 Another day on planet Earth, another day of what has been the theme of all these months since March. The theme of uncertainty we don't really know what is going on, what's happening, so many possibilities and we often are confined to our screens and to the news to find out what to do. It was COVID, of course, the overruling theme, but now, of course, there is the election. It's day two of not knowing exactly who might be in charge or not, even so indications seem to be clear. So it is, once again, a time in our life where we also have to really think about life and art, but also art and politics, life and politics or the political and the political in the art. This is a bit our theme. We do say new times, new forms of theater. This is what Bert Holbrecht said in the time when he started doing his work, when the airplanes, cars, radio came up, recordings, projectors, radical change in the history of mankind and now, of course, with the internet, Instagram, cable news, with iPhones, Twitter and everything things are changing perhaps even faster and many, many say much more dramatically than we know. And of course, COVID has changed everything we think and people, like a car on high speed came to a full halt. We are still up in the air. We don't know how we land for the first time. All productions more or less stopped, restaurants, businesses, but also theaters, artists and human life in a way is valued of the elderly people, people who are endangered. We also don't know it can be Kevin to all of us. So something has changed. It's a time to think. It's a time to ask questions, to explore. And this is what everybody tells us from the artists we talked to since March before four months. We talked five days every week with artists and now since September, we opened it up to curators, to producers, academics, philosophers and it's of real importance for us to hear from them because we have to plan what we are going to do and also to go deeper into our thinking. And with us, we also have Andy Lerner from the Seagull Center, our next generation fellow in case there will be any significant updates from the world we live in regarding the election and you will come in so you will not miss anything and then you can go back to the news. As far as we know, no major announcement will be made in the next hour. But of course, it's a highly traumatic moment. And he says the end of the American century of the American Empire, Trump's victory speech that wasn't one that might be, you know, compared to many other rulers over centuries who have declared in their own world, they live in the realities that do not conform with where we live in. But we all see, nobody knows, again, it's a moment of uncertainties, but artists have been on the right side of history always, most of the time on the right side of progressive justice, on the fight for freedom, the complex fight for freedom, liberties, and inclusion of everyone, as Jean-Crancius said, who was on our program here, the French philosopher, the fight for radical equality, that we are all the same and no one is more significant or important than others. And this is why we have, of course, also the democracy for the people and by the people. Today, we have with us two workers in the field of theater and performance, who are making a significant contribution. And we always say it's about radical listening, and then I talk so much in the beginning, but I also know we all have to tune in, and not everybody does, makes it on 12 noons, but I would like to welcome two people whose work we do admire. First, we have with us Miga Rallapati, who is a curator and writer and arts manager based in Chicago, where she is at the Jack Goldwater Residency at Hyde Park Arts Center, and she supports artists across Chicago and internationally. And she has done many, many projects like railhouses in Houston, airport in Tel Aviv, and she has presented in New York City and many, many other cultural centers. And she is now, if I understand right, also a visiting artist from a great organization which we at the Segal admire very much. In fact, the co-published work with Fritzi Brown, C.C. Artslink, Liva Yatzi, a poet who was with us from Lebanon. And she was a visiting artist there in that exchange. And we have many, many people who came to us, who also came to the Artslink. And Simon Dav, who is an important, I think, force in the landscape of New York City's theater and performance, not only because he was a co-director and a co-curator of the Crossing the Line Festival. And he worked for Dancing in the Streets before he is a professor of practice and the director of the School of Dance of Arizona State University. He is also a partner, the partner, living partner of the great Lily Chopra, who we admire so much because of our work at FIAF and now with LMCC, the downtown developments at the FODE Arts. And Simon took over at C.C. Artslink that is promoting in that idea of cultural mobility, on the move.org, also promotes so strongly. It's an exchange between cultures. And of course, the mission of the Segal Center is to bridge academia and professional theater, international and American theater. So we are right in there. And so Simon, welcome, Megha, welcome. Where are you guys right now at the moment? And what time is it where you are? Megha. I'm in Chicago at the moment. It's 11 AM. And I'm a little bit louder. Yeah. Oh, yes. I'm in Chicago at the moment, 11 o'clock. It's still late morning here, getting into the work. How was the mood in the streets of Chicago with the elections and everything? I think that here in Chicago, it's probably reflected as it is elsewhere around the country and the world. There's a real reluctance to jump to any conclusions. I think we're very much in the stasis and on pins and needles a bit, but trying to do our work. And honestly, the most important thing for me and my work is that regardless of what happens today, tomorrow, this week, the work that we're doing is the same. And the struggles that we have to be involved in and the work we have to move forward is the same. It's going to look the same regardless of who happens to come out on top in this election. Yeah. Simon, where are you? Me, Frank. I'm in Al in the south of France in France. It's I'm here really because I was desperate for my daughter to be in a school. And as we were looking at the fall from Brooklyn, where I'm usually based, it was clear schools were going to be hybrid at best and maybe not very active. So we knew of a great school here. My partner is French, so and I'm British. So we were not subject to the travel ban that most Americans are facing at the moment. So in August, we effectively relocated. So we're now working remotely to both of us have jobs in New York City. We have an office. CSU has an office in St. Petersburg in Russia. So I'm much closer to their time zone. And all the artists we work with are scattered between Uzbekistan and California. So I'm actually a good middle point in terms of connections and my ability to engage with them much more actively. But it's 6 PM. My daughter will be home in a moment. So if I leave the screen, it's because I'll be making dinner for everyone. Good. So tell us a little bit. Not everybody knows about CEC Arts Links so much often is on presenting work, on building bricks and houses. But CEC Arts Links does something different. What do you guys do? Well, we always say we're in the business of cultural exchange. But that can mean many things. What we've really been doing since 1992 is looking at how we can affect genuine cultural dialogue and what you might call artist mobility projects between what was then Russia and the post-Soviet countries and has now expanded into the Middle East. So 37 countries now in total we're working with. And looking at how we can build not just an exchange of artistic practice and ideas, but genuine connections between people, that kind of person-to-person connection that eludes us at the moment as we're working virtually. But essentially, cultural mobility and advocating for it, you're very aware, Frank, given your relationship to On the Move. But there used to be a great investment from the United States in international cultural mobility and exchange. We at CEC Arts Link were founded in 1992. And the founding funding partners included the National Endowment for the Arts, the NEA. The Soros Foundation and the Trust for Mutual Understanding. Sadly, the only one left is the Trust for Mutual Understanding. The NEA gave up on really investing significantly in international culture in the early part of this century. So in the early 2000s. And there was a study actually recently that looked at funding since 2008, since the recession, looking at the American investment. And there used to be 16 foundations with a very clear commitment to funding international exchange. There's now only eight. And of those eight, the Trust for Mutual Understanding is the largest single investor. And their budgets, I mean, they have a total budget of 2 million, but they put about 1 million into cultural exchange. So that showed you the paucity of the economy of international exchange. So for us, part of our job is not just connecting artists with artists and institutions in the US, but it's also looking at how we can persuade foundations, donors and investors that the future of American society, you know, the future of its cultural work, the future of its thinking about its position in the world really depends on it having a real engaged dialogue with the rest of the planet, you know, that America on its own is one very small part of the myriad of ways of thinking about how we exist in the world. So we... Why is this so important? Why does America depend on it? Why do you think this is essential, this exchange? Because, well, and Mega can talk to it too because she has a lot of international artists in her exchange program for a very specific reason and has partnered with us very significantly in the past few years. But for us, it's really critical that if you are evolving, you know, what we may call civil society, you know, you could say America is still involved in this process of defining what it is and defining what American values are. And we see that very much on display in the election this week. And for me, it's crucial that we are part of a broader dialogue that is about engaging with different perspectives and different ways of thinking about who we are and what we're here for. And that of course needs to be constantly stimulated, question provoked by alternative thinking, by perspectives that come from outside of our neighborhood, our community, our village, our city, our town and frankly, our country. So that we are genuinely part of a way of thinking about how we are as human beings and how this, what I call the, you know, the kind of human project on this planet, how we evolve the way we want to be and how we are thinking about how that could be. And artists, as you know, are incredible catalysts for creating platforms for thinking, ways of encouraging people to engage together in a way that it's not party political, it's not based on a specific economic need. It's often artists offering an opportunity and a platform to bring people together, to genuinely think together about the issues that face them as individuals or as a society. So for me, artists are critical in this project and how we move forward on the planet. And we know no system of whatever government or boundary defining, you know, borders of countries limits the way we think about ideas. And certainly the way we're now globally connected means we need to be thinking much more collectively about how we address the issues that face us as individuals, as society and on this planet, as, you know, caretakers of this planet. Mega, how do you fit in all of this in Chicago and we see the Arts Link and Russia, Petersburg and the Middle East, how are you connected to this? What does it mean to you? Simon, thank you. Well, thanks for this invitation, first off. And Simon, that was the perfect kind of introduction to the work that we're involved with together. What I can start out and share with you is that I work at Hyde Park Arts Center, a community focused arts organization in Chicago which started in 1939. So this was a time, a very complex period. The country, the US was, the world was in, it was a war time. This was a segregated country. Chicago was certainly part of that segregated reality. And the federal program, the New Deal, established the WPA, the Works Progress Administration. So an important program that builds essential infrastructure around the country like roads and bridges. But what it also established was community-based arts organizations. So Hyde Park Arts Center was opened at that time. It's founded completely by artists. It was an artist-run organization that received the support from the federal government because that role was so essential to build a space inside the heart of a residential neighborhood across the US where artists could show work, where people could learn what art was to make it and to be with each other. So these were art spaces that serve very integral functions. So Hyde Park Arts Center today, many decades later, still retains that spirit. It's not exclusively run by artists anymore. So the kind of infrastructure has evolved a bit, but that spirit of retaining the perspective and the needs of artists is central and core to what the organization does. So there are exhibitions that happen there as well as a school where students can take art classes and the way we view that sort of student body is really broad. And that's one of the things that's most kind of exciting about it. There's four and five-year-olds taking their very first art classes. There's professional working artists working toward projects and exhibitions. And then there's people at really every level, I think our oldest student is in their 90s. So all of these people are there together, making their work at whatever level they are operating at. And I run a residency program within that context. So when you think about the nature of the WPA and the role of this organization in Hyde Park neighborhood, Hyde Park is in Chicago. It's about seven miles south of the downtown area. It's a residential neighborhood. It's a university town. It's a complex, really rich area on the south side of Chicago. The whole kind of purpose of this organization is to support and foster art in Chicago and to support Chicago artists. So why would we have an international residency program? Ultimately, this program, which started about eight years ago in this kind of formalized way, really the goal of it is to support Chicago's art context. So the invitation to invite visiting artists, either those who come from around the U.S. or internationally, on one hand, it's certainly to support their practice. They come and live in Chicago, live in Hyde Park, have a studio space, and make their project. It's absolutely to support them. But it's also about inviting this perspective into the context of what our art scene is and into the context of how artists are thinking and working. And so that kind of invitation is really very specifically attuned to some of the things, Simon, you were talking about. What are the shared kind of, what's the shared territory across really quite diverse practices? And that's very much at the core of what I'm looking to kind of support between in the conversation. Over the years of doing this program, I feel very strongly that the art that is made is so specific to the context it's coming from. A project's made on the South side of Chicago is very specific to the communities that are involved with it, those who, the process of it being made there, just like an artist working in Istanbul, the work is speaking directly to that place. But it's been a really fascinating process to see what the through lines are between these two practices. What is the nature of creating change in Chicago and what are the methodologies that artists use to, for example, at this moment, there's a number of artists who have been working on participating in the electoral process, asking questions about what democracy is, what the democracy looks like in the US, and what those questions are outside of the country. So we're very invested in really bringing these artists who are from ostensibly different worlds in certain ways, bringing them together to share very precisely the methodologies they're using, the strategies they're using. What is the shared territory? How is, what are the very particular needs of Chicago artists and Chicago communities that really don't expand outside of the city? And what are the things that can be shared and to facilitate that kind of connection between strategies, solutions, methodologies of approaching solutions to, for example, expand voter turnout, or in this specific example, to make people feel that they have a voice and that they can express it, whether it's through a vote or through another means, to kind of identify what those shared territories are, and then that's where the learning can be. And ultimately, the kind of the idea for, from my perspective as for Chicago artists to feel that, okay, this artist working in Egypt, dealing with questions of democracy there, is not so far from me. And they inside their artistic community are asking and answering some similar questions. Okay, maybe we can transcend this geographic distance, and especially now we can speak more about this with the tools of the virtual space. We don't have to think of each other as that far away, that actually maybe we can really kind of share ideas in an ongoing way, more sustainably, to expand what we're each able to do. For a question for both of you, the time of Corona, did it change your thinking, your practice? Do you feel something different is necessary? Yeah, hugely, Megha, do you wanna go first? Sure, I can. I mean, Frank, I think you spoke to it a bit in the kind of introductory remarks. I have to say, it has been a huge, this event has hugely impacted the way I think about what is possible. I really feel that never in my life has the earth stopped kind of turning on its axis in the way it has at this particular moment. And the causes are many, but it really feels to me like a question and an opportunity to stop and first pause and breathe. That was one thing earlier in the year, I felt very reluctant to jump into action mode right away, but instead to really take a moment and stop, stop for the sake and health of everyone around me, but also just stop and just take stock of what the status quo really is, because I think there's a lot of work that's required in understanding what the status quo is when you're so invested and involved in moving the machine forward, even in our context, we are driven by our programs and by our exhibitions and to really pause really, that to me is radical actually to stop and to think and to take a look at what is around you and then to slowly do the work of understanding what needs to change and how it needs to change. This has been probably the biggest shift for me in really allowing my particular program, my role as a citizen in my community, all the different kind of roles we play. This has been probably the most important one to sort of stop and to think about, all right, given the landscape, given kind of the realities of this great pause, what is the work that we want to do? What is the nature of justice that we wanna pursue inside our organizations? What are the goals of, why do we support artists work and why do we present their work to what end? These are a lot of the kind of questions that have emerged for me as my programs have had to evolve and adapt. What does that of evolution look like? So more specifically, we really overhauled a process that we have used to identify artists to participate in our programs, our residency program, to really question who are the artists that we want to work with in Chicago or internationally? What does kind of continuing this work of what is valuable in their practice and when are we upholding structures that kind of keep the power structures in place? And when can we, and how can we use our program to chip away at those things? Do we feel that artists need to have a certain sort of career trajectory to work with us or can we push on that? Can we think about education differently in learning? Can we think about the virtual space and the actual space of our organization differently? So some of those things have certainly come out of this period for me. No, and I agree the requirement on all of us just to stop firstly to take care and to take care of the communities and the loved ones around us, but also then to reflect on what is possible. And because we're having to think about what is possible, we're also being forced. And I think this is across the whole arts field entirely. We're being asked to think about what is really important, what is critical to the work that we all do and how do we achieve that perhaps in a different way? And I think the other big question we were asking ourselves is what we're doing the most sensible and responsive way to be or responsible way to be working. We were in the business of moving artists sometimes way around the world in a context in the US, in a community or with an arts organization. And the received understanding of course is that that person-to-person connection is the best way to build a relationship. And of course, ultimately between people is, but we're in- Yeah, we can't hear you at the moment. I think it's interrupted. If you can repeat the last sentence. Are you missing me? Yeah, maybe say again the last sentence you said. Yeah, we seem to have, there's an internet connection, a problem that Simon will come back to it. Maybe he just, you know, will sign in. And I think why the engagement of a CSC arts thing is important and radical is because that's on exchange, on personal exchange, on spending time in another culture in the process, nobody has to produce anything yet, but to open an understanding in America in a way is an island. It's a very, very big one, but it's still an island. We at the Segal collaborate with Penn World Voices, a Penn, the great writers organization, and they point out 95% of all books published in the United States are American, some British, so they are four to 5% left. France and Germany is supporting their writers, so they cover 50%, so you will have 2%, 2 books out of 100. Are you giving us an experience of a different world? It would be unthinkable for musicians not to listen to world music, it would be impossible. Seeing artists, painters, sculptures know what their contemporaries are doing and we do have what I think Salman Rashki and Paul Oster and they created Penn World Voices at the Tunnel Vision and I think the CSR thing isn't making a great contribution and what Meka does in Chicago is actually implementing it and I feel it is important also for perhaps all theaters that you should have international artists and residencies to help us understand better who we are. You only know what American is if you went to India. You don't really know before, or what is it, you know, if you're from France, you had to be in maybe in Chicago to understand what France is about. So Salman, how many people do you bring in a year? How many artists come? Well, there's a whole range of programs. We have a group of 10 international fellows who come every year and they spend a great deal of time hosted all over the country by different organizations. We really curated very carefully so that each artist has the right level of support and what we call a stimulating context in which they are working, which relates to their research and their artistic interests. We bring a group of artists from Central Asia in the summer, more as a study visit and we've more and more started to build our relationships between a whole range of Central Asian countries and the Caucasus and Russia in our Art Prospect Network. So building exchange, their skillet exchange, but also commissioning work. And we found this year, of course, it was really critical that we were able to get resources to artists who were finding all their usual ways of earning money, not just as an artist, but often in the service economies were also curtailed by the pandemic. So we did a lot of commissioning of artists this year in many countries and connected them through our festival system or structure online. So we were able to support artists that way. But essentially, yeah, I would say there's about 20 artists that we're working with intensively each year. The program enables those artists that come to the US to then create a project which we support in year two of their fellowship. And year three of their fellowship is to create a project back in the home base with America. So the whole idea is to leverage a relationship between that artist, the US community and the US professionals that they're connected with and to build something that we hope has a life beyond our three-year fellowship intervention. Yeah, and at least, you know, also from my perspective coming from Europe, one cannot underestimate the significance and importance such exchanges do have would be cultural ambassadors. Louis Armstrong was one going around the world at a time. America Houses, from the time it was so supported, made a crucial contribution, but that was post-war Berlin in Paris in Bombay. In other words, what Goethe Institute starts to really open a dialogue and also signaling interest. I think per day 10, 15 million are spent per day on military presence, you know, on bombs on others to liberate voices. But who cares about the voices? Who listens to the voices? Who translates the voices? Who brings them over? So we learn something from them. They learn something from us. Have American artists go there? Have them come here to have an exchange to participate in a global change and in global civilization. The Project of Mankind, as Simon said in the very, very beginning. And CFC Art Links is an organization that does that. And many wonder that when the Soviet Union collapsed and the Western world, and especially America, I have worked, was cheer-dancing and really did not engage in a meaningful dialogue. If at all it was, people felt insulted in Russia, felt demeaned and a lot of the Putin's ammunition comes from that there was not an exchange in the sense of bring your artists, we bring yours, come and learn from us. You know, have internships, like you have a dialogue, maybe bring young politicians over, like NPS artists in residencies, they could be in residencies in small cities around the US or in Europe to learn to have an exchange and to also have a real dialogue and I think it didn't happen and we know the consequences and we suffer, I think, from that tunnel vision. But it feels at the moment it is more urgent. It has always been important, but right now, not only that we have a president who said you should inject yourself with this disinfectant who was ready to send the military soldiers against peaceful demonstrators and now officially wants to stop counting or leave the legal votes. These are messages we're used to hear. Yeah, what people would say, Russia often dictatorial states, it's shocking. And part of it is perhaps because also we are not connected to the world of people are in their bubble. So what can be done? What do you guys have? What have you learned in your practice? What are you picking up around the globe? You have your eyes and ears so close to so many countries. What is working? What should we be doing? What do you both think is of significance, urgency and necessary? I mean, Frank, you're aware the social and political issues that you're outlining in the US are in many countries amplified and even worse. The context for citizens, but also artists in many countries in Central Europe, in the Caucasus is really getting incredibly difficult. We've been in the assembly this year talking with artists from Belarus who are under house arrest. So it's an artist who certainly can't travel but we can connect with them through our webinar series and start to enable them to have a platform and articulate their perspective. And the more we have built these relationships and the style of the more we've heard from people that knowing that there is someone who is listening, that there is someone who cares and that there is someone who is addressing similar problems that we are and it is coming up with appropriate solution or survival mechanisms is really important. So we've really been trying to leverage the other resource we have. I talked earlier about commissioning artists as much as we could, which is about resourcing them financially. But what's really been critical is making these connections and these dialogues and enabling people to be talking either to their neighboring countries, which in many contexts is difficult. And now Azerbaijan and Armenia are now at war and in conflict. We have artists in both countries. We're now working with them on how do we create dialogue and connection because it's again, the human process of connection that can start to help communities feel closer and avoid this whole process of demonizing the neighbor, demonizing the other, which plays into the hands very much of authoritarian politicians and regimes. How do you build a human connection? Which is about all the things that we share and bringing the perspectives that we know are there from different cultural frameworks and from different areas of practice. So for us, we're looking at how we can leverage dialogue, the connections we have, the networks we have and build this greater sense of relationship around the world, which we feel cannot only address the bigger global issues around climate change and poverty, which is huge, but also helping neighbors in neighboring countries but also in neighboring towns and communities make the connections that we know will enable them to start to have a dialogue and build something constructive and positive. So that's really the big takeaway for us this year. I think the point about what is signaled and model, the idea of what is modeled to a society is so important. Frank, you mentioned that in many ways, the kind of role that the US has is a military presence. That's sort of what people might know of the US. The other side of that coin is with an administration that champions such strong isolationism, the withdrawal from the world. And along with this comes the value that we don't need, forget our neighbors, we don't need the world, that we don't need anything but ourselves. That's all that we need to sustain. That is such a powerful message that's being sent all around the country, all around the world. That value in the US has an influence elsewhere in the world and vice versa. So for me, it comes down to the role of the artist is to provide other ways of thinking, other ways of thinking about solutions to problems that are just other modes and paths to living that might reaffirm our fundamental values, human values. And it's important that we don't rely on the artists to do all that work. We actually need to take the cue from them and then we need to run with it and support those ideas. They might just come up with the idea, but then we need to find the ways and the infrastructure to amplify those ideas and get them out there. So I think a real commitment and adherence to this idea that isolationism is not sustainable, it's not possible, it's not healthy for a global kind of community which we are part of and we have to just really commit to doing this work and really valuing the need to have these conversations across culture. But one thing I do think is that this idea, I think one of the shifts now at this moment is that sharing and that connection doesn't have to be done only through a flight. That really, there are ways that we can connect with each other deeply if we are thoughtful and unintentional about the pathways to do and kind of consistent about keeping a conversation going, we can do them. At the moment we have partnered with another foundation, the Asian Cultural Council, which similarly to CEC Arts Link has a real value of that deep kind of sustained dialogue between artists in the US and artists in Asia. And we were involved kind of following up on a residency we had for an artist based in Malaysia. We're kind of continuing that work by connecting a group of artists in Chicago and a group of artists in Malaysia around the sort of joint themes of their practice. They're working in theater, kind of queer theater spaces, thinking about anti-racist approaches to their practice and by bringing them together consistently over Zoom meetings, Zoom studio visits, these artists are really getting to know each other quite deeply and we hope that some seeds are planted for further collaborations. Maybe when travel is again possible, they might be able to meet each other and work on something together, but at the moment the virtual space has been really fruitful for them to come up with ideas, they're sharing texts, they're sharing this idea of what anti-racist struggle looks like in both contexts. And I think there's a huge learning for the Chicago artists around the nature of that work that so many artists here are so deeply invested in. The nature of racism looks different in theater communities in Malaysia and the contours are so different. So that learning has already in the first couple months of doing this has been quite powerful. So that's one hand kind of really activating and being intentional about how we use the virtual space. And then the other two is in our cities in the US we have access to communities that are new to us right here at home. So it doesn't necessarily always require flying somewhere else to get involved in this, to kind of nurture the conversation. It's really possible to do that at home. One of our arts link fellow from last year an artist Selma Bannick from Zagreb she was so interested in connecting her practice which is a transnational sort of women's collective across Europe that she is very engaged in kind of linking that work to immigrant justice groups that she met in Chicago. And she saw this very strong thread between the two but she really encouraged us to think about this community she met with and connected with in Chicago who are pretty new to us too at our organization that we are all in the same area and we're in the same neighborhood that we can forge our ties together with each other even while all living in the same country. So the kind of project of working across difference cultural difference, any type of difference can happen on all these different levels. So it's important. I think that's sort of a learning of this period is that the work can be happening on all these different registers despite what barriers we have to the big trouble. I have a great model also from last year. We had an artist from Uzbekistan who was placed in San Juan in Puerto Rico. And of course, when he was told that's where he would be he was thinking, that's a Caribbean island. It's not America. It's not the mainland. But as soon as he got there, of course he realized that there was this incredible relationship in that he as someone in Uzbekistan experiences culturally in relationship to Moscow and to Russia. The communities in San Juan were experiencing in relationship to Washington and the US. And they had so much in common in terms of their ways of both thinking about the support they needed and their relationship to this whatever you'd call this kind of federal pre-structure. They started to organize locally and now of course he's learned so much about how the communities in San Juan were organizing in order to meet their own needs and to support the communities there. He's now doing that in Uzbekistan. And so it's this idea of what do you share and what do you then bring to each other? Which I think can be profoundly kind of clear both for an artist and a community when they engage in that kind of thinking that is both from a distance but also then incredibly based on local and immediate community needs. And now of course there's a group in San Juan who are looking to how they can get to Uzbekistan. So it's created this relationship with a place that they probably didn't quite know where it was on the map before he got there. And now there's a real tangible relationship with how they work and how they both see their communities progressing. Yeah. It was the great Edouard Glissot who actually also happened to be teaching at the Greater Center who said from the Caribbean that it's a failure of imagination, homophobia, racism, violence against women and not imagining that you could live in San Juan or some you have a Mexican name. The idea that it's unthinkable for you instead of being able to imagine it and perhaps saying it's something new. We live in a global world. We have global businesses. We live with global. We buy global products. Though our world is global, we then cannot turn the world back. And I think it's such what you guys do and healthy vaccination against what perhaps is no longer a defensible the idea of American exceptionalism that America is a special country. It is different from the rest of the world. It's loved by God and it's exceptional and is perfect. And if everybody would be like America, everything would be right. But there are histories of centuries and thousands of years of communities and we can all learn from each other. I think the world learned so much from America, so many great lessons actually, so many lessons about freedom, about democracy is one of the early ones about the liberation of the concentration camps in Germany that was done by America and American soldiers and the Marshall Bar and all that. So so much has learned the idea of perhaps a more social phase of a capitalism but there is a freedom that came with it. And so the world has listened but perhaps also it is one of the oldest democracies. Now there is a time to renew it and to learn and to function. I think the idea of C.C. Artsling, which is not based on productions, it's something to say, I bring a Belgium director over and he shows something in his theater. The idea is that we invest in people, they make, spend time, they go back to their communities, we bring someone over there and they come in with a lifelong engagement in a process and it's idea of hosting, of a radical hosting in a way. And what if every American theater would host always wanted international theater artists, however small or big it is. So what would every business, what would every school have international teachers? What is the one took this idea serious? So I know in one of your talks and you also would highlight C.C. Artsling's also does Zoom talks about their work because now they don't have people present but still it's an exchange of ideas they also are fighting for that we should listen to and we should listen to global voices because the fight against racism, against injustice and the freedom of speech is a global one, it's not a local one and we shouldn't have to value the African-American struggle and the Black Lives Matter is at more or less worth an in Hong Kong or in Lebanon or what's happening in Chile. It's a global struggle and also that is why it's important to focus on a global view but the idea of radical hosting and I hear heard some theories, some works by artists and it's also one of your themes. What is that idea of radical hosting in your mind? All right, I would like to learn more. Well, it's something of course C.C. Artsling has been cultivating for a long time but this year and specifically this year in during this health crisis it was clear to us that we were not going to be able to be bringing artists into the US and that we needed to look at firstly, how do we achieve the kind of connections that we know is sustaining the artists but is also stimulating and provocative for the host organizations. So we set up an entirely virtual residency program this year beginning in February and it happened. It began in August. Normally the artists are coming in the fall so we kept to a similar timeframe but we had to completely reimagine everything but in talking with the artists and the host organizations the conversation shifted to so what do we do then and how can we really be useful? And what was clear was what was really needed was a way in which the host organizations could open up not only themselves you need to understand the artist, the person and they need to understand you, what makes you tick but then what connections do you have what networks are you part of what organizations are you in dialogue with which artists are you supporting and why and this idea of opening up not just your center, your building your community, your programming operation but also all the things that make you tick led to an incredible level of intimacy and closeness that has already been achieved between hosts and artists, international artists who have not yet physically met and the conversation we've occasionally dropped into the conversations they've been having either on Zoom or WhatsApp or Jitsi Meet or all these different platforms that they're having ways of sharing ideas and connections or just saying what's going on in your life at the moment and how are you coping? We've dropped in on some of those conversations and the sharing of, I would say this generous sharing of everything of ideas, of connections, of thinking and this goes far beyond physical resources what studio spaces do you have and how much production budgets do you have? It's actually about what do you need as a human being and how can that enable your work as an artist to evolve and grow and develop in the context that we have here in, I mean, we're talking with we have hosts in Kansas, in Portland, even in Chicago. That's mega, but all these contexts that are being so generous and sharing of what they have as all kinds of human resources beyond their material ones and for us that's led to a level of dialogue and conversation that when the artists are able to come and we hope they may be able to come next year or maybe it's the year after there'll be a level of connection that is extremely profound and I hope will lead to an exchange that the kinds of which we've never experienced or seen before. So for us it was that sense of a generosity of spirit beyond, here's a studio, here's $5,000 make something and we'll see you in six weeks to how do we engage with all of what you are with all of what we have? And in this time of as mega outlined increasing American isolationism, hostility to travel increasing costs of visas. It's now gonna cost, if you use premium processing over $2,000 to get a performance visa for each individual artist that wants to come to the US there's a kind of bureaucratic and as well as a kind of political obstacle that's slowly being constructed and we need to find human ways to maneuver around that and to circumvent it as much as we can. Otherwise, yeah, mega's right. We're gonna be this isolated place that has very little engagement with the rest of the world because we have created so many barriers that prevent that kind of connectedness. So we're losing using all our approaches to the, yeah, using the virtual tools we have to find ways in which we can really build those relationships and we're finding that we were able to start to achieve something that is deep and profound and the results of which we have yet to see. This is what will emerge in the next few years. For me, radical hospitality as a concept is fundamentally not cerebral. It's not intellectual. It's not even related. I mean, it's related to certain structures but it's very simple, very human, actually very basic. And I think the idea of you said, you're never more American than when you leave the US or you don't know what you don't know until you leave and see a different way. But much of the world, the relationship between a guest and host is written into the fabric of the culture. When you invite someone to your home, you wouldn't dare not offer them a cup of tea or offer them even just a bowl of peanuts. You wouldn't dare do that. When you go somewhere, you bring a little gift no matter how small it is and it has nothing to do with money or even in our purposes, it has nothing to do with how large the grant is. I don't think it has everything to do with the spirit of curiosity and openness and a willingness and interest in spending some time, a little time. So I think that we have so much to learn even the artists that I've worked with or as I have traveled, I really have come to really appreciate and I'm really fascinated by the particular relationship between guests and hosts and how you welcome someone into your home or into your space. Even doing studio visits, the way artists welcome you into their studio space, not their home necessarily, the way they invite you into their practice and the way as a curator to perform a studio visit is for me a privilege and it's kind of a gift to be able to be invited into someone's space for them to share their practice with me. So somehow it's about, I think embodying the space of, maybe generosity is part of the word, but I think it's really about kind of a curiosity. It's an interest in not rushing, slowing things down, being interested to spend time and not necessarily having an objective outcome of what this meeting will be. We have a tendency to, we fill our days with meetings and even the way studio visits are done, I've done these myself. They will be 45 minutes long, you walk in, the artists better be done talking about their work, very expedient, very business oriented and that's a way to do it, but I feel we have learned so much about what hosting looks like from the artists that we've invited and in my own experiences traveling. What does it really look like to make someone feel welcome in Chicago, in a neighborhood that's not theirs and in a context that's really different. So, there's certain things that we've done long before an artist will come to the US and the further away they are based, the better. I love to send them articles on just context. This is what Chicago is now. This is what the US is doing and going through at this moment. What does that sound like to you? What is that, how does that resonate? This is the part of the city that you'll be living in. It looks like this and it doesn't look like this. It doesn't look like the pictures you might have seen. When they stay in Hyde Park, they're looking at the downtown kind of touristic area from the South to the North. They're looking at the big buildings from a slightly different direction. This is what your street feels like. To really help them feel they're welcome and their experience, their observations are really welcome. And outside of the things like providing, like you said, Simon, providing various days and providing, doing a community dinner so they can meet the other artists. I really like to think about as a resident or an artist leaves to return back home, what are the things that they have brought that have changed our institution? What practices have they developed to help us push on how we think we operate and how we might operate differently? I think it goes to this idea of feeling like we know everything about how to run a residency or how to run an arts organization and how things work in Chicago. Are we willing as an institution? And I'm interested in these questions of how an arts institution evolves and adapts in response to the changes of the world. Are we willing to change some things we do because of an experience? Are we, you know, like it's taken resident, you know, visiting artists that we've worked with for me to even think, why do we do something this way? We have a program for teen artists, young artists who are just learning to develop their practice. Their projects tend to be in an exhibition quite distinct from our other exhibitions. Why is that? Why do we age segregate in that way? Why do we organize our meetings in the way that we do? If we're willing, and we don't have to change everything, but if we're willing to respond to what a visitor brings, to me, that is very much part of the radical aspect of radical hospitality. Yeah. I do think, yeah. No, I was gonna say, and I think it's the possible way that things are gonna evolve because, you know, touring products and creating shows that you can tour around the country or around the world is simply unsustainable economically. It's gonna be more and more, I think important to be building these human relationships between artists and communities and then seeing what that gives rise to. And, you know, the impact, I think, on each individual can be profound and it shifts away totally from this transactional idea that, you know, I'll spend $50, see a show and then I go home and that's the end of the experience. Maybe something emerges or develops, but this idea of being able to connect, you know, with someone's thinking, with someone's practice, perhaps from the other side of the world, in relationship to my life and my way of looking at the world, I think has put the potential profound change and impact. Yeah. Yeah, and I do think that your work is a real possibility and a real contribution to what needs to change, the idea of hosting, of traveling, being open hosts to learn. As David Foster Wallace famously in his great speech, you know, you ask a fish about water, that all saying the fish will say, what's water? We don't know what you're talking about because it lived in water. He says, I'm now an older fish. Let me tell you, it sounds like a little stupid story by an old wise white guy or whatever he said. It has something to it. And the idea of hosting and being open is something that questions what we normally do and we do, I feel we do need some help. As we know, this society has been divided, like never before in America, people are not talking to each other. No ways that, you know, people are able to listen, to really radically listen to each other. It's more like the Yankee fans and the Red Sox fans and the political divide. They will not let our team foul as much as they want as long as they win. And this is wrong. It's not the real idea of democracy. It's not a real idea of participation, but how do we do that? It's a big failure, I think, also in academia. I'm the left to listen to people, to engage in talking. How come that so many Latinos, also black votes, went to President Trump? Because I think they perhaps feel they're out of their dialogue in the idea of radical hosting. And I've heard of projects like this. What would it mean if someone in the street and everywhere in Chicago and New York, when you invite an immigrant family for a dinner in this organized, what if you would be invited by an immigrant family to go to their house and you listen, you spend some, or they sleep over. Adelheid Rosen, a Dutch artist, an artistic director of her company, her project is he goes on a bike with her company. They park somewhere in a house that looks interesting, green the doorbell and say, we would like to do a show if you want in your space. Tell us about your life. And she says, you would expect everybody to get out of here and say, it does happen, but often we say, oh, that's interesting. And they listen, and then they come with a dramaturg and a writer, they create something and they invite people from the neighborhoods and they have like eight places at the same time and then the audience goes for 15, 20 minutes. So how would that change? In a way, that's what you do. You bring someone over who tell a bit of a moment of a different life and we all know one of the most exciting things now lies with if we visit someone, someone opens a home or we open a home, we are inspired. And this is something that is, I think, terribly missing and I think it's a most significant contribution that that's an idea of a radical host that you really think that through. And I think it has answers for problems we have and I think we should have theater plays and they should also be in there, but the house has many rooms, but the hosting and the idea that it's not ghetto tourism, but theater artists do, they come and go, but they spend time with the people, they walk on the streets, they get lost, they miss the bus, they meet the fam, whatever this is important that makes actually for a real experience. And I also do think it is one of the ways that artists do always and actually artists love that to go and travel and experience in a real way and not just by a cruise, but a country. This is what we need to do. We have to connect back. And I think you guys have real answers. We are trying to do a festival in 2022 for three weeks. We are talking to all 50 theaters of colors and the St. Anne's, tomorrow's the great Susan Feldman will come on and talk about her experience, but also to all the CUNY theaters or the French and Japanese and all the embassies and cultural sizes. Let's bring something so I would like to be a part of it and bring 50 artists or we bring them all over New York in all five neighborhoods in the park and the community and we create work. I think it was the Tanya Bruguera who was on the seagull talk also here, the Cuban artists who said, we are used to go to see palaces and we still go to see where the kings lived and if there was anything radical, it was a French revolution. And so about the people, so let's go to the houses of the people, let's meet. And I think what you guys do with bringing artists to the houses of theaters of homes of artistic directors, I think it is really something that is contemporary that is significant and will grow because it also has an impact. Everybody who has ever been invited to go to a foreign country, another country to speak, to teach, to listen, carries something there, but also with him or her. And I think we need to talk to each other. Art is a way, theater is a way, performance, painting, exhibitions, creating communities. But I think the idea of being a host of promoting exchange of listening, the real listening is something of importance and we can learn what artists do in their practice. What you do, I think, can be transferred to our society, what did every politician had, intern from other political parties or other countries. So I think it is really important to hear from you, but tell us a little bit, what else, what are you, what's on your plate? What do you think, do you have now visions what you would like to do when we all get back are there new ideas, are you planning, or what would you love to do if the Soros Foundation came back and said, here's 200 million, sorry, we turned our back on you, actually that's what you do is important. And I actually feel it really, really is, it's essential and it's needed. But so what would you do? Well, there's two things that need to happen. One is a major process of getting American foundations and individuals to look at the importance of supporting international cultural exchange, cultural mobility, because the paucity of curators traveling, of work coming in, especially from outside Western Europe is a real crime at the moment. And all that does is impoverish American audiences and American society as a result. So I would do some major advocacy work around foundations and getting significant levels of investment, which of course encourages the cultural institutions that are able to see their way through the pandemic to also look at their role and their responsibility to not just program what is easily on the market from Western Europe, but to really develop relations with artists long term that can lead to projects that can have significant impacts here in the US. So that's one thing. And I think the other thing, perhaps in relationship to your festival, Frank, is to not just see it as about events, but to see it as exactly this relationships that need to be built and they take time. And we need to completely rethink the idea of festivals not being a series of events that people can move quickly from one to the other, but projects that evolve from the real grounding of a relationship between an artist and a community or to an artist from one place and an artist from the US that yields a genuine dialogue and a sharing of perspectives that has a huge impact on those individuals, but also on the communities they work with. So to think of a festival not just as a series of events, but really nurturing and nourishing relationships and thinking that that takes time and to genuinely invest in the time that those things take. Our fellowships are three years. We know that's just the beginning, but we don't ask for any outputs. We ask that there's genuine relationships and that those lead to kinds of collaborations and shareings, but we are very open as to what it is. And I think this shift away from a festival being about connections and relationships away from shows and products is really important. I totally agree with that. And it's not a small thing you're saying. The shift from big production, writing for a grant, receiving money for something splashy, something exciting, that's what we're motivated and incentivized to write to apply to grant foundations for, money to do something big, bigger than it's ever been done before. But I feel like it just, it comes down to something more granular because of the depth of the problems that we have. It's about really reasserting the importance of communication and discussion and conversation with other artists, other artists and other cultures and other ways of doing things. But to that point, we have had some luck partnering with like-minded foundations, I think also the funding sources of finding supporters whose mission themselves is the true goals of this work. So it's not just travel, like one of you said, travel for the sake of travel, travel for the sake of going somewhere different, but really with the goal of the broader goal of equity, understanding equity, understanding racial difference, cultural difference, that is very much the work that we do locally in Chicago around reducing and working against racist structures in our arts organizations for me is so directly linked to our capacity to speak with and work with artists from who aren't from the US and view their work and their process as equal and that there's a mutual sharing there. Those things are very linked. But I think, so one thing that we've been able to do is set up mutual exchanges where Chicago artists can travel abroad and we invite an artist from we had a project in the north of France specifically focused on lens-based work in kind of deindustrialized parts of Chicago and in an area in the northern region of France where they're dealing with the demise of industry and how that's impacted the community. It's a very specific precise reason for this kind of mutual exchange. There's a lot of great learnings around that, sort of an equivalent experience for two artists but I also have been thinking more and more that artists in the US have really a lot of privilege around the skills and resources that they do have access to. And I think that it would be really exciting to receive support, to share some of those skills, some of those things we consider quite basic. So for example, in the assembly, the Arts Link Assembly in the last couple of weeks in a really wonderful dialogue with artists and people on the ground in Beirut working there to repair, revitalize and kind of do the important work of building, sustaining the art scene there. There was a need, someone stated a need for the most, basic art preparator skills, access to how to do sort of simple electrical work. The basic kind of skills that are required to run an arts organization. Simon and we have been thinking, okay, if that's what people need, let's try to meet that need. If we have access to this knowledge and materials too, can we find a way to consider that as part of the sharing too, that we can do that and that's an important need and cultural learning will inevitably be part of it too. So I think the more granular, the more relationship-based, the better to sort of rebuild and fortify our foundation of this work before we go and try to build the skyscraper. No, I think this is really something we should follow and we should get updates from you. I think of course we love big shows. We love Ari Amnuschkin to come and Robert Wilson and the great, the great work of Oremani Polygoni Castellucci. The theater performance is a house that has many rooms but perhaps what is of real importance at the moment that next to it and same importance is an engagement with communities, with the parks, with the people, with the house and listen to them and also not looking at the people just as business, look as customers, politicians, as voters and we look at people as ticket buyers. So you know, these are human beings, that's for them. Any time it might be the last time they see a theater play in their lives, Hannah Miller, the great playwright, and we have said it before, he has said, it's not really the fact that we have a live audience that makes theater so special. He said that the audience, Maddenberg potentially can die. It's the last thing he or she says, sees on a stage or listens to in a concert. There's a big responsibility. So how do we connect to this whole idea of a human existence and the meaning of it? And I think it is something we have lost too. So the hand of specialists who took us away from it as politics is completely in the hand of specialists of the spin doctors and people who create the commercials. We don't see people on the streets hanging posters and discussing in small little groups. No, it's all done somewhere else. I think we have to bring that back, that discussion for the everyday person as we also have to bring arts back. And that's why it is important. And as Simon pointed out, it's shocking that it costs $2,000 to bring in foreign artists and international artists, I mean, to come and do work here. It is shocking that international students cannot come to the US at the moment, that it's so hard to get these visas to even study here, that this country is turning away international exchange and makes it complicated. How can that be? It is shocking and it needs to be fought. And I think one of the recipes is, what CNC Arts Links has done in many other organizations in this idea of hosting an exchange, but it's rare and it's precious to really fund someone for three years, think about it. You know, it's incredible and everybody who funds them congratulation, more should be coming. And I think it would be a great contribution towards the understanding of the world, the global thinking and acting locally to really support such things. It's at the center of what life is about, what meaning is about, and also at the center of what we miss now. We cannot travel, we cannot meet new person, new ideas. So when it's been taken away, it's now unveiled in this idea of calypsis, of apocalipsis, the idea of unveiling of what happens, not so much doomsday. And now we see what's missing and what is really of importance. And I think your work is at the center of it. So I apologize for talking so much today. Dominic Ballista bit more, but it's something I'm passionate about and this is great work. Tomorrow we will have Susan Feldman with us who runs the great St. Anne's Warehouse that has been rebuilt, newly built, who also was innovative. How she said, you know, how do we connect? And always thought, how do we connect to the people in the park? You know, we created the rooftop concerts and many other things. And how does she deal with the fact that she's losing foundations, she's losing support to bring the great international artists is one of the few places in the Americas to really bring on a high level international work. And it's closed, it's down, I'm sure budget is down. And what does she do? Also, is she rethinking something? How is her personal life in this time of COVID? You know, she is an artist in her way, how she collages and puts out things. So we will hear from her tomorrow. I'm very happy that she comes on next week with the great Carol Martin from NYU who kind of told us all that this theater of the real is a significant term at the moment, the documentary theater, theater of the real also trying to capture more of a reality as these artists do when they come and visit and record and speak and make interviews. So we're gonna have Hotel Modern from Rotterdam, a very important company. Pauline Herman and Alain will come and Ravi Moure from Berlin, Beirut based in Beirut but in Berlin a great artist will come and Nick Kent from the legendary tricycle theater in London who did the great game, the Afghanistan plays and so many, many other things. They famously put Tony Blair on trial while he was the prime minister in England for the invasion of Iraq together with Bush as a documentary play. So we're gonna hear on their idea on how to engage with this reality, how to bring change and help people to imagine a different future. This is what people do who went on the streets when the Black Lives Matter movement started as imagining a better future of forms that work and your guys, Miga and also Simon and Fritzi before and everybody's in your supporters, the trust, great trust for mutual understanding and so many others and the Soros Foundation, this is on the right track and then it should be much, much more than it is now and I hope this also is a contribution to raise the awareness of the significance, the symbolic, the imaginary and the real significance your work makes. So thank you for staying with us. Thank you for our listeners on this crazy day. We didn't hear from Andy if she's there, I guess there are no updates from the campaigns, no new developments and no protests, I guess, nothing bad also happened, but also not yet results are in. So we'll see how the days goes. It's a big day. Perhaps today the American presidency will be decided. Many people do say that it will be clear at least by the votes. And so thank you for sharing with us and talking about art and culture and history and on global elections. Thank you so much for this series too. It's very inspiring and really an important way for us all to keep connected. So let's talk more also about your festival in 2022. Yeah, we want you to come and bring artists and show us what we need to do. We'll be radically host. Good, yeah, and Chicago should come. All part of it goes over there. So thank you all and all the best to Millie too and your family, your kids and I wish we could come over for a glass of wine in Al and but it's not possible at the moment but there is TAC as we say, the time after Corona nothing lasts forever, not the good, but also not the bad. So something will come up soon and better be ready for it. Thanks to HowlRound, Vijay and Tia for hosting us to Andy from the single center and our listeners and what they have to say, Mega and Simon. So it's important to find a way for yourself. How could you host someone, invite people, maybe offer your own tiny little residency, support artists and it might enrich in your life, open up your eyes. It's on the very personal level too. So maybe you have a house open somewhere, just open it up and someone could use it for a month or two or you bring someone into your place. Just invite someone you have seen but never talked to and try to understand each other better. So all my best, stay safe, stay tuned, wear a mask and to all of you who can't, let's see you tomorrow. Bye-bye. Great to see you and you Mega, thank you. Bye-bye, thank you.