When you're an artist, you have a platform that can reach millions.
There's something pleasing about large, well-lit spaces. I love that dealers are willing to take massive chances in order to give this much room to their artists. Most of all, I love that more galleries showing more art gives more artists a shot.
I like the platform to show your art and everything that goes along with that. To show your voice and hopefully find films that are more politically driven, films that maybe inspire.
Sundance is just a great place for your work to be seen. Not much more to say about it than that.
For me, the Sundance Institute is just an extension of something I believed in, which is creating a mechanism for new voices to have a place to develop and be heard.
I am an activist. I have a really big pulpit with my fiction and I love knowing that I can make people think.
Music is a great vehicle for communications, and I have a certain platform. I have an opportunity and I have to take it.
I have my views and obviously my music has connotations that lean toward what I believe, but I've learned through other artists' mistakes that I'm never going to use my career as a platform for politics, especially at shows. People come to hear music. It's my job to entertain them, and it's my escape too.
If I have a voice to shine light on things or draw attention or provoke, as an artist people look to - I should do that.
Beyonce has a platform; what's a better way to speak on your platform than through your music?
I am fully committed to Hannah Montana. It's what gave me this amazing opportunity to reach out to so many people.
We are so blessed as artists and entertainers, and we should use our powers to raise awareness of things where we can.
Showtime has given new, young filmmakers - black, white, across the board - an opportunity to make films, as well as actors who want to cross over into directing.
I really understand what that process is all about and how important it is, especially with young folk and creative folk that love looking for some platform that makes it easier for them to express themselves.
If you have something important to say, Broadway and New York are great places to say it.
I think artists are always investigating how to have an economic, political platform. At one time, artists were supported by the Church. Then they were supported also by the state.
It feels nice to be able to call Brainfeeder my home. It's giving art the platform. That's what Brainfeeder has always been for me: hope for art.
I think our duty as American citizens is to be involved and engaged in anything that affects us. As an artist, I have to use my platform, and as a dad, a brother, and a black man, I have to be as socially woke and present as possible.
We stand on our songs and we stand on the songs that we wrote for other people. That gives us a higher platform.
As soon as I left Georgia, my narrative became about taking risks and the fight for creative bedroom artists with no platform.
It's my job as an artist and as an actor to use this platform to make people learn and grow, to change their perspectives on how things are in whatever way I can.
I have a more direct avenue to expression as an artist than I ever would as a politician.
There are a lot of actors out there who don't have an arena to present their stuff.
What I voice, I voice though my art, if that's not too vainglorious a word. But I don't think it is.
I think when you're in my position as an artist, I can say what I want and talk about the issues that matter.
