[00:01:50] Host: Let's start with your artist statement. You describe yourself as "pathologically curious". I love this term. Tell us what that term means for you.

[00:02:00] Cedric: That was a really endearing term that was given to me by someone who teaches, in my senior middle school, but they used to run Pan in Highland Park. Brian Gentner was one of the first people who I finally felt comfortable in LA to do artist visits with, because I usually avoid curators. It's a little bit of self-sabotage and trying not to meet professionals.

After we talked, he described me as like, "Oh, so what you're saying is, you're pathologically curious?" I'm just kidding, but I've never heard it put that way, and I like all of the different terms that people come up with. Some of them are controversial. I don't like the term neuro-spicy, but some people refer to me that way. I thought that neuro-spectrum is an interesting evolution of neurodivergent.

Some people don't like the term "neurodivergent" because one of the people, and there's many people that came up with the term, but one of them, I guess, was one of these trans-exclusionary radical feminists or something. Even that term I've heard has been re-termed to FART, and it's like feminists by, something, something.

[00:03:15] Host: [laughs]

[00:03:16] Cedric: Nothing radical about them as feminists, so someone else came up with another term. One thing that you'll notice, is that, terminology keeps changing, not just whenever someone is being canceled, but it's a living thing. Some people talk about language as a living thing when they're talking about pronouns. From the article that Dr. Yolanda Pierce brings up, there was a group that's beginning to say that we're going to revisit the definition of autism, because it's this evolving concept.

I think that's one of the things that excites me the most about honing in on the misnomer of attention deficit hyperactive disorder. We already know that there's something quite dangerous about using the term "disorder", because you're creating internalized level of, "You are bad," and there's no way around it.

[00:04:11] Host: Something is wrong with you, this needs to be fixed.

[00:04:15] Cedric: Simply the fact that it's embedded in someone, it's not a societal thing. The thing that people glossed over for a while was the fact that, they got rid of ADD, they got rid of Asperger's, and they all lumped it into ADHD, but not everyone has hyperactivity. To me, that's an opening, if something official even has a slight kink in it, and something's wrong, that's the place where you can go, "Wait, if you're making this up, we can make this up."

If you wanted this to be the official term, you'd be more precise than this. What is it precisely? That's where you get into things like, well, it's just an interest-based neurotype, and that's confusing. I have not found the other neurotypes, so I don't think it's like a category. I think it's just a nice way that people describe that it's not a disorder. On the other hand, people mistake negative terms with terms that are being reclaimed.

Someone might be like, "Don't use the word 'disabled' for yourself," but disability is not even a term that's being reclaimed. It's a reality for, if people are disabled by the society we live in. It's a way of talking about what happens to someone. I think Johanna Hedva has the best description of it, where they've described, "I myself am not disabled as a person, that's not my identity. It might be a lived experience that I can share with other people who might also identify as disabled, but we are disabled by the limits of the structures in society."

You can't take it that personally because it's not you. You're going to do the best you can. If someone says, "Oh, that's amazing, you're so vulnerable," they're still just stating what something is. They're not really describing something that they've done. I didn't make disabled work, in the sense that, I didn't either make works that don't function in the way that works should function.

There are ways that I'm trying to probably make visual or make accessible, stuff that I've wondered about. The one thing that I am doing, is that I'm trying to get rid of the shame around what something might look like. Is there shame in showing unfinished work that you were very ambitious about making? That's my attempt, I'm going to attempt to show all of it.

I'm still embarrassed about the amount of maximalism that's in my show, but because so many friends are like, "That's you, that's how your brain works." I'm leaving it in because friends have told me, they would like to see it. It feels weird to have stuff that I'm not entirely sold on, if it works or not, but that's the reality of art, and exhibition-making.

If you want an experiment, you just have to do it, to see how it turns out. I'm not sure if I'll do a show again exactly like this, with the modular mini golf course in the back, things that are touchable with glass, in which some of the glass, I forgot to put like a sign, this is so recently fired. I haven't taken down the razor blade edges.

[music]

[00:07:34] Host: I want to talk about that concept of, like you said, that your friends said this is how your brain works, this is the representation, because this exhibit really did feel like a personal experience of your mind, of how you think, how you work, and how you function. You even include your workspace as a part of the exhibit. Is this how you approach all art? Is it an expression of where your mind goes? Is it a way to release? How do you approach art, in general?

[00:08:14] Cedric: I think, in the most general way, this show is exactly how I've thought why exhibitions are exciting. I don't love solo exhibits, because I feel like, often, I just get really tired, and then it's just this need to do marketing, and to present stuff that I don't know if it's going to work or not. The thing I do like to do, is think about, "This is an opportunity. How do I use all the different things that are specific to this context?" Because that's going to make what kind of work interests me is very context-specific work that I couldn't do in any other way.

I would not necessarily have my visible studio, or notes, or any of those things. Had Marcus Herse, the director of the Guggenheim Gallery, not tell me, "We are currently on a summer break, your show is going to be the first one that's going to open." Unbeknownst to him, I was just complaining to someone that I don't like solo shows.

I think it's weird that people are expected to get a solo show, let's say, every year in order to be considered a professional. The number of spaces versus the number of artists are so few, that it's a really unrealistic aspect to expect, unless you want there to only be a 1% of artists. When I was told I get two months, my brain was like, "what is happening?"

I had just gotten off a residency, and I was thinking, "I don't know where I'm going to move next with this idea of an ADHD conference." If I was to do something, it has to be so much more resourced, I would want there to be people I could just talk to, so I could be more of a participant, rather than a administrator, and for sure, if I'm going to do a show, I would need at least, and more than two weeks of an install time. When's the last time I ever got two weeks to install work? Then, all of a sudden, I think this is because of my other friend, Kim Zumpfe, who also works at Chapman.

All of a sudden Marcus is presenting this idea that there's this new humanities and mental health minor, and what I want to maybe do some kind of programming, like maybe the ADHD conference, or maybe some kind of work. I thought he was talking about a group show, and I can do one piece. Then, when he told me, "Oh, no, this is for a solo show." The part of my brain that was just like, "I'm freaking ironic that I was just making fun of solo shows, and now one just falls in my lap."

For a while, I was like, "How do I accept it?" The other thing that I fear is, I come up with too many big ideas that I can't really pull off. I immediately thought, "How do I bring in all these artists? How do I bring in all these thinkers?" Then, I had to remind myself, "How do I do less with more?" Me eating lunch with people, me going on a walk, those are the planned events.

Me giving a choose your own adventure artist talk, that's going to make it easier for me to not have to prepare anything. I just send someone a zip file, they open it, they choose which works I talk about. All of those are ways that I don't expend more energy than I may have. I really feel like, I'm still coming into my idea of what does my work look like, and it's mostly affected by resourcing.

That is a show where you can see, Marcus was like, "Let's make a budget for printing things out, so we can hand them out to people." I used to print all of those zines by hand. They would take me a good, an hour and a half to make four zines.

[00:11:51] Host: Wow.

[00:11:53] Cedric: Now, they're just printed, and I can hand them out really quickly, and I'm already--

[00:11:58] Host: It's a wonderful resource too. I love it.

[00:12:00] Cedric: Yes. I still feel like it's slightly outdated, because even in two years, there's more information that I would love to get into, that's very political, and maybe involves autism, or trauma way more. That is a great precursor, because the entire zine begins with things that are very straightforward, where you're kind of convincing people who don't believe you. By the time you get to the end, it's much more complex and existential.

To me, that was the actual beginning of all these projects was during the pandemic. I came up with like, "I want to make a zine." Zines seem like a way that you don't have to ask for permission for all of these different really important resources, as long as you cite them. I was a little shocked that I was like, "Our college is going to print this? All right. I'm more than happy to let you figure out how this gets disseminated."

[music]

[00:12:55] Host: Do you remember at what age art came into your life, and was it always this opportunity to express, and release, and manage how your brain was working?

[00:13:12] Cedric: I am a little amazed that I can't always see all the systems that I work in, or make, and a lot of friends and teachers have really managed a lot of the things that happen around me. I'm realizing, as you ask this question, one of my first experiences with really getting into art, is maybe a story of ADHD as well.

I can't remember her name, but I was getting in trouble in, I'm going to say it was probably fourth grade, or third grade, but I'm supposed to be in class drawing a shoe, and the shoe gets filled in with patterns. I keep talking to other students and distracting them, so I got in trouble. When I got in trouble, I had to stay in during recess, and do the art that I didn't do. During that time I was super quiet, and got really engaged.

In the end, I'm pretty sure the school district ended up buying that piece that I made, because the art teacher ended up recommending which pieces should join their collection. This is a really early on experience in which someone is helping me. I didn't even know at the time that I have some kind of hyperfocus, but I was just more than happy to doodle. Somehow it must have also been an interesting way of observing what a shoe is made up of, because I think we had to draw the outer shoe, as well as the patterns inside of it.

I can't remember it very much right now. I know I have a photo of it, but I actually thought you were going to ask a question like, "When did you get diagnosed?" There's so many moments, where things are not happening, or things are happening, but I'm not aware of it. I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was probably given ADHD meds, but I was never given a pamphlet on like, "We've just diagnosed you. Good luck with preexisting health conditions, because this will cost more."

[00:15:08] Host: It's just, take this pill. [crosstalk]

[00:15:09] Cedric: Yes. I basically was failing student teaching. There was like a year-long student teaching process when you graduate from Michigan State University, and then you go into an internship, and I was not going to finish. After talking with a therapist about my panic attacks, they recommended one medication. It just made me really tired. They recommended some other one.  Next thing I know, I'm able to actually finish the entire year and focus. Even though there's an Adderall shortage right now, I can vouch that medications definitely helped me finish something. I also left it, once I was able to just do my own thing. I didn't take Adderall again when I was just making paintings in my bedroom, knowing that I finished the certification.

I've never entered a K-12 classroom as an official teacher, other than giving maybe brief talks, or workshops. It's surreal to me that, that was me navigating the world of, "Do I need medications, or do I not?" Then, other people are going through this. Often, when I do my little neurodivergent walks, one of the main things people ask me is like, "Should I be on medications or not?"

I don't remember there being such like moments of like, "This is when I know I'm ADHD, this is when I know I'm an artist. This is how I know I'm thriving." It almost seems like the thing that's the most invisible is the structure that people make for you to help. I thought it was ingenious that a friend even came up with this idea, where go for a hike, eat protein, be out in nature, and say you'll talk about mental health, and people might be in the mindset where they feel like they can be vulnerable, and talk about it.

It works every time, so it made me wonder, should we change the way that people enter this idea of knowing, and make it more like less-- I don't know if it's less stigmatized, or if it's just making space, and not enforcing that this thing has to be talked about. During the walks, we don't even necessarily talk about it, it's just a possibility. If you had questions, you can ask me.

Since I'm not an expert, I'm just going to talk about my own lived experience, and it's going to be extremely anecdotal, but that has enough novelty in it, that it's so different from everyone else's exploration of, "I went to see this person, that's a specialist. This specialist gave me this $3,000 autism test. After the autism test, I now have to figure out will I disclose my autism to my employer or not." These are really heavy decisions that get made, and I feel like I'm always trying to avoid the really direct stuff, to maybe find really indirect ways to still get at it. It won't have to be so daunting.

[music]

[00:17:48] Host: I want to talk about this, you brought it up just now about when you're in your room and working, you can get your stuff done. You brought this up earlier, and also in that article with Dr. Yolanda Pierce, she talks about where is disability located. Is it located within individuals, or within society? It's this concept or idea that, when left alone, or in the small circles, people can function and be happy, but it's the intolerance of society that is the problem, or the pressures, or the anxiety that society brings.

It makes me think about the pandemic, and when everybody was locked down. I mean, there were these few-- There were some really vocal people who said, "Open up, and let's get back to normal." There were a lot of people who thrived, because they were in their small little bubbles, and didn't have to interact with all of the noise around us. What was your experience, I know you said you were making your zines, but what was your experience during the pandemic?

[00:19:00] Cedric: I've always been fascinated how different everyone's experiences are. I should say that, for example, some of my artist friends were like, "Screw this lockdown." They went on the biggest road trip ever, and they would visit the Grand Canyon. I'm a little sad, I didn't think about the fact that everyone was going to be doing what everyone was asked to do, which is stay in, but then you might get a few people who are going to do their own thing.

I personally found that the reason I probably got into the zine, was because there was a lot of people who were sharing resources with each other online. One of them was a posted coronavirus schedule for people with ADHD. I set my own phone up with maybe, I don't know, it's like 30 alarms throughout a whole day. It would tell me, "All right, you've just woken up. Feet on the ground, get to the kitchen, and then do one hour of just wasting time, having fun."

I was like, "Wait, you can start your day that way?" Then, it'd be like, "All right, next transition. You're meant to set up your work area." All right, now 15 minutes is up, work on something you're avoiding, 10 minutes, is it? What was fun was that, I would often get so hyper-focused on the thing that I'd been avoiding, but because I started it so early, it's almost like a trick. I was like, "Oh, I finished paying these bills, or I finished doing this, or applying for this grant, or filling out this unemployment stuff, because I started it thinking I'd only do it for 10 minutes."

There is other people who were telling me, "Oh my God, I was going crazy, because I think that people have actual harm that happened to them, if you are just stuck in your space. These were friends who ended up really needing personal interaction, where just a phone call wasn't enough. They need to have presence.

[00:20:54] Host: See the face, and, yes.

[00:20:56] Cedric: Yes. I felt really bad for those friends, because even though they were the friends who would defy lockdowns, and visit someone with food, and it's like, "You made this with your hands." [chuckles] This is how we're going to get each other sick. I'm going to accept it, because you're in my pod, but we're not really supposed to be doing this.

I just know that, I know that there were certain people that when they're told, "Oh, now you get to design your own time the way you know your very-- You can have more agency over dictating what to do with your time in your space." That didn't work for all people. The reason it didn't work for all people was, if someone doesn't know how to set a structure for themselves, because some structures are too structured, but they can't do it without any structure, how do you find that fine line?

I just recently saw a thing that was very helpful. It was a coach, an ADHD or autism coach that said that they helped their clients with flexible schedules, so that it helps put them in the mindset for working, and then they can do this thing. That helped me, because I was just trying to prepare a lesson plan just now, and I was like, "Oh, yes, I need to remember what is the mindset I want to put them in?"

Whatever the activity is that they're going to engage in, I have to get them there first. Otherwise, I can't expect them to deliver on a certain kind of output. I really do feel like a lot of stuff gets aided by external structure, but it still comes down to how do you pull it off. I was just reading another book, I think it's called Neuroqueer Heresies, it's semi-related. They were talking about how they don't think it's either nature or nurture, the ways that both sides tended, like really get entrenched on their take on where does this sit? If it's disability, or if it's ADHD, if it's inherited, where does that sit? They were just saying, they believe it might be 80% environment, and 20% inherited. I think that's a nice way of thinking about even this question of where does disability lie. I think, maybe you should consider that 80% of your efforts should be on how much structure it will take you to pull something off. Then, the last 20%, is you needing to pull it off.

That might also mean with this idea of do less with more, which is actually a saying from Creative Capital, instead of do more with less, what if you only did 20% of what you're really good at, and the 80% that you are supposed to also do, that gets-- Either a friend body doubles with you, and so you're able to do that remaining work with assistance, or it gets delegated, or you just find some other way in which that 80%, you just accept that 80% of your time might suck.

I don't know, I just like the ratio of it, where you're in charge of a smaller amount than all of it, but you also-- That part that you're in charge of, is one-quarter of the other things that exist. It seems like a nice way to imagine, "Oh, I might be in charge of this, but what I do," it reminds me a little bit of the discussions around climate change. Everyone's like, "Whoa, are you doing enough personally?"

Then, there's the easy rebuttal. "At least, I didn't spill 60 millions of barrels of oil like ExxonMobil did." What is an individual, versus the larger structure? If it's 2080, maybe it's like, "Okay, if we all are in solidarity together, we might still make up 20%, but that's still a huge amount, and enough to turn the tide." If it's the 80% are larger corporations where it gets muddied of who's the consumer, and who's the producer that's creating waste, then it's a bigger structural issue that you might have to attack in a different way.

Because what you could affect, everyone's vegan, everyone's only eating what's in season. That might come down to 20%. That's nice to think about like, unless you were at 100% changed everything, maybe you could still only affect 20% of all of global emissions at the time. It still seems more realistic than being like, "I will guilt someone into not solving this crisis or that," when they might be extremely limited in the influence that they could have, whereas the larger systems are larger for a reason.

They are almost like-- I was just thinking about, if capitalism was seen as an idea, then how do you make some other idea sexier than capitalism? How do you make some other thing replace this 80%, even though it's a daunting task? To me, it's at least a little closer to getting at structural issues, because the incentives are there to keep 80% of it functioning in the way that it dominates change of what makes change happen. At least, it's more [chuckles] realistic than trying to guilt yourself into thinking, "If you don't do this, everything's going to suck."

[00:26:20] Host: [chuckles] We're all trying. We're all trying to be as good as we are. I'd like to think that we're all trying.

[00:26:30] Cedric: Yes, I'd like to think that too, but I also feel like relating mental health to climate change, I always thought, if you wanted to work while in climate change, you'd almost have to get your own shit together, because I would notice, I would waste so much more when I was depressed. I would take so many more convenient shortcuts that might have some underlying thing that's not so great, but if I worked on how I felt internally, then it was easier to change things for the better.

That's not to say, "I'm only going to stop being wasteful when I'm not depressed." I just think there is a relationship to how we might feel internally or with our soul, and how we're taking care of the planet. I do wonder if there's some kind of rift between the alienation we have from us and land, and from us or animals, or us and lots of interconnected things.

Maybe that is something that needs to also heal. Not just, internally, I need to figure out my individual problem. I don't know if it is going to be an individual problem. I think it's actually going to be a systemic problem.

I'm fascinated about how other people might take that, because I've personally not made very much work about climate change, but I'm so curious like how does someone make effective work about climate change. Because people are able to talk about mental health, and actually see that in an empathetic way, where like it allows people to engage with issues that maybe they couldn't talk about before.

Could you get someone who might think differently than you? Let's say, it's like some kind of extreme right-winger. I always like the idea of convincing them like, "Yes, your conspiracy theories are right. Facebook is spying on you. They're selling your data to-- Maybe we'll disagree on if there's lizard people or not. You should not like these large corporations, and you should worry about how they're censoring you, and you do feel like you're mentally going crazy from the amount of news that is really bogging you down.

Let's shift that towards, what are they covering up then if they want you to think about Ukraine, instead of climate change." I keep thinking that you could still bring people into the populist realm of being skeptical, but for a better cause. Because if the better cause is just like trying to protect, I don't know, the free market, part of me is like, "Well, that was a fun exercise. We didn't get as far as I hope," but I don't think the free market needs help. It's the hand of God. It's the invisible hand of the market.

We didn't have any say over this or that. There's some part of me that really likes the idea of finding loopholes around people thinking that they're really further away from each other than they are. Yes, I just really think people are more diverse than we have labels for, or there's more overlaps, not even on find the middle ground of where we agree. I totally take a different approach.

I want people to be mad, but I want their anger to be towards the people who have power. I don't want it just to be anger for the sake of like, "Great, now we're all up in arms, and we're just waiting for the right situation."

[00:29:50] Host: Or putting the blame on groups of people that [laughs] are just born in--

[00:29:57] Cedric: Yes. It's really-- Scapegoating is the one thing that will always be a red flag. That means I can't really talk with someone for very long, because once someone really hinges on scapegoating, if they talk about their own victimhood, it will always be in relation to that scapegoat. It's impossible to then listen to their plight, because they fully can't go into, "Well, this one thing happened, and I didn't like how that felt." Which you can talk about.

That's a generative, the minute it goes into, "Well, you know I have not been able to get the healthcare I need, because all these trans people have been taking up airspace of what matters." I always want to be like, "A trans person literally stopped your doctor from getting you--," it's really hard to talk about any minority group, unless someone has the right person talking to them about it.

I think the messengers of all of these things really matter. I don't think you can just have someone on the internet tell you, "You're homophobic," and that's going to do something. I think you need people to really remember what it feels like to have friends, and how they made those friends, and then again, have the accountability and responsibility in which you lose those friends, based on the actions you take.

You need to have that level of engagement if people are friends with someone, and then that friend lets someone know explicitly, this is why we are fighting. We're fighting because you said this which affects my people. Then, we can love each other from afar, but currently, we can't do this. Let's just have conversations, as if it's just a conversation like we have.

[00:31:46] Host: Right. Let's talk about music instead, [laughs] or art.

[00:31:53] Cedric: I think even art gets people really angry too. I don't think art has ever been that-- Always positive. I think it's good to keep in mind that sometimes art was meant to agitate people, and that conversation is worthwhile.

[music]

[00:32:07] Host: If you would like to continue the conversation, visit chapman.edu/Wilkinson to learn more. To access recommended books from our guests for further learning, and for more socially conscious content, visit us at pastforward.org, or follow us at Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast.

[music]