美国国家公共电台 NPR--When people are less important than beaches: Puerto Rican artists at the Whitney

When people are less important than beaches: Puerto Rican artists at the Whitney

Transcript¹

Puerto Rican artists wrestle² with what Hurricane Maria revealed about their country's flaws and strengths in an exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art. (Story aired on ATC on Jan. 7, 2023.)

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

Hurricanes are cyclical. And for Puerto Rico, they're not just natural disasters, but disasters of mismanagement and infrastructure³. In a new exhibit at New York's Whitney Museum of American Art, 20 Puerto Rican artists wrestle with a long legacy⁴ of the island's people being treated as less important than its sunny beaches. NPR's Jennifer Vanasco has the story.

(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO)

MAGGIE: (Speaking Spanish).

JENNIFER VANASCO, BYLINE⁵: That sound? That's rain and wind. It's Hurricane Maria five years ago, battering⁶ the house of Maggie, who's speaking. "Good morning," she says in the video piece. "It's 5 a.m. I've been awake since 1 a.m." The screen is black, except for the occasional ghostly flicker⁷ of a white wall, a window. Water is coming in. A moment later, she says, this is getting worse.

SOFIA CORDOVA: It was just rain, rain, rain and just their whole house - a second-story house flooding, you know? Can you imagine?

VANASCO: Mixed-media artist Sofia Cordova, who lives in Oakland, is Maggie's niece. She used her aunt's cellphone footage as the beginning of a two-hour piece that focuses on how individual Puerto Ricans experienced the hurricane and its aftermath.

CORDOVA: You know, you can really see them on the, like, safety boat, or whatever it's called, like, really hanging on to each other and talking to each other, trying to make sense of something that your brain isn't really made to make sense of.

VANASCO: Cordova's piece is intimate. Though it shows some beautiful images of Puerto Rico - a lizard⁸, a landscape - they're usually overlaid by the words of her relatives as they try to process not just what happened, but why it happened. This is not just a natural disaster, they say. It's a disaster of planning.

(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Speaking Spanish).

VANASCO: "This was a chaos⁹ that could have been avoided," he says in the video. Some of the artists, like Cordova, are part of the Puerto Rican diaspora. Others currently live there. And it's not just the artists who have a personal connection. Marcela Guerrero is from Puerto Rico and curated the exhibit at the Whitney. She called it...

MARCELA GUERRERO: (Speaking Spanish). "Puerto Rican Art In The Wake Of Hurricane Maria."

VANASCO: Because, she says, it means a post-hurricane world doesn't exist. A hurricane, she says, is a metaphor¹⁰ for a force you can't escape. Much of this exhibit is about those forces - colonialism, mismanagement, climate change, the failure of almost the entire electrical grid¹¹.

GUERRERO: You know, I want people to understand that it's not just an inconvenience. It's not just that you can't watch Netflix. You can't keep your medicines refrigerated. It makes living very hard.

VANASCO: Guerrero points out there's a wall of sharp, evocative posters by Garvin Sierra in a brightly colored grid, encouraging resistance.

GUERRERO: Sometimes with joy, with joy of saying, we are here. We're surviving. We are not going anywhere.

VANASCO: There is joy here in the exhibit, and love and hope, but also a deep anger, a feeling that the United States has never had Puerto Rico's best interest at heart, a feeling that the government prioritizes investing in beaches instead of infrastructure and tourists instead of the people who actually live there.

(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: I am optimistic about the long-term growth prospects¹² for Puerto Rico. It has a perfect climate. It's a very, very beautiful island.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: You can essentially¹³ minimize your taxes.

VANASCO: This is a particularly pointed¹⁴ political video piece called "B-Roll" by the visual artist Sofia Gallisa Muriente. It juxtaposes lush tourist office scenes of an island paradise - the clear blue water, the palm trees - with remixed audio from the 2016 Puerto Rico Investment Summit extolling¹⁵ the archipelago to investors¹⁶.

SOFIA GALLISA MURIENTE: You know, I just really wanted to kind of reveal how sinister¹⁷ sometimes this visual language can be with which we kind of sell the country.

VANASCO: The audio from the conference touches on the airport, on tourism opportunities. This place could be amazing, one man says. In this video piece, Puerto Rico is for play, for pleasure, for making even more money. Puerto Ricans? Well, in this video, they're all but invisible.

Jennifer Vanasco, NPR News, New York.

FADEL: If you want to experience the exhibit firsthand, you still can. It will run through April 23.

(SOUNDBITE OF LE YOUTH'S "WAVES")

1 transcript   

n.抄本，誊本，副本，肄业证书

参考例句：

• A transcript of the tapes was presented as evidence in court.一份录音带的文字本作为证据被呈交法庭。
• They wouldn't let me have a transcript of the interview.他们拒绝给我一份采访的文字整理稿。

2 wrestle   

vi.摔跤，角力；搏斗；全力对付

参考例句：

• He taught his little brother how to wrestle.他教他小弟弟如何摔跤。
• We have to wrestle with difficulties.我们必须同困难作斗争。

3 infrastructure   

n.下部构造，下部组织，基础结构，基础设施

参考例句：

• We should step up the development of infrastructure for research.加强科学基础设施建设。
• We should strengthen cultural infrastructure and boost various types of popular culture.加强文化基础设施建设，发展各类群众文化。

4 legacy   

n.遗产，遗赠；先人(或过去)留下的东西

参考例句：

• They are the most precious cultural legacy our forefathers left.它们是我们祖先留下来的最宝贵的文化遗产。
• He thinks the legacy is a gift from the Gods.他认为这笔遗产是天赐之物。

5 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

6 battering   

n.用坏，损坏v.连续猛击( batter的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• The film took a battering from critics in the US. 该影片在美国遭遇到批评家的猛烈抨击。
• He kept battering away at the door. 他接连不断地砸门。 来自《简明英汉词典》

7 flicker   

vi./n.闪烁，摇曳，闪现

参考例句：

• There was a flicker of lights coming from the abandoned house.这所废弃的房屋中有灯光闪烁。
• At first,the flame may be a small flicker,barely shining.开始时，光辉可能是微弱地忽隐忽现，几乎并不灿烂。

8 lizard   

n.蜥蜴，壁虎

参考例句：

• A chameleon is a kind of lizard.变色龙是一种蜥蜴。
• The lizard darted out its tongue at the insect.蜥蜴伸出舌头去吃小昆虫。

9 chaos   

n.混乱，无秩序

参考例句：

• After the failure of electricity supply the city was in chaos.停电后，城市一片混乱。
• The typhoon left chaos behind it.台风后一片混乱。

10 metaphor   

n.隐喻，暗喻

参考例句：

• Using metaphor,we say that computers have senses and a memory.打个比方，我们可以说计算机有感觉和记忆力。
• In poetry the rose is often a metaphor for love.玫瑰在诗中通常作为爱的象征。

11 grid   

n.高压输电线路网；地图坐标方格；格栅

参考例句：

• In this application,the carrier is used to encapsulate the grid.在这种情况下，要用载体把格栅密封起来。
• Modern gauges consist of metal foil in the form of a grid.现代应变仪则由网格形式的金属片组成。

12 prospects   

n.希望，前途(恒为复数)

参考例句：

• There is a mood of pessimism in the company about future job prospects. 公司中有一种对工作前景悲观的情绪。
• They are less sanguine about the company's long-term prospects. 他们对公司的远景不那么乐观。

13 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

14 pointed   

adj.尖的，直截了当的

参考例句：

• He gave me a very sharp pointed pencil.他给我一支削得非常尖的铅笔。
• She wished to show Mrs.John Dashwood by this pointed invitation to her brother.她想通过对达茨伍德夫人提出直截了当的邀请向她的哥哥表示出来。

15 extolling   

v.赞美( extoll的现在分词 )；赞颂，赞扬，赞美( extol的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• He never stops extolling the virtues of the free market. 他不停地颂扬自由市场的种种好处。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• They kept extolling my managerial skills. 他们不停地赞美我的管理技能。 来自辞典例句

16 investors   

n.投资者，出资者( investor的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• a con man who bilked investors out of millions of dollars 诈取投资者几百万元的骗子
• a cash bonanza for investors 投资者的赚钱机会

17 sinister   

adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的

参考例句：

• There is something sinister at the back of that series of crimes.在这一系列罪行背后有险恶的阴谋。
• Their proposals are all worthless and designed out of sinister motives.他们的建议不仅一钱不值，而且包藏祸心。