that like, man, when especially in imaging, in photography, when you're building your archive, which is the photographer's language, you know, you are building, you are building a text that not only speaks to the time that you existed, but speaks to the challenges that that society that you were in faced, you know, whether whether it be like, I don't know existence vision of the South or or Gordon Parks vision of Chicago from the mundane to the explicit, you are seeing something that 50 years from now may not even look the same.
00;20;26;19 - 00;20;33;04
Joseph Cochran
And there is a certain power in that and a certain certain power in that in of itself.
00;20;33;07 - 00;20;43;11
Rob Lee
Thank you. Well, I was I was taking a quick note because I have a rapid fire question I'm adding. And that's the thing I like to do. I like to think ahead of what we're cramming.
00;20;43;13 - 00;20;45;29
Joseph Cochran
So give give me the.
00;20;46;01 - 00;21;09;26
Rob Lee
The ultimately the driver if if there were, you know, three, three words and I'm taking almost like definitely lifting from one of the things I read sort of the the archive intertwining the theological, historical and societal dimensions. What would you say like those that that those those drivers would be if if it was like what would you say that sort of main driver is to push forward in that?
00;21;09;26 - 00;21;14;10
Rob Lee
Because I think I'm getting it. But for those in the back who came later class.
00;21;14;12 - 00;22;06;23
Joseph Cochran
The main, the main, the main driver is fear of erasure. It's the fear of being erased. And you know, I much like yourself, we are products of not only the era of mass incarceration, but the era of the war on drugs. We are we are we are truly the first generation of of light of black Americans to be, in my opinion, to really experience, if there were any fruits, to be had, the fruits of the 1968 civil rights bill, you know, and, you know, before before that flash point and after that flash point, how many lives erased, You know, how many how many, how many generations destroyed, how many histories silenced.
00;22;06;29 - 00;22;35;29
Joseph Cochran
You know, you know, we're still finding out about heroes of the civil rights era like today. We're still finding out about them, you know, like the heroes of the reconstruction era, of the Jim Crow era. We're still finding out about them today because they have been erased. You know, and and that's the societal dimension, I think basically, you know, the the the medium itself is, what, 150 years old.
00;22;36;02 - 00;23;11;26
Joseph Cochran
And in that time, there have maybe been less. If I had to make a throw a shit to the wall estimate here. Yeah, probably less than 200 notable black and brown, black and brown photographers in this country. Notable works, you know, ones that have major museum acquisitions, major institutional backing are talked about in the canon of photography itself, so on and so forth.
00;23;11;28 - 00;24;06;20
Joseph Cochran
And and then I would also posit that probably a good chunk of them besides like people like Roy Decker, Rava or or Jane Van der Zee or something, come after the year 1945. So yeah, so like, so like you condense that, that maybe like 80 years of, like black excellence in photography. Yeah, maybe, maybe even less so, because Gordon Parks is kind of like the flash point for the, you know, and, and I look at it like, all right, you know, Allan Circular, the photographer and the circular, he has a very good manuscript called The Body in the Archive, and it asks about how photography was used to create social stratas for people to, to
00;24;06;20 - 00;24;43;14
Joseph Cochran
exist, live it like the mug shot. It is a is a photographic creation. And and it was created with this idea that if you that if you index something enough you can then make determinants of behavior. So you know the mug shot when as far as like all right there's the certain ear that a criminal has is a certain knows that a criminal has the height of a criminal of criminal is all of these integers which we know are bullshit today that that classify a criminal.
00;24;43;20 - 00;25;19;27
Joseph Cochran
And I mean it just so happened that most of these criminals were darker and, and you know, like it's things like that that within the canon of photography I'm trying to, I'm trying to be mindful of and approach in new ways. You know, also there is that personal aspect to me in photography which is like which maybe comes from like me playing sports as a youth and and whatnot, which is like, all right, if I'm going to compete, you know, I want to be I want to be in the canon.
00;25;19;28 - 00;25;37;16
Joseph Cochran
I want to be because like, photography is one of those things that it is a trade. Like people forget it's a trade. You can be the best at a trade. You know, you can be the best at like these kinds of things. Sort of photographers that I really resonate with. These are people who I think have mastered imaging.
00;25;37;17 - 00;26;11;09
Joseph Cochran
You give them a printer or a camera, they can make you an image. And I think that's and I think that's so powerful. Now, there's also the scientific, the, you know, the anthropological, the ethnographic and and and and also the philosophical. And on an ontological. And this speaks to like what it's like the point about mythology, which is what is what is the Iliad but the hopes and dreams of the Greek people condensed condensed into a work by Homer.
00;26;11;11 - 00;26;44;10
Joseph Cochran
You know what is what is like, you know, various stories. I mean, Les Miserables, you know How to Monte Cristo, like any myth, the myth of Anansi, you know, like any myth that you can think of, these are the hopes and dreams of the people condensed into a volume of work. And, you know, something that something that, that, that an ex of mine used to call me all the time, which I used to take great offense to until I started embracing it.
00;26;44;12 - 00;27;14;26
Joseph Cochran
It's used to always call me the black Odysseus and the because like with no money, no, no actual knowledge, nowhere of all I was able to take myself across all these continents, embed myself into other societies. Yeah. And photograph them and be around them, live their cultures, live their customs. And, you know, like for me, as someone from the hood, you know, I was just talking to my homies in Van de piece yesterday about this.
00;27;14;26 - 00;27;42;13
Joseph Cochran
Like, you know, these these cats now who when I left, they were 11, 12 years old. I'm back now at 33. They're now adult men. And they're like, oh, like people talk to people talk about you around like you're a myth. Like you never existed. You know, like, like we can't like, we can't believe this, you know? And I told them, like, I can't believe it either, You know, like, there are times I look into my archive and I'm like, Yeah, I actually can't believe I made this image.
00;27;42;16 - 00;27;43;10
Joseph Cochran
You know.
00;27;43;13 - 00;28;17;07
Rob Lee
That's like, that's one of the things, Leigh, when I look back through and I was telling you about like how many these interviews that I've been able to get and document and all of that and, you know, having one of these moments recently of seeing like this sort of shift and, you know, I'm a baseball guy too. So definitely will mention that, you know, I used to work for the Orioles back in the day and the events and all of that and seeing like the new Citi Connect jerseys and seeing this sort of awareness around art and me doing this podcast for the last few years, I don't know if they're connected, but then seeing,
00;28;17;09 - 00;28;35;27
Rob Lee
you know, sort of the jersey it having this this reference to a poet that I interviewed a couple of years ago and it's literally a quote from a poem that he wrote. And in TV, you know, a guy I've interviewed, musician I've interviewed twice due to national anthem, and then see, they had the DJ set up and I was like, Oh, I've interviewed him.
00;28;35;28 - 00;28;38;19
Rob Lee
And then seeing the curator and I'm like.
00;28;38;22 - 00;28;39;18
Joseph Cochran
Oh.
00;28;39;21 - 00;28;44;28
Rob Lee
Oh, and no one knows who I am unless, like, you're really around me.
00;28;45;01 - 00;28;48;12
Joseph Cochran
You're at the nexus of these of, of all.
00;28;48;14 - 00;29;04;01
Rob Lee
And then even seeing sort of the traffic to like, you know, it's the using the hockey thing, it's the, the, the Wayne Gretzky of it. It's like I'm going where the puck is going now. Where exactly. Yeah, that's right And I find like almost being a little bit of a head of it, you know, having conversations with folks.
00;29;04;01 - 00;29;25;10
Rob Lee
And this one is definitely one of the stimulating conversations of, you know, it doesn't feel like there's any like walls and blockades. It feels like, hey, this is the thought, this is the thinking. Where's it going? And, you know, when I talk to folks about like, all right, this is what I have in mind, and then I start seeing it happening, you know, where it's like, Hey, I want to bridge these communities.
00;29;25;10 - 00;29;40;19
Rob Lee
This is my methodology, these are my ideas. But it's seeing it like whether it's people because I do these interviews in Philly and do these interviews in New York, do these interviews in New Orleans, and in seeing folks that I've interviewed come up into Baltimore and see it and then comment like, wow, I didn't know that was here.
00;29;40;21 - 00;30;06;28
Rob Lee
What it needs is in this community, this is like what Rob said and like and just seeing that sort of connection and it just just tells me it's like I'm doing the thing that I'm supposed to be doing, doing that the right thing and really being able to get into some of these spots where you hear someone that in Ed, you know, of a large magazine, well-respected magazine, or that has a really good profile of like, Oh, I know about your work.
00;30;07;01 - 00;30;16;27
Rob Lee
I really respect and appreciate your work. That's a really good thing to hear. And it doesn't make me say, okay, now I'm good. It makes me want to just keep going and look back at that archive like, Damn, I did.
00;30;16;27 - 00;30;40;03
Joseph Cochran
Ask that damn I am going to do because at the end, at the end of the day, you know, like it becomes a, it becomes a method of self-actualization and becomes a method of like, all right, you know, you know, I'm doing this so there's no reason why I should have acid. If I love it, I should continue to do it and I should do it at the highest level, whatever that highest levels are going to be.
00;30;40;03 - 00;30;45;27
Joseph Cochran
You know, I should I should try and do it. You know, it's the thing you is.
00;30;45;28 - 00;31;09;10
Rob Lee
A gay bar thing where, you know, it's just like they don't say good luck, you know, in using the Japanese idea, you know, and I'll say, good luck. It's just like you're going to put forth the best effort that you know exactly. You're going to do it. You're just going to do it. And, you know, as I try to extend and branch out on the things that I'm interested in and let you know, my my interest kind of drive me, I get very protective of it because people will do this thing.
00;31;09;12 - 00;31;21;20
Rob Lee
You know, maybe it's what one looks like, maybe is what one's background is or whatever profile they fit, you know, based on what they might look like. If it's like, oh, I don't know if that has a lot of merit, It's like, Well, I do. That's why I'm doing it.
00;31;21;23 - 00;31;25;14
Joseph Cochran
Yeah, I can relate to that.
00;31;25;17 - 00;31;53;08
Rob Lee
So I got, I got to real questions before I hit you heads with these rapid fire questions because I added one that's very troubling for New Yorker, by the way. So let's talk about impact in exhibitions a bit. So showcasing internationally, can you can you talk about like those experiences in addition to, you know, Schomburg in addition to Langston Hughes Library, talk about sort of like the exhibition and engagements contributing to the artistic journey for you?
00;31;53;12 - 00;32;32;00
Joseph Cochran
Totally. So internationally, you know, so and I'll preface this by saying like for a long time, well, not long time, about, oh, seven years or so, I stayed away from any interaction with gallery people, you know, not that they were looking for, you know, but but, you know, I, you know, I, I made it a point of the effort to not promote or show my art to anyone who was involved in the art industry, because it was an industry I didn't understand, you know, you know, I understand drug dealer.
00;32;32;06 - 00;32;35;09
Joseph Cochran
I don't understand art. I don't want this in art industry.
00;32;35;12 - 00;32;38;16
Rob Lee
And that's a great quote. I'm going to use that quote. That's a great quote.
00;32;38;19 - 00;33;03;11
Joseph Cochran
You know, and and I you know, I didn't understand the industry. And I mean, you know, imagine being 24, 25, 26. I mean, I lived it for four years, you know, in China, which has its own galleries as its own art spaces. And, you know, there are people who love the word. They're seeing the word because I was a part as collected called Basement six, who actually gave me my first exhibition, which I'll get to in the second.
00;33;03;14 - 00;33;29;03
Joseph Cochran
You know, people are seeing the work and they're asking me like, Oh, so what are you doing with it? So and I'm just like, Yeah, I don't know how I works. I don't I don't want to be involved, you know? You know, I'd rather just like, sit in the cribs, smoke weed, make my pictures, hang out with my girl, rinse and repeat, you know, like, hey, like, like for me, it was like, I'm just happy to be here making the pictures, right?
00;33;29;06 - 00;34;10;07
Joseph Cochran
Like, you know, if I die, one day and, like, some fucking kid just finds this archive of shit. Well, that's awesome. You know, I'll be like, vampire or something. That's great. And, and, you know, but basement sex, when I. When I met them with who? Whom I met through the music scene because very early on, people in the music scene in Shanghai, they noticed my photographs and noticed what I was doing and they were like, hey, you know, just come in like photographs, be shows, photo galleries, events, and, you know, it really helped break the ice for me in terms of like making making the practice viable enough for myself to do it in the
00;34;10;07 - 00;34;44;13
Joseph Cochran
street, to do it exclusively in the street and in the street and in the homes of people. But basement sex, which was this like collective of of just like artist and fuckin wayward souls and, you know, LGBTQ people who are dodging Chinese censors all this shit. You know, they embraced me very early on and they made me a part of the collective and, and, you know, like from there I was like, wow, Like, this is an artistic home where it's not pretentious.
00;34;44;13 - 00;35;07;12
Joseph Cochran
Everyone is just like creating. Everyone is, you know, helping each other, realize ideas. And these are people who were able to, you know, take me around the city, like, really take me around the city, made me a part of the city and made me understand how the city thinks, grieves and acts. Yes. And and from and they made my work.
00;35;07;14 - 00;35;41;21
Joseph Cochran
Well, what probably would have taken me double the time that I spent in China, they made it possible for the to only take four years, you know, And and, you know, they gave me my first exhibition of which was a which was just like a group show, you know. But again, from there, like, you know, at the time, I had never used medium format, which I upgraded to for this show, broke my camera midway through, broke the camera midway through, preparing for it, show them the images like, Oh, these are great.
00;35;41;21 - 00;36;05;22
Joseph Cochran
These are amazing. You know, like, put these up and everyone fucked with it, you know? And and I put the battery in my back to, like, keep doing what I was doing, you know, and, and even moving ahead, you know, when I had, when I had left China, you know, I spent about a year or so just making more work and everything.
00;36;06;00 - 00;36;39;06
Joseph Cochran
And then I got to Brussels. I mean, I could I'm always making work, but I spent like a year or so, like just making work, just making work alone. You know, I had moved to Morocco and I lived there for like five months and by myself and just like, shot a whole new project there, then moved to Sardinia, Italy, which is where my ex is from and lived among her people made the project I was telling you about with refugee and asylum seekers, made a project in her village, which is a village of 4000 people.
00;36;39;09 - 00;37;01;17
Joseph Cochran
And I just, you know, kept making the work. And then I got to Brussels and and, you know, we were now really back in the Western world and, and, and with that there was a new set of challenges that I was not prepared for because I had left. I left basically left the West when when I was like 22, 23 years old.
00;37;01;20 - 00;37;31;05
Joseph Cochran
And now and now I'm 28, 29, going go like in not not back in America, but in the country I've never been in where people just meet French and Dutch, you know, there's a whole thing and, and I'm like, well, shit. Like, now I have to put myself out. Now I have to be out there because, you know, I have my lady got school, got all these things like we can no longer have the luxury of not being visible.
00;37;31;07 - 00;38;20;07
Joseph Cochran
We have to be visible, you know? And from there, I thought that's when I started doing a lot of my public facing like installation works, which is which have all been like video works usually like not documented where I like live. A basically with archive of archive video and and I started to do those works and and you know while it didn't manifest into any any like monetary into anything monetarily it it did manifest itself in terms of opportunities when I returned to the U.S. in the sense that you know I got back to America just months before the pandemic started.
00;38;20;10 - 00;38;58;08
Joseph Cochran
And and in that time and this and this answer to your question about the Schomburg in that time, I got together with Black Mass publishing, which is run by esteemed brother Yusuf, Yusuf Hassan and he commissioned me to make a book or a zine, if you will, which was called The Lower Deaths. And the Lower Deaths was a 16 page book that consisted of a lot of my just like extremely short, annotated, like notes of my time away, you know, it was meant to represent the lower depths of my mind.
00;38;58;11 - 00;39;29;08
Joseph Cochran
So in it there were photographs. There was a what I call a digital poem that I made. Yeah, I do think there was a there was a there was a, a speech from Mao Zedong where he where he implored black people to move to China and allegedly this speech was done while W.E.B. Du Bois was standing right next to him.
00;39;29;11 - 00;40;07;12
Joseph Cochran
And there were archive images from the from the from the Belgian, from the from the Belgian razing of the Congo. And, you know, the Schomburg from Sharpe, the Schomburg, the Langston Hughes Library and the Evergreen State College Library. They had they had interest in the books, in the book. They purchased it. And for me, as a native son of Harlem, having to Schomburg purchase, one of my works was like, what?
00;40;07;12 - 00;40;37;03
Joseph Cochran
Like, I can't I can't believe this. You know, like, it's incredible. So, you know, to, to even like further the exhibition. But like your question about the exhibitions, you know, my first exhibition in the U.S. was with um, Swivel Gallery, which is based, which was formerly based in London Best I Brooklyn, that was in Bushwick. And that exhibition was titled A lot of things have changed.
00;40;37;03 - 00;41;16;03
Joseph Cochran
A lot of things have not, which is a direct, direct quote from most death at the beginning of his album Black on both sides. And and you know for this exhibition, which was meant to be a survey which was meant to exist as a survey of my time, of my withdrawal and return, you know, one of the one of the centerpieces for that exhibition that I created was a vitrine kind of like a display box of sorts that housed that housed like the multiple phones that I use while I was overseas.
00;41;16;05 - 00;41;54;05
Joseph Cochran
My camera that I used for most of the time that I was overseas, letters that were written to me by former loves or death certificates, all kinds of just more archival information. And and I was very inspired to make this vitrine by the work of Joseph Boys, who Joseph Moise was a former Nazi soldier who crash landed allegedly crash landed a muslim shaman had a significant change of heart and a crash landing among some natives who then introduced him to a shaman who then changed his life, allegedly.
00;41;54;07 - 00;42;20;18
Joseph Cochran
And and from that point on, he began to make art, which had which always had this idea of social practice in it. So it was like, okay, you know, not only social practice, but mythology excuse me, but mythology, personal and external mythologies. And one of the things that he would do is he would build these these vitrines that would house like objects.
00;42;20;18 - 00;42;50;15
Joseph Cochran
It would be it would be leather from a boot, it could be fur, whatever, you know. And he did this to push forward the idea that these objects that we interface with, you know, they are not only readymade to speak to Marcel Duchamp, but they are also these, these objects that have intense resonance with us spiritually, physically and metaphorically.
00;42;50;18 - 00;43;20;23
Joseph Cochran
And they are as worthy of display as the art pieces we make. And and for me, I tried to take that a step further with offering aspects of my life that were very near and dear to me, such as like putting putting my grandmother's identificar in the vitrine, but heavily redacting the information and which is something that I do in my text practice to protect the lives of people and, you know, so on and so forth.
00;43;20;23 - 00;43;51;23
Joseph Cochran
Also a kind of critique of the United States own process of redacting information. But, you know, in this I was very happy that people understood the point, that people understood that, you know, I had left the U.S. as one person and I returned as a new person, you know, And while not much had changed in the way that I go about my life, much I changed in the way that I thought about life.
00;43;51;26 - 00;44;32;01
Joseph Cochran
And, you know, really this exhibition was meant to signify that. Like, all right, I am in a medium that everyone thinks they do today because it's so ubiquitous. But what I am doing is not just making pictures. I am writing a novel. I am maybe multiple novels, you know, maybe, you know, I'm I'm really trying to offer something to the people that I hope will exist in a way that people will be able to analyze and, you know, critique for years to come and all these exhibitions and spaces that I've been able to get to work.
00;44;32;01 - 00;45;11;20
Joseph Cochran
And they have served as kind of like obviousness where a lot but like flash points to describe how to describe my own personal development and also to hammer home this singular idea that for me, the only the only thing that's relevant today is the is how we translate culture to one another. It's how we it's how we not only translate culture, but how we present culture to one another.
00;45;11;22 - 00;46;04;13
Joseph Cochran
You know, and and and I believe that we live in such a globalized world that we are I would hope that we are beyond just the monolithic displays of culture. And, you know, I really want to create an archive that really pushes that idea forward. And I like to believe that my exhibitions have done this, you know, have have really worked to to create threads between cultures and between these seemingly disparate spaces that we're in because, I mean, like, you know, again, like Shanghai Mira, I mean, China, Morocco, Italy, Belgium, America, like these are all places that maybe politically they have some sort of like tethering to one another.
00;46;04;16 - 00;46;23;18
Joseph Cochran
But socially, you know, we live in the age of globalization, but but we are so disconnected from all of these places. And and for me, like the exhibition, though, is in the context of my work should serve as that hub or nexus for for giving people this sort of experience.
00;46;23;20 - 00;46;49;06
Rob Lee
Thank you. Well, I mean you got again you you start off right the podcast with like answering like four of my questions and then you as well answering that was one that I skipped and I was like, No, I got it. So no, no, no, this is great. I guess you make my job easier. And I think there's a lot to to kind of like break through.
00;46;49;06 - 00;47;09;03
Rob Lee
And I see a lot of sort of, you know, simpatico is not the word, but I see a lot of similarities in how you're approaching and what you've been, you know, mentioning in the through line that you've been discussing in this interview with, you know, what I aspire to do. And it makes me kind of think about what I'm doing in a slightly different way.
00;47;09;03 - 00;47;17;00
Rob Lee
So so thank you for that and thank you for for sharing so much. So what do you do with these rapid fire questions?
00;47;17;01 - 00;47;18;16
Joseph Cochran
These do.
00;47;18;18 - 00;47;21;04
Rob Lee
Well, you know, I got the trophy when I got to ask you.
00;47;21;11 - 00;47;24;24
Joseph Cochran
A I love troll and so please ask.
00;47;24;26 - 00;47;31;03
Rob Lee
All right. So don't overthink these questions. We all do it. Yankees or Mets?
00;47;31;05 - 00;47;32;07
Joseph Cochran
Mets.
00;47;32;09 - 00;47;47;10
Rob Lee
My man, How are you? Come on. Oh, he's got it. He's got to make sure. He's gotta make sure. Yeah. I'm so. You've mentioned, like, you know, many places and, you know, the sort of Odysseus odyssey situation. What's the favorite place you've lived? That.
00;47;47;12 - 00;48;11;23
Joseph Cochran
Oh, shit. Fuck. Favorite place I lived in. Um, with sheer freedom. This is going to sound crazy. Shanghai, for sure, but Shanghai for today. Well, don't, don't, don't, don't anyone listening. Don't go. I mean, go. Well, I don't go with with what I'm about. Don't go. What I'm about to say in my when I was there that shit was like Paris in the twenties, you know.
00;48;11;28 - 00;48;20;06
Joseph Cochran
But it was just like all the little freedoms we don't have in America. You had you have they're just don't say anything about the government. But, you know, failed at that too.
00;48;20;13 - 00;48;23;11
Rob Lee
But you don't want to get AI Weiwei, you know. That's right.
00;48;23;14 - 00;48;49;15
Joseph Cochran
But but like in terms of like I think in my soul, what was my favorite place to live just in terms like what was needed what was what was given to me, what I learned, how it evolved me living in or goes, hello, Sardinia or goes a little Sardinia is a town of 4000 people in the mountains of Sardinia, Italy.
00;48;49;17 - 00;49;31;18
Joseph Cochran
And my access from there and, you know, I lived there with her in a family who immediately basically brought me on his family. The whole village embraced me and I got to make what I the whole village embraced me. But enough people in the village embraced me. I got to make I got to make work that at the time I didn't know that besides myself, Sebastian Esata and one or two other also Italian photographers, the only other photographer to make work in this village was Henri Cartier-Bresson.
00;49;31;20 - 00;49;54;04
Joseph Cochran
So like for me, I was like, Well, shit. Like, you know, I'm walking the same track as Legends in a place that I'm completely just living and chilling. Like I'm I'm, I'm, I'm drinking spirits every day. I'm I'm chilling, like, hard, chilling. And I'm also Sardinia. So small, so beautiful. I mean, it looks like the goddamn like Garden of Eden or something.
00;49;54;04 - 00;50;06;10
Joseph Cochran
I mean, it's incredible. You know, I'm just a city boy, so I couldn't stay there for long. But again, I would say I was probably my favorite place that I lived in. And then and then, like, following that Marrakesh, for sure.
00;50;06;12 - 00;50;21;06
Rob Lee
So, see, this one is going to be interesting to read. It kind of falls in line with, you know, sort of what we've been talking through. Ready what what the, you know, autobiography title be. Give me the title.
00;50;21;08 - 00;50;36;28
Joseph Cochran
It'll be it'd be Joseph Cochrane the second at least he tried. I like it. I like it. I mean I have some more explicit but that my had to be off was probably this is this is the.
00;50;37;01 - 00;50;54;27
Rob Lee
Last frontier that falls into the trolley next I told you about, you know, my partner is a New Yorker and we go back and forth. I always hear about water in in bagels and all of the nonsense, you know, in those travels. What is the sort of New York staple food that you miss the most?
00;50;54;29 - 00;51;14;07
Joseph Cochran
Oh, shit. That's definitely a hero. Definitely a hero sandwich. I mean, like, God damn, You know, even when even when I found I remember I remember arguing. My ex about, like, paninis, which are very different. Italy. Very different paninis, you know, very, very different. I want, I want to make that clear for everyone. But, you know, you know, I sit here like, Yo, what did you tell his?
00;51;14;07 - 00;51;46;25
Joseph Cochran
That excuse was like delis. We have a panini shop now. My go panini shop fuck is going to get a panini. I'm like, Oh, this. Then as we had asked bread like, I want, I want my probably cancerous spat filled with food hero and I want I don't want globs of fucking garlic mayo on it I want fries on the side I need that I want that it's in my heart you know that that and definitely the definite early on.
00;51;46;28 - 00;52;17;14
Joseph Cochran
Definitely halal food for sure which I was happy that you know I met the younger population in China because you know I don't eat pork in like in China like shit on a pork. And you know, if you if you don't if you eat pork and, you know, it was cool that like I just lived down the block from like a bunch of just like Muslim people who you know so very cheap even by China's, you know, by Chinese standards, I could eat like very clean and very healthy.
00;52;17;17 - 00;52;25;23
Joseph Cochran
You know, it was very good. But yeah, like the hero for sure, man. You know, I'm about to get a fucking hero right now. I have to go to the gym.
00;52;26;00 - 00;52;37;03
Rob Lee
But yeah, I'm a I'm a beginning of the morning kind of guy and just, just banging away. So have you and that at first thing, I was like, Yo, I need, like, an egg and cheese. And he's something.
00;52;37;03 - 00;52;37;15
Joseph Cochran
I or.
00;52;37;21 - 00;52;38;07
Rob Lee
Or maybe.
00;52;38;08 - 00;52;56;29
Joseph Cochran
I was making that in the crib. I was just like, in the crib, like, just making make a scrambled, making them so leg and cheese is more or less so, you know, like a lot of my New York staples I would just make at home, you know, because like, even like the bagels and stuff, like, you know, I made my little lox bagel and all that, you know, like I was I was doing my thing.
00;52;56;29 - 00;53;24;27
Joseph Cochran
But, but yeah, like, and also one of the things I definitely missed and this was more so a China specific one was American Chinese food and this right despite a speech that this right speaks childhood I am I'm very early on going to like restaurants in my homies and I'm like yo like we as a general sell chicken like like where's where's this riffraff race?
00;53;24;29 - 00;53;46;09
Joseph Cochran
They're like, what are you talking about? Like, Oh, no, no, you mean the Cantonese? But like, we don't eat that. I'm like, Oh, shit, You know, nobody else. Yeah. So, you know, definitely Chinese takeout myths that, you know, shadow my Chinese. Take us all over the world. Yeah. Much appreciated. Well, great way to do that.
00;53;46;11 - 00;54;05;21
Rob Lee
Thank you. Thank you. Man. This is. This has been. This has been great. This has been. This has been robust. I appreciate it. And what I want to do is when these final moments offer, you know, the space for you to let the fine folks know where to check you out, check out your work, social media website, all that good stuff.
00;54;05;22 - 00;54;07;23
Rob Lee
The floor is yours.
00;54;07;25 - 00;54;42;05
Joseph Cochran
My website is a Joseph Cochrane dot net. The probably the easiest way to find me is on Instagram. My Instagram is Joey Jr. Or to be specific at two underscored Joey Jr and also subscribe to my substack Joey Junior dot Substack. Everything can be found down the links in my on my Instagram and other than that a shout, a shout out to my to my family uncensored in New York and shout you rob.
00;54;42;07 - 00;55;03;20
Rob Lee
And there you have it, folks. I want to again thank Joseph Cochrane the second for coming on to the podcast and I'm Rob Lee saying that there's art and culture in and around your neck of the woods. You've just got to look for it.
