 Hi, good evening everyone. I hope you can see and hear me okay. My name is Penny Baba Honey. I am an Iranian German theater producer. And I will be chairing this evening's panel on patriarchy and the climate crisis, which has been co-produced as part of a series between Liverpool Arab Arts Festival and Creative Destruction called Artists Ideas Now. To give you just the smallest introduction to the event. So the co-hosts this evening, Liverpool Arab Arts Festival was founded in 1998 and is the UK's longest-running Arab arts and cultural festival. And this year's festival, which has been running since July, both digitally and also in person in Liverpool, is dedicated to the complexities of the climate emergency in the Middle East and North Africa region today. And it's very much looking at the subject matter from an artist led perspective. My kind of involvement with this year's festival has been as a creative producer of 22, which is a creative anthology of rapid responses from artists and activists across the Arab League. Providing conversation starters and kind of openings and entries into the really big, vast and sometimes kind of impossible to grapple with topic that is the impact of the climate crisis on the Middle East and North Africa. And so I'm really, really pleased today to be joined by three artists who have contributed to the 22 projects who are our panelists. And if all the technology goes well, and they should start appearing on your screens once I introduce them. So first up, we've got Alah Boussir, who is a documentary photographer based in Ireland. I don't know what order you see them in, but next on my screen I've got Juliana Yazbek, who is an actor, writer and musical artist. And finally, we have Mala Alasaker, who is a visual artist based in Kuwait. Hi everyone. We've just seen each other, but it's great to see you again, formally and properly as part of our conversation. So, I guess, maybe a good way to start might be to just throw some facts out there. We're not coming today kind of into this talk as climate experts by any means, you know, everyone here is very much an artist and a creative. And some of us have been thinking and making work around the climate crisis for some time. For others, this project was the kind of the first entry into tackling that subject because, and this is quite astonishing to me, forever remain astonishing. Some of you have just never been asked. Nobody had ever asked you to think about the climate crisis or respond to the climate crisis, which is surreal because, as I'm about to share, it's very much a kind of a topic that affects us and our homes, whether they are places that we currently live in or whether they're places that we have ancestry in. So, just to kind of get us rolling, a few facts about the kind of the climate crisis today in the Middle East and North African region courtesy of the Arab Center in Washington DC. So at the current rates that we're going, we are looking at a potential four degree Celsius increase in temperatures in the MENA region by the end of this century. And that is compounding effects that are already being felt. And I think this is a conversation that Meha and I had when we first spoke, but about five years ago, Kuwait recorded the highest temperatures that had ever been recorded in the eastern hemisphere. Kuwait and Iraq both were two of the highest temperatures that had ever been recorded in kind of modern history. And so, you know, the global warming is, the region's already quite dry and quite warm, but the warming is very much being felt as we speak. And when you put that in the context of a region that is incredibly dependent on food imports, that makes things even more, even more urgent. According to the kind of the papers that were cited by the Arab Center in Washington DC, more than 50 million people in the region were considered chronically undernourished in 2019. The region is one of the most water stressed in the world, so 70% of the world's water stress countries are in the MENA region. And that is already factoring in the reality that 80% of the water used in the region goes towards agriculture for about the 5% of the land that is arable. I was always really terrible at facts and equations, but those numbers are kind of pretty stark. 60% of the population in the MENA region has little to no easy access to drinkable water. And alongside this, five countries in the region also hold more than half of OPEC's crude oil reserves as of 2018. So we're talking about a region in the world that is already being affected by climate crisis very severely. We'll continue to feel really severe effects, but at the same time, it's also incredibly oil dependent. And there is no kind of obvious exit strategy for how that might change rapidly at the scale that we needed to. Having said all that, we're not the climate experts here. But what we do have is three amazing kind of brilliant artists for whom gender and meat triarchy and women's roles in society have played a kind of crucial aspect in their work so far, which is why I thought you might all be brilliant contributors to what is essentially a living room conversation. I've had the pleasure of speaking to all three of you individually about the climate crisis, about your thoughts on it, and you have all kind of contributed beautiful works that everyone can see on the Liverpool Airports Festival website. But before we go on to the kind of inevitable question of patriarchy and the climate crisis, I thought I would just ask one by one. What if you recall your kind of first reaction to hearing from me with an invitation from Laugh about contributing on the topic of the climate crisis and how you initially thought that fit into your work. And even if that response was, I don't really think this fits into my work. I'd be really kind of curious to hear on reflection what that was like. Juliana, do you want to kick us off? Honestly, I was, can you hear me all right first of all? Yeah. Okay. I just wanted to chat with you and Laugh and Maha. Honestly, I was like, why has this never happened? I just want to sit down with three other Mina women, also creatives, but also just women with these lived experiences that we've been having for our entire lives, whether that's displacement or in the motherland, like you said, and talk about what we're going through. Honestly, that was it. I was like, I didn't even think that anybody else would watch it or be an audience. I was like, I want to sit down and chat with these amazing women about this. Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely, it's definitely something that has come across that have come across a lot and talking to all the kind of brilliant artists for part of 22. We just we just never get the space to sit down and talk and figure out how we feel. And figure out something to say, whether that's really eloquently and backed up by lots of facts and science or actually just really instinctively and intuitively. What was it like? What was it like for you, Ella, when you got the kind of question, both about this panel but also about the project more widely because I know we've had some interesting chats about what you might contribute. When I got your email, I literally went blank. I'll be honest. But I remember, so a lot of my work has got to do with human rights and so on. And I remember once I was reading a research about how climate change affects the meaner region women in their human rights. Like as simple, like most of the people that travel for water because there's no water in their area because of their climate change are women. Like it's something as simple as that that we don't think about it. And I remember reading the research and I said that the women are getting my younger because the male wanted them to be safer and having their own household and everything so they don't have to do those journeys, especially from one tribe to another. And it's a simple thing that we don't even like think about even like having electricity in the tents, like solar panels instead of actual like some places don't even have electricity. So something like that, like solar panels would change a lot. So that's what I first thought, but I can't do anything around that because I'm not in that area and especially because of that short amount of time. Two weeks was a penny, I remember. And so I started thinking and then it was me and you having conversations about traditions. And then I started thinking about my grandmother and the past and how like her clothing went on to me, the rest of the grandkids, a lot my living clothes was moved on from one person to another person to another person until it got to me. So I was like thinking the sustainability of the traditional clothes. And that's how my idea came about for the collaboration. So yeah, it's, I love, I love the photographs you've taken a lot and no small part because there is also some Kurdish representation in there which I'm always massively appreciative for. But yeah, it's so interesting that you kind of in your original research you picked up on these realities that women in the region face. I was reading just earlier today about this kind of this idea of like ownership versus responsibility for the land. And, you know, very, very little I think maybe as little as 5% of the kind of the privately held and own land and we know region is held by women. But women are often responsible for keeping the household going for going to get the water for making the most of the food that is available to them for feeding their families. And that kind of rarely ever gets recognized or factored in those realities. They're, they're very rarely acknowledged. And what about you, and we also had some really interesting conversations when we first started speaking, and kind of wondering like where, where the climate crisis is around you when it doesn't necessarily always feel present. I feel like when I when I got here, the first things I'm so sorry. My first thing came to my mind is, wow, such an amazing festival. I was like more focused about who you are. But then I kind of like freaked out is like climate change. Like, my work is not about that. But through the conversation, I realized that my work is about that it's just how a word can sound different, and how we perceive things based on the media and the way how we see it. But then within the conversation. That's what I'm doing. I am personally a sustainable person. I am into textile. I am rethinking about material. And, and the way how we are using things and waste in a way that I don't think in any conversation that there is this amount of waste of food of clothes of everything. And I was so excited that this conversation came from you guys, because usually these kinds of conversations always coming from the West, maybe having but but to have this kind of identity, people who I relate to. And I mean, we do have our voices just there is no one place that put it together. Yeah, absolutely. And I was just, I was just looking at the page for the piece that you did about rethinking materials. And it's so, it's so interesting to me that by no design of mine, actually, and all the three pieces that you all have contributed and have kind of some elements of rethinking and reclaiming and reconsidering heritage and our kind of our physical space around us. So, and, like you said, my how you, your thing was about rethinking materials. I love you look that kind of returning traditions and clothes and Juliana I love. I love your song, because it does not feel like initially we've talked about this when you first look at it you're like this is what's this got to do with climate change and but you speak really beautifully and about where actually kind of returning to our roots and kind of reclaiming heritage plays into into your works I mean you can kind of kick us off and tying in this kind of this overarching kind of question of like climate and patriarchy and what it means to be and you know women having these conversations and by kind of telling us a little bit about the story of your of your work of your song. Yeah. And I think you know there's so much language around. Okay, so the conversation largely I mean actually most conversations largely around the world are belong to a very small demographic let's just say a very small global demographic and then you've got all these people who are indigenous people of the global majority people like us. And I think in particular when we talk about women. We, we are also not white women and that's just shouldn't even be a thing but it completely is an often feminism can be monotone and yeah I you know so already if you know for example when when you and I penny we're having the initial conversations about like like a lot and how we're saying about what would you contribute as a narcissist as an artist isn't necessarily, or doesn't self identify as my work is about the climate. Ultimately, even if it's just about taking up space and being heard that is already a step towards liberation and also returning to self I mean liberation can be interpreted in so many different ways. And that conversation that's so often taken over by this tiny demographic. There's always this idea of complexity and it's complicated and everything is so complicated and it takes time. And I think it's really not. Oh my God is honestly that the answer to the climate crisis is two words. Land back. I was like, you know and indigenous people have been saying this for hundreds of years. How to look after the earth. Can you give it back to us please. And once I was like, oh my God, there's so much of this is tied into the world having been colonized and being colonized because it's not something that just ended. Then it everything just came together and I realized that you know this whole journey of like everything from no longer wanting to look white to no longer wanting to sound white to no longer what really is internalizing or normalizing the systems that don't belong to us all of the systems that are destroying the planet are not indigenous systems. They are colonial systems. Yeah, it just became so simple and I understood that there is no equality unless it's global. You know, and this obviously includes gender equality, but you can't separate. You know, oh the climate climate justice is one thing, but actually women can you actually like stand in line and wait because we just need to sort out this really urgent thing and then it doesn't exist it's all one struggle and you either have equality or you have a beautiful just natural healthy world or you don't. And that was really at the heart of the song that I contributed that that you very kindly welcomed and put on your platform but also just I think my work in general that's really the you thought of it. Yeah. It's so interesting when you when you spoke about time and Joanna my my brain immediately went to you maha and the piece that you've made which I think hopefully you remember how excited I was when I first like saw the initial like are you are you are you 100% sure that's a banana peel. And because you know in your kind of work exploring textiles and materials, and you were just playing you were just the way you told us to me is, you were just forward and you were playing and you were trying out different things and you came up with this lovely way of turning what is essentially waste into into a new kind of textile that has potential uses and I just thought about time and the way that so much of your work has focused on women's place in society, because you look a lot at the kind of the restrictions that society places on women that Juliana kind of so beautifully identified those societal restrictions or what's killing the planet that's what they are the kind of the restrictions that you look at them on the big scale. You are contributing to our unsustainable ways, and I was wondering whether, as you were making your contribution for for this project, whether you kind of had any any thoughts about time and what it meant as a woman as an artist to have time and to have space to create differently, and to think differently and whether that kind of sparked any ideas in you. Time is like one of the things that I've been thinking a lot about, and also the material because I'm also experimenting with natural dye and stuff, but it was funny that like I was showing you a lot of work and I was telling you about my new way of playing and because like sometimes when you start making art you start to rethink overthink everything and instead of producing work you just criticize yourself and it was just like the banana that I eat in the morning and it kept it in the car and then I start to see the transformation of the skin, the skin of like the peel of the banana, I see it as a skin that's similar to my skin and how it changed based on the time and how it starts soft and yellow and then start to be very stiff and fragile. And I start to play with that every day eat a banana and keep it in my studio and then start to weave and I started to like sometimes I would do some stitches and and just observe and have fun with it. But then every day more and more ideas start to come and when I start weaving it just hit me about the things that we wear every day that we even don't think and don't like consider how this fabric was made it was a threat. It's just like the way how they want to gather. And these simple things that we do every day and we don't think about like what kind of material is that I remember by I love fashion and younger I was like just buying because I like it looks good. And when I decided to switch to sustainability I realized that there's so many information that even hidden. Like it wasn't available to me younger, I didn't hear about these kinds of things. I was like hearing certain messages. And once I start to get excited about that I was like, okay, I'm damaging. The first thing I do when I go to stores just like check the label, check the material, and then think if I really need it or not. So all that also come back to hidden informations and the power of information and the idea that women are like specially in the Middle East, the Arab women, they're the one who run everything. But at the same time they are full of fear, because there's a lot of restrictions, and there's a lot of filter information going to them. So this kind of conversation I feel like it's where it's supposed to be to be surrounded by other Arab women and try to talk about it and show them like the Empower them in a way, in understanding how can they contribute to the bigger pictures of the climate and the universe. Yeah, absolutely. And that requires time and space. And it's so often the kind of thing that's not granted to us because, you know, one of the kind of the homeworks of patriarchal systems is it's kind of relentless productivity, and relentless effectiveness, efficiency, and never just the time to sit and to explore and to think and to reconsider to make different choices and actually the choices that women make by nature of kind of the world that they have in society. They have a huge impact on a kind of a personal level, less so on a political level, which is why I guess we always hear this kind of refrain of like imagine if a woman was in charge when that was going on, how differently it might have played out. And thinking about kind of textiles and materials and you got to spend some time with the subjects of your photographs. And, and you might have just been having a really fun time together, which is also completely completely legitimate but I'm wondering whether you got to kind of have any conversations or hear any stories about their relationships to the clothing that they were wearing and what they thought kind of when you initially spoke to them about doing a project around kind of climate and sustainability to do with their heritage. At first they were like so I told them what the project was about and they were like, like I was like I'm featuring traditional clothes, and it's about climate change. And they were like how the hell does traditional clothes go with climate change. So I didn't want to say it to them straight away. So, Shilan and Tebra and Rahaf as well, the three of them, the outfits are actually not theirs, it was given down to them, as much as like Tebra's Libyan outfit was given down from her sister. So Shilan's outfit was from her mother, the Kurdish outfit. And then Rahaf's outfit was actually embroidered by her grandmother. So it was like, I was like okay, do you not see there's a pattern there. And they're like, oh yeah there is. And I was like okay what are the materials that are used in these outfits. The Kurdish one we didn't know because it was Shilan's mother. The Libyan one we knew it was from silk. And it was even the thread is from gold and everything so all these are eco friendly. And then the Palestinian was as well, it was, I can't remember from the top of my head but it was material sourced from locally in Palestine. So I was like this, these are the small things that we take for granted and we don't think of. And that's how I kind of came back to the title returning to return to traditions because if we think of it, our traditional heritage was all made and locally sourced. So nothing was coming from the outside and it was all eco friendly and it was like if you had to bury it, it will dissolve. The other thing is about living clothes. It's not only something that comes with you from your head, like from whoever wore it beforehand like my grandmother. It was my auntie that gave me mine. But I have my grandmothers and you get it from some people get it before they get married and then some people get it when they get married there's a certain outfit each outfit has a different meaning to it. The one you get married in is also what covers you before you get buried. So they live for such a long time my grandmother got married in the 30s and she passed away in 2007. So you can imagine how how old her outfit was. That's how that's, yeah, that's the conversations we're having. That's amazing to think there was such a kind of a contrast between, you know, what you were talking about my health like the clothing that you used to wear and most of us still wear, because that's what's available to us versus how, how it was done before. And since you were kind of talking about roots and heritage, it made me think one of the other pieces and that's been contributed to 22 projects by an artist called Nadia Boyce called how to die slash DIY and you should see it. It's very cool, but something that she, she wrote for the project that really, really struck me and I kind of want to read it out to you and see what you make of it is around this kind of this struggle that we have between, you know, these ideas of what sustainability means of living locally of local of acting locally etc, whilst having displacement and movement and migration as part of our heritage. And so, Nadia, Nadia wrote, how do we express that we the people of the global majority are intimidated by the unbearable whiteness of green, which is a quote that you can kind of read more about it's linked in the piece, which thinks locally and doesn't speak for the native homes destroyed by colonial enterprise war and oppression. And that really when I first read that that sounds like a shutter down my spine, because, you know, when I when I kind of started to think about what a more environmental friendly existence for me and look like. Personally, it was very much about trying to live and exist and contribute as locally as possible, make a grassroots, you know, like where I can go to the local butchers and the fishmongers and the fruit and veg vendors avoid supermarkets trying to eat out and go to the cinema everywhere that's within walking distance, try and live within this kind of concept that's becoming very fashionable of like a 15 minute city where this idea is that like the perfect kind of sustainable existence is one where you can get to everything that you need get to work, get to education, get to kind of amenities within a 15 minute walk or bike ride. But there was always this kind of like this weirdness in me and around home and family, and the people that every once in a while I get on a really like carbon intensive flight to go visit because there are such an important part of who I am and so when I read this this beautiful thing that Nadia wrote, which thinks locally and doesn't speak for the native homes destroyed by colonial enterprise war and oppression. I just, it was such a beautiful kind of expression of not necessarily a solution. But this question of like, how do we, how do we do it? And how do we kind of hold our heritage and express it and stay connected to it. And while, while trying to kind of enact change on a local, local level. I don't know, I'll kind of throw it, throw it, throw it open for anybody who might have any kind of reactions or thoughts to that. It is so loud that the same cultures that destroyed community are now waking up to community. It's just a lot. I will only use the word loud. I'm not even going to give an opinion. I don't need to, but it is loud. And there is so much work that needs to be done outside of communities that have been stripped of their, their natural way of life. So much work that needs to be done. It is beautiful that we're even asking this question amongst ourselves. I still think the, the really the core work is this. Like, would I even be here if I could, if I could, I would be in my grandma's village eating zaatar. Okay, that like, do I even want to be in this city. Yes, you asked for my thoughts. But yeah, it's, it's really loud. And it's also, you know, there's this like cycle of, there's a lot of finger pointing towards global, global south for lack of better words, awful term, and indigenous peoples and like your practices are barbaric, and like you are the largest producers of waste and pollution. Again, it's really, really loud. Some indigenous communities literally cannot survive without traditional hunting practices. Other communities cannot survive without fast fashion and cheap production and, you know, things that aren't serving anyone, least of all them. And we all know why we know why we know why being an eco conscious person is now an extensive practice that is so against nature. And I really think that's where the work needs to start. I don't know like any white people are watching this like just look in the mirror and start there. Thank you. I think talking about being eco conscious, I feel like it's so much easier to be eco conscious in our countries than here. Like when Joao, Joao, Joa, I can never say your name. Me, Joao. You can call me Jewel. Jewel. It's because I'm just sexy. I saw apologies. I can look at the name and I can't read it. It's totally alright. Like she was talking about her grandmother's house and everything and all it hits me is me walking around my grandmother's house and it's all pomegranate and olive trees and peach tree and date like a, like a, I forgot what a nakhla is. Palm tree is a palm tree. And so on. And it's like we get our fruit from just, just walking my back garden, even like it's so much like you're walking on acres of land just all planted. It just, and then I come over here and I have to buy everything. Everything is packaged in plastic. Everything is fast fashion. It's interesting. Like it's the West that is causing the effects on the on the MENA region and the rest of the world. But they're not aware of it. It's just, oh, the weather is getting colder over here because of climate change. But what are the effects that you're doing back in other countries that you're not even aware of? So it's so, it's so, um, I don't know whether it was you, Maha, who was when we were talking said, you know, like, I go to the supermarket now and everything that my mother or your mother buys everything is wrapped in plastic. It's so fascinating to me because of this, this research that I that I mentioned at the beginning about how actually the MENA region has become so dependent on food imports now. And along with those foods being imported, they're also importing the plastic and the lifestyle and the packaging that comes with it. Right. What is it? What is it like now and like Kuwait, because I just had this really vivid memory of you talking about your mother. I was talking about how I like when I came, when I came back from the States and I mean where I already established my way of like, sustainable and, and, you know, not try things unless I need it and living in really, really with minimum stuff. Although there are a lot, but there are also minimum coming back home, seeing everything wrapped in plastic. Like even the food, if they want to bring it from the outside kitchen inside, everything with plastic was like mom. And she's like, no, like just like for the flies, like it's okay. You can just cover it like this is plastic. This is a waste. And my mom is very like, my mom is like, she's well educated. She is, you know, she knows everything, but these kind of small information that they don't think about, and how each home contributes, like, like thousands of plastic wraps every day. And, and it's, it's fascinating how these small mundane, everyday life things that we do, like plastic bottles, cloth that we buy and throw, like, these are small little things that we are not aware of it because we are doing it every day and we'll just get used to it. That's, that's where the shift is the ships start here. And I know another lot I just, I was thinking about what a lot said about the, the traditional outfits and how back then, you know, people who are sustainable are like, like really small villages poor, less educated people and now, and now to be sustainable you need to be, you need to have money because it's expensive to be sustainable. That's, it's like really fascinating me how the idea of being sustainable and, and think the materials is really costly and start to be like an elite or like a trend that only people who, who has more advantage like money wise to do it and this kind of new society that complicated things and now want things to be back to basic, but it's expensive. Yeah, I find that so fascinating that you started your journey towards sustainability while you were still in the States and then you come back home to Kuwait and everything's wrapped in plastic and plastic is indigenous to nobody. And then you kind of imported that lifestyle but also that mentality and kind of that societal acceptance in our families and our mothers this idea of like, what constitutes clean and respectable is now everything that is like wraps to the nth degree and plastic and covering. And yeah, I don't know it's it's so it's it's so strange kind of having having those conversations with my mother. Because I feel like this is like this, this lopsided generational thing where if I look back at my grandmother's generation she had no choice but like you said not to be sustainable. That was just the way her life was there was no plastic back then there was we bought everything in bulk my mother came to visit me recently and I very proudly took her to a zero waste store in my neighborhood. And I was like yeah so here's what I do I bring my I bring my little like canisters and I go and I pull on the fancy lever and it dispenses like lentils into it. And she goes yeah that's what they also do back home in the bazaars and I just kind of sat there and I was like oh yeah. That thing that I, after we kind of emigrated and left started to look down as like oh that's a weird thing that's a bit of like a weird backwards thing right that like people just go to like the bazaars and they have and they just like scoop out whatever they want into a bag and take it home. That's weird. Everything comes should come in nicely packaged kind of like boxes and then now I'm actually going no no no get rid of the packaging go back to the scooping. And my mom just finds it so hilarious. She's like you didn't like it you didn't like it when it was something the thing that my grandmother did, but now it was shame no because we experienced racism for being sustainable. Absolutely because and so now that she's learned to do things the Western way the acceptable way. I'm turning back around to her and saying actually no, you shouldn't do that. But yeah, that was just a that was just a very like humbling moments that I had last week with my mother and my fancy North London zero way store. Penny, do you remember the conversation that me and you had about when our parents first migrated, and how they used to sell our clothes and everything, because life was so expensive here so they had to think of the most basic things like a lot of my friends. My dad was here way before I was born so I never experienced this when I was already here for 15 years. But I'll have a lot of my friends that their parents used to sell their eight clothes and their school clothes, and so on. And oddly enough now they all buy their clothes because it's like more kind of prestige and everything. But it's my friend would never say oh my mom sold my clothes or something like that. And because my parents never did it, I used to be like why is like this person selling their clothes or why is this mother so in their clothes why does my mom not know how to sew. And it's something that I felt like I wanted, but they didn't want. And I, but it was interesting like we were sustainable even when we came it's just, we had to go with the wave and like westernize ourselves. Yeah, that idea prestige we had to, we had to buy our way into social acceptance, right. We had to buy our way into being presentable and acceptable and what's the word that I'm looking for that isn't coming to my brain integrated. We had to buy our way into being like socially cohesive and integrated and all of a sudden everyone's going actually buying is bad, but we've decided buying is bad. So now it's really bad. Funny enough, I was watching everyone probably knows the five guys. The Korean guy. I think he's Korean. I can't remember his name. But he was saying about when his family first moved from Korea and for his it's funny how clothing is not going into. Sorry, it's off topic. But I just remember it. His mom would go to charity shops and buy like things that are branded. So they can say like the kids her kids will face less racism in school. And to not get that much racism and I was like, that's something like I would have never thought he was in a white school and everything. But even our clothing made the statement of where we come from and so on. Yeah, who we are where we've come from and how yeah how integrated we are and how acceptable we are. I just cut somebody off. I wasn't sure was it was it you maha. I'm just like, I just felt very sad. That's it. The thoughts of buying the label brand so her kids would be having less. We have about kind of 1015 minutes left and so I actually wanted to open up to the rest of you. Are there any kind of questions that you want to ask of each other or anything that, you know, you want to see kind of want to want to squeeze into these last kind of 10 minutes of conversation otherwise I will I will have questions but I thought I could stop asking the questions for a minute and see if any of you on the panel wanted to ask each other questions. I have one question that I always find hard to answer. How do we make our careers sustainable, like climate friendly, because a lot of us use electricity, petrol, so on, that what decisions do we make when we make work. I never thought about this way. I feel it's it starts with you the way how you live your life, like the way the decision that you do every day, the things that you eliminate and live with this and through that your art would be coming from there. So, it's, it's mostly about your daily habits and choices that you made, because once you live in that environment, your art would be more than the these rules. What about you, Juliana. I do know that the system I am sort of required to survive makes it impossible for me to truly, truly, truly, truly live within the. Ethics, because I don't think they're ethics for us, they're just the way of life, it's almost a spiritual thing, you know, looking after the land it's that simple, and after each other and and living for the community. I know that the system I live in now makes that impossible and like we just said and like my had just said, if you're not really wealthy, you can't really make those decisions of being like, Oh, I'm going to live off grid and middle of nowhere it's, it's a bit mad that you have to be rich to do that. So, it's just something that I carry with me does it make me furious and sad, yes. But I feel like there is hope in truth. So just being true and being like, you know what, this is not my system. It's not our system. It shouldn't exist. I don't want it. And from there I can, I can start to be like well then how do I live outside of it. How do we all live outside of it, you know, what needs to be dismantled. And like I said, some of it is going to literally be mundane stuff. Other is going to be systemic stuff but they are interconnected. And the other, which is the more creative aspects is that I kind of naturally. So, before lockdown so early 2020 was when my career kind of rocketed as far as the industry is concerned this means numbers and money and magazine covers and that kind of stuff it has nothing to do with art. It's just you know what the industry considers to be successful. And I remember feeling really out like not in alignment with myself. The more I kind of like went on tour. And I don't know like played these big venues, like massive lighting and thousands of people. It just felt so. No, unauthentic. I'm not saying I wouldn't like to have a big career. But if I didn't live in the system is that what I would really want. And I think the answer is no. I think the answer is I would want to use my voice probably in a garden or a forest with a community, probably our community. Literally, if I didn't live in capitalism. That's, that's what I would want as a human being as an artist. And I just hold on to those two things and try to stay true to them. But I mean the rage of knowing that yeah I have to, I have to live in the system. That's not mine and it wasn't made for me and it's kind of pretty much made to destroy us, but we are trying to like hustle and thrive. You know, there is rage there. Maybe we can use the rage and do something with that. Yeah, and I always. The thing that I love about kind of being in being in community with artists who do kind of come from in this in the case of the UK kind of deliberately marginalized backgrounds is that actually they don't always refer to it as sustainability but the way they look at kind of sustainability isn't so straightforward isn't so cut and dry. So when I kind of look at projects I try to think I try and break down the sustainability of it into three possible strands. That could be the environmental sustainability, the literal kind of day to day material impact of a project. But it could also be the social sustainability of it, who it serves, who it works with, who it creates a community for what kind of like grassroots infrastructure it helps to either build or develop up to scale. And then there's also the kind of the economic aspect of sustainability as well, one of my favorite topics of research in this idea of a care economy. It's kind of referred to as a feminist Green New Deal the Green New Deal is this kind of idea that lots of governments progressive kind of people are trying to push for governments to implement of kind of overhauling the economic system around renewable energy, etc. And there's a factions were pushing for a feminist Green New Deal that is based in care that is based in paying teachers more paying nurses more paying social workers and care home workers and people who work in daycare is a kind of the people really actually valuing those jobs and those roles. And artists, so that actually, and the kind of the, the, the labor of these people is recognized and compensated and kind of the thinking behind that goes that if we invest more money and looking after each other as opposed to just buying stuff. People will inherently live more sustainable lives. So, that's kind of what I try to, what I try to look at whenever I look at a project I'm like, you know realistically like Juliana said it's the system that we live in it doesn't allow perfection. It doesn't allow us to fully live by our values, and because it's always trying to exploit labor out of us. But maybe, maybe kind of, you can hit two out of three pillars. Maybe you can hit one of those kind of three pillars of looking at sustainably in a more holistic way, whether it is the environmental impact, or it's the social impact, or it's the economic impact that you have. And there's always room to do better in one of those, and kind of gradually, and maybe that will help, that will help the other aspects as well. Yeah, I recently did a, I produced a play where when we look at the budget breakdown, we had spent far more money on people than we had on the physical stuff, because the people looked out for each other and supported each other and kind of helped us to make the process feel more sustainable and the stuff we actually, we got from people who were going to throw it away, and then we gave it away to people instead of throwing it away and the aesthetics of it are different it doesn't look like the kind of the flashy that you're used to with everything brand new. It looks and feels very different, but that was our, that was our attempt. And I think attempts are important, the attempts at the kind of the beautiful works that you all have created or contributed to 22 are important because they show possibilities, right? They show us kind of opportunities to think differently and do differently. And yeah, the thing that I think I've said to all of you and everyone who has been a part of this project is maybe one of the 22 pieces that we have online will speak to you and make you, and lead you to starting a conversation that you wouldn't have otherwise had, lead you to make a change that you otherwise wouldn't have made. And that's a, that's a start. That is absolutely a start. I think we are very much at time now. I don't think we do have time for any other questions. But thank you all so much for joining me this evening and my literal living room for what's been a really fabulous conversation. I wish we could have had it in person, but I'm really glad that the wonders of zoom actually allows us to connect across countries and cultures and time zones. Thank you for being a so late. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm very grateful to meet amazing two artists. It's always for me, it's, I get excited when I see another creative and try to learn and understand what they're seeing what they want to say. So I'm enjoying the 22 artists to go through your website, whatever I have like spare time to see the work, try to understand the person and their voice, everybody there is really inspiring. Thank you all so so much. I think the way this works now is we turn our cameras off. I'm just going to echo what Ma said that honestly this was really special. You know when we talk about doing the work thank you Liverpool Arts Festival for literally doing the work and claiming the spaces nobody's going to offer them to us. So here we are making, making space and time, and a lot of moha like honestly this has been such a pleasure to kind of see a bit of the insides of your creative minds and wonderful spirits. Yeah, thank you guys. I'm the same. And honestly saying other Arab artists kind of empowers me as well. Sometimes I feel, especially in Ireland, we don't have that much Arab artists, there's only about four of us. And I was the first to graduate from art school and actually get an award from things so it feels like I'm really alone when it comes to Ireland and in the arts field. But seeing other Arab artists kind of empowers me and I'm so happy to have a conversation with all of you and hopefully there's many more to have and maybe one day face to face in Liverpool. Thank you all so much. Have a lovely evening and thank you for joining us and watching from wherever you are. We're going to disappear from your zoom screens now.