The Encyclopedia of Invisibility — A Home for Lost Stories | Tavares Strachan | TED

I really love lost stories.

So I'm from this very tiny, hot island

in the middle of the Caribbean called Nassau.

Has anyone here ever heard of it?

Yeah?

I distinctly remember the place being so small that I could land there,

shout from the airport,

my brothers would somehow hear me

and they would know to come and pick me up.

(Laughter)

The North Pole, however,

is an inhospitable frozen tundra that's incredibly difficult to get to.

Not to surprise any of you,

but I am the first Bahamian presumably to set foot on the North Pole.

(Applause)

It's true.

(Applause)

Now, if you were to speak to my parents about what I was like growing up,

they would tell you that I was mischievous, precocious,

the kid devouring all the information

and never, ever taking a no for an answer.

But if you got them into a secret room,

they would also tell you that I was a pain in the butt and a troublemaker.

Early in my practice,

it was important for me to create an artwork

that would share the sense of vastness

that I'd experienced in the Arctic with my community.

So on a second expedition,

I decided to move this 4.5-ton piece of ice

from this frozen Arctic river

and bring that to my neighborhood.

(Laughter)

I'd work with a team of scientists and engineers,

and together we would install this block of ice

in a solar-powered freezer unit outside of my childhood classroom

on this 100-degree day.

Now, the response was a mix of excitement and wonder.

The folks in my neighborhood had never really seen ice quite like this.

It was my way of telling the story of our deep connections to each other.

Now, while all of this was going on,

I realized I was having a separate journey of discovery.

It was on this expedition where I began to hear whispers

of an unknown polar explorer named Matthew Henson.

Now, up until this point,

the fact that the first person to set foot in the North Pole

looked like me, had me aghast.

I mean, come on, look at this guy.

(Laughter)

In 1909, Henson, and fellow explorer Robert Peary,

had done what no others had done up to that point.

They had made it to the North Pole.

Now, this son of a sharecropper had managed over seven Arctic expeditions.

Yet his massive, massive contributions became lost to history.

And I ain't really cool with that.

So since this lightning-bolt moment,

my work became a quest to tell these lost stories.

And to tell all of you the truth, if you really pay attention,

you start to see these lost stories all around you.

And when you find them,

you realize that they can speak with a very loud mouth.

Now growing up, my grandparents' house was the place

where my entire Bahamian family would meet

every Sunday for Sunday dinner.

Now I've got a big family, so,

13 aunts and uncles and 52 cousins would all squeeze

into my grandparents' tiny home.

And for sure the house was small,

but it was a sanctuary filled with life and love.

Now, I believe I was around 12 years old when my grandfather came home

with the first set of encyclopedias in our community.

This was a big deal.

My uncles, who were some big dudes,

would never let us get close to these books without wearing gloves, guys.

Can you all believe that?

I couldn't wait for my turn to fan through these pages.

And as I would fan through these pages,

the questions would arrest me, like,

who wrote all of this,

and how did they write all of it?

And was everything in the entire universe arrested in these pages?

And as I would fan through this book further,

a question really hit me.

No one from my community was in these pages,

and if they were missing, then what else was lost?

So years later,

with infinite more questions,

I decided to make my own encyclopedia.

It's called the Encyclopedia of Invisibility.

This is a 3,000-page,

leather-bound book

that has over 17,000 entries.

And yes, it was difficult,

but I read every single last one of them.

Now, the first entry that I wrote was on,

you guys may have guessed it, the explorer Matthew Henson,

the one that I learned about my first Arctic expedition.

From there, I thought, who and what else should be included in these pages?

I would make list after list of things that were excluded from history

and research them.

At first, it was just me alone.

Then I needed an assistant, and then I needed an entire team.

And together we would comb the globe looking for people,

places and things that were mostly untold.

Now this is arranged alphabetically,

and the organizing principle was to try to include the kinds of things

that you may not ever learn at school.

So let's look at this entry on the Mino.

It's a powerful, all-female military regiment

from the Kingdom of Dahomey, which is current day Benin.

Then there's an entry on Robert Smalls.

Now the great Robert Smalls freed himself from slavery,

overtook a bunch of Confederate ships,

freed a whole bunch of slaves from those ships,

and then majestically marched on

to become one of the first Black congressmen in the United States.

Then there's an entry on rhinoceros.

Did any of you know there was a woolly rhinoceros?

No?

Then there's an entry on Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe is the mother of all rock and roll.

Then there's an entry on B-movies.

Now who can't handle a high-quality B-movie?

Then there's an entry on the great John Edmonstone,

the man that taught a very young Charles Darwin

the art of taxidermy and a whole lot more.

To come to think of it, the only entry missing from this book

is an entry that explains how you can put

a full pair of socks into a dryer

and somehow only one foot comes out.

(Laughter)

Now, after 12 years,

a limited edition of this encyclopedia was published as an artwork

occupying these territories between sculpture, book and installation.

And this experience truly convinced me

that there are an infinite amount of lost stories to be told,

and there's no real limits to how they can be told.

So in 2014,

I decided to create an artwork

in honor of astronaut Robert Henry Lawrence.

Now, Robert Lawrence was the first Black astronaut.

He never realized his dream of space

as he was killed in a flight accident in 1967 at the age of 32.

Now, my goal was to honor Robert

and to bring his profound legacy to space.

Now, those of you who know anything about space,

you would know that that's easier said than done,

because after all, there ain’t a bunch of island folks

walking around with rockets in their back pockets.

So step one was to find someone with a rocket.

And who has rockets?

The head of SpaceX, Gwynne Shotwell.

And then I had to figure out who was going to be

as interested in these lost stories as I was.

The head of SpaceX, Gwynne Shotwell.

We were introduced by the LA County Museum

and after four years of rigorous testing, planning and sculpting,

a satellite was produced in honor of Robert.

Now, this satellite was made of gold,

and it was important for me

to have this satellite follow an ancient Egyptian tradition of storytelling

by imbuing the essence of a person into a container.

Now, this satellite was called Enoch,

after the story of a mythological character

whose walk with the gods was so close

that he never, ever died.

On November 30, 2018,

Enoch blasted into space

in the belly of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket into orbit.

Almost 50 years after his passing,

the legacy of Robert Henry Lawrence is celebrated amongst the stars.

(Applause)

Now, I've spent my entire life being obsessed with these lost stories.

Can these lost stories hold the key that unlocks our sense of belonging?

Lost stories definitely need to be told.

Not in small ways.

But in ways that match the ambitions of the people that we speak for.

Now, I know all of you have access to lost stories,

so please,

let's not let them be lost forever.

Even if that means you're called the pain in the butt

or a troublemaker.

And thank you.

(Applause)