 Hi, and welcome to the Arts Link Assembly. This year we're entirely online, and instead of one day in New York, we're spending five weeks exploring some of the key issues that artists and arts organizations are addressing both locally but also trans-nationally. Today is really the end of week three. Week three has been looking very much at the work that's happening around the world, especially in the continent with Faustin Linucula. And today I'm very, more than delighted, I make static that Faustin and Peter Sellers join us today. Both are extraordinary artists, Faustin Linucula, as you know, based in Kisangani in the Congo. Peter Sellers, director, educator, based in Los Angeles. Both artists are extraordinary and prodigious creators and producers, but they're also great thinkers about where we're going and how we need to work, both as artists, but also this relationship between artists and communities, which we focus on a great deal within the Arts Link world. So Peter and Faustin, welcome to the Arts Link Assembly. I hope you're there. Here's Peter. Hello, Simon. Thank you for having us here after yesterday. Thank you very much, Simon, for the invitation. No, thanks for being here. We're looking forward to you, looking both at your current work, but also how you see artists and the future of artistic practice, both locally and trans-nationally. But I'll leave you to chat. Thank you so much. Hey. Faustin, good morning. Good afternoon. Yeah, good morning, because I'm sure for you it's morning. You know, and the last time we were together, it was in Wellington, in New Zealand. It was in Wellington, yes. And it seems like it was another world. And we could not have imagined that just a few months later would only have to resort to these platforms to be able to meet and to dream and, yeah, to dream together and to dream about possibilities of the future. So even before talking about a future, it's just like, how do we give ourselves a possibility of a future when we're bombarded from all fronts, you have the global climate crisis, you have xenophobia, borders closing, and then you have the pandemic of COVID-19 and the whole world seems at a loss, just don't know how to deal with it. So where do we find that possibility of a future? Well, again, first of all, I think your work has always been at a key place, which is immediately working with people around you. What is around you? What is within reach? What are we dealing with? Could we deal with it as immediately and directly as possible? And, you know, in this period of thinking, you know, we've all been, everyone was taught to think institutionally and now institutions are in complete collapse. And for me, that's actually pretty useful in some ways because institutional thinking has, you know, in my country, the justice system does not deliver justice. The healthcare system does not deliver well-being. The education system is not delivering education and the US Senate is not delivering democracy. So how do we not just think institutionally but really actually think in terms of real people in real places with real situations and real conditions? And to me, that's one of the beautiful elements of performance, it's about that immediacy and that immediacy of action and that immediacy of forming some kind of sense of shared purpose and shared future. And so, you know, and exactly at this moment of isolation, it's kind of a very inspiring to also have this moment where everything stops for God's sake. What a relief. And also where we can see each other without plane fares, you know, without, you know, huge logistics but actually just speak with the kind of immediacy of a quick sketch of your next project. You know, this, you know, a Zoom is a good sketching pad and it kind of, you know, it's not an oil painting God knows but it is actually beautiful for a shared sketch pad and a place where we can meet without a lot of fuss and just throw things back and forth and let things evolve in a free-floating way. And also that just takes down borders at this time when borders are such an issue, you know, we don't have to get visas to make this conversation today. You know, that's amazing. And so, for me, there's a bit of that and I'm actually very encouraged to start from the beginning, from the ground up from a place of mutual recognition and a place where strangely Zoom creates structures of equality, you know, quite unexpectedly. And a whole lot of issues suddenly aren't in the way of a conversation. That's pretty interesting. And of course, I've been spending the last few months, you know, after my super high experience in New Zealand with you, where really, Lemia Ponafazio brought so many artists together who were creating in a direct context of shared histories and shared retrospective thinking and shared forward thinking. And that we were able to be together in really beautiful contingencies and adjacencies and yes, intersectionalities. That was very, very moving and that every single day began with ceremony and that there were all of these structures to reinforce what it means that we're moving forward together. That was very, very, very inspiring and we had the first COVID cases appearing and New Zealand was starting its first lockdown as we were leaving and then we went into this world. So actually, our time together that in February is kind of was the signal for the seven months that followed for me. And so I'm still living with that and living forward into that. And I mean, tell me what's been going on? You've moved totally into a film mode but have you also, what's been going on in Kisugane? So, before I answer to that, if you can just pick on what you just said, at least this summer, when in Europe, they were reopening after a few months of lockdown, I was afraid that most people I was talking to were just turning the page as if COVID-19 didn't happen as if the world did not shut and we're all just talking about going back to normal, whatever that means. So, when I listen to you, I hear that I hear that this situation could be an opportunity to stop, to think and to ask ourselves the questions. How did we get here and how do we move forward? But often I have this feeling that many of us just don't want to stop and ask ourselves that question. And instead, it's about all going back to normal. How is that from where you are? Well, for me, it's like most arts organizations are run by Republican senators in complete denial. And for me, the media is freaked out as well. And so, there's actually no, nobody who's giving a sense of the weight of this time, what the actual loss is, what the statistics are in America. Now we're 227,000 deaths in the last six months, but what is that number? What is one death? What is one family? What does it mean to lose your mother or your brother or et cetera in this period? What does it mean that you can't even go to be with them in their last days because they're in quarantine and you can't even have a funeral because nobody can be there because it will spread the disease. And so, people are unburied or definitely mourned but all the ceremony is gone, all the sense of when we lose somebody that usually means the family at least comes together, that's gone. So it's the actual weight of the economic collapse, the actual weight that people can't pay rent, the actual weight that the Los Angeles City Council made just as people are being evicted everywhere and living on the street, they actually made it illegal to sleep in your car. So on top of everything, even people trying to survive by just sleeping in their car are being arrested. And so, but where is this reflect, where is the weight of that reflected? Where is the actual intensity of the loss and the sacrifice that has been going on? And again, for me, sacrifices, well, not just for me, but sacrifice is usually necessary in order to create forward motion because it's not until things get truly terrible that people say, oh, maybe this has to stop. But what's so strange is, has nobody noticed that it's truly terrible? Has everybody just said, oh, let's get back to normal? As you said, and what is normal? For me, the future is not a crisis. The crisis is what we've just come from. The crisis is a generation which created the most amount of billionaires ever in history with obscene levels of concentration of wealth and the entire rest of the planet damaged, impoverished, and uprooted. And so to me, going back is the nightmare. Going forward is the hope because what we came from is a catastrophe and a degradation for the planet and degradation for most of humanity. So to have new structures from the ground up to begin to at least work together with new types of solidarity and new ways of understanding and to have the people we can talk to, not just people who can afford air travel is very beautiful. And that sense that we can decide to create quality time with each other in all kinds of situations right now and truly work transnationally and truly exactly as the laws are totally focused on separating us. We actually have technology now that just says, let's gather, let's gather all the time. Let's keep gathering. Let's keep a discussion moving and let's keep many discussions moving. And let's, yes, of course there's Zoom fatigue but there's also Zoom thrill that we can be together. Of course, my mother is in a home that doesn't allow me to visit her. So I have to explain to her why I can't see her for seven months. What it means not to be together physically is painful. And of course, how much emotion is shared in touch and how much emotion is shared in just holding each other and just in that sense of deep presence with each other. Yes, I mean the hurt of that. Where am I hearing that reflected? Where am I feeling that reflected? For me, the cultural world has so much worried about its structural, that the structures endure and the structure of these empty shells. And meanwhile, I think a whole new set of relationships are called for and that are not based on priority of privilege or financial advantage but are just based on lateral ways of understanding each other and moving together. His, what I'm also noticing is this, like in the same quest for going back to normal, like the dictatorship of performing over the internet. And like, yeah, this is the only way to exist. And so let's go there but not approaching this as a space action to rethink how we got here and how we can move forward but just as a way of perpetuating the status quo. And so you just talked about the film which is one of the projects that came about for us during this time. But at first it was not about the film. It was about asking people how they are. You know, I found myself in Portugal when all this madness began. And I received a lot of phone calls and emails from journalists asking me to talk about how I was going through this but somehow implicitly what they meant was how are African artists going through this? And systematically I would say no because I'm in Lisbon, I can't speak here in the name of all African artists. And so Virginie remarked once like, if all these people seem to be concerned about the well-being and future of African artists, why are they asking you? Why are they not making the effort to go and ask a lot of young artists who are on the continent and whose situation is worse off than where you are? So that's triggered something. It's like, okay, maybe this is what we need to do. Let imagine an emergency project, so to speak where we just reach out to our network of younger artists on the continent and just ask them how they are. How are you going through this? And if we can convince our friends who have theaters and festivals to give us a little bit of money so that you can be able to send $500 to each one of these artists, as we're saying, hey, you also need to pay rent if this can help even for a few weeks, then good. And it was incredible when we started making phone calls. It's like within less than 10 days, we got enough responses from friends and partners in Europe and also in North America, like Simon and the CEC ArtsLink to get enough to send to each one of them at least $900. So it was like, okay, good. So this is the idea. So the emergency is not in producing something for the internet. In fact, we're not even producing something for the internet. The emergency is in talking to people and asking them how they are. And this becomes like an excuse to have Zoom and WhatsApp calls to just talk. So from wherever they are, they can tell us how they're doing. But then just say, okay, could you send us some video material that you could share with others so that we don't keep this beautiful energy just for ourselves. So that's how this film, Letters from the Continent came to being. But then we didn't want to release it as an emergency project. So we've put the money we've shared with artists on the continent, but let's take the time to build it. And so that it becomes a space to think. It becomes a space to think about where are we going? How can we rethink where we are? But because I miss the energy of being in the same room or in the same yard with people. Because when we're on Zoom, there's like the dictatorship of like making every second count. So you're feeling this big. How do we just stay silent? Is it even possible on these platforms to be silent for half an hour? We just know we're there. We know it's necessary to breathe. And so I miss the beauty of being in one space with people. And especially in the Congo, where really, yeah, people have time. People take time to be with you. So when you meet someone, they will never, the greetings could be a long, long ceremony. How is your mother? How is so-and-so, how did you, you know? So it's a whole journey. And then you can eventually get to what brought you together. So the other thing we're asking how is life in Congo? It's just that I just came back from Congo two weeks ago and before coming, I traveled to the village of Banataba, which is the village where my maternal grandfather was born and he was raised. And I went there and I brought people together and I performed to Le Cargo in the village yard. And of course, a performance is always an excuse to have a party. So it was high chat because it's like people, it's like you can't be alone having all that fun with all these drums and we're just watching you. So if drums are there, they get into them, people stand up and come and dance with you. And after that, it has to go on. So if the performance is one hour, be ready to be there for six hours because people want the party to go on. So it is with this energy that charged with energy that I came back to Europe. We'll be home. It's so beautiful. So it was six hours into the night. Oh, yes. Yeah. And we had to, actually it was basically six hours in a village of like 250 until there was no more alcohol in the village. Then the people can go to sleep. And were you meeting people in your family who you didn't know? We've been going there for some years now. So apart from the newborn, there are a lot of, I knew everyone. Oh wow, that's great. But then again, no, no, it's not that true because this time, Andre, my uncle who was like the chief, the head of the clan there, he took me to a place where he'd never taken me before. And it was very casually. He was like, well, all right, let's go to this island on, you know, it's an island in the Congo River. It's called Tabakili. And it happens to be the island where our ancestors, when they left their birth region, which is upstream on the Congo River and they drifted down that's where they landed. And so there were like the first occupants of this island. So somehow we have ancestral land rights on that island. And so he wanted to take me there but he wanted to take me to a special place. And he was like, oh, okay, we got there. It was just forest now, very quiet, birds chopping. And then he said, this is where our ancestors used to be buried. So I stood on this place, which in Langola language is called Diombo, Bana Akande. Akande is our first ancestor. And said, okay, this is where your ancestors were buried. So yeah, this time I met other souls that I've never met before. And because as we say in Lingala, which is one of the languages in the Congo, yesterday is tomorrow. And we use exactly the same words for both realities because the unborn and the ancestors are that one. So I can say, yeah, this time I met some new souls. So beautiful, very beautiful. Well, some strange link of course in my last few months has just been, you know, talking to my mother on FaceTime and she's a bit disoriented because of being alone all this time and not feeling touch and she's really, she will call me and say, okay, where's my mother? I need to talk to her. And I say, well, she died many years ago. And my mother said, no, I just talked to her this morning. I just need her phone number. And yesterday, yesterday she told me this long story that she knew Trump when she was a little girl and her father knew how bad Trump was and Trump was trying to get near her like some kind of big guy and she said, get away from me. Don't touch me, don't touch me. And her dad said, get out of here right now. And she's, and then she went on about all the things she knew about Trump when she was a little girl, you know, Ohio. And so, but I mean, again, this sense of ongoing presence, I think sometimes with our functioning capitalist mindset, we just, we're only counting the things that we can count visibly. And of course that's not really who's here. And that, again, the people who are gone are more present than ever. And to actually live in COVID in that spirit is really, really crucial. And my mother just keeps bringing that into our conversations of really talking to people who of course are still here. And I'm being so stupid and saying, no, no, we can't, we can't talk to your mother now. And she said, of course we can. So, that, for me, that sense in this time of the people who are gone are actually the people who are here. And to live that, and to live in the spirit of what is the compensation of that. And what are they trying to suggest to us? And again, what I've been working on is entirely about the disease, not as a affliction, but as a message. Because that's of course what illness is all the time in your life. It's a message that you have to stop what you're doing. And suddenly your life takes a detour you didn't expect. And you have to notice things and learn things. And you're incapacitated. And you're suddenly feeling really deep because we're all encouraged to feel so little. And suddenly you're in a nervous amount of pain and suddenly you're sensitive and you're unbearably sensitive in some cases. But this idea of, in a desensitized world, what does it mean to become incredibly sensitive again? And what does it mean that your body is the testimony for what your mind is refusing to accept? And your body is trying to deliver the message that your mind just doesn't have time for. And suddenly your body says, no, no, I'm gonna make time. I'm going to insist on time. And your mind is racing everywhere and your body is saying, you're not going anywhere. And for me, this period is that for the body politic. The body of our countries, the body of our friends, the body of our enemies, the bodies are speaking. And that's really, and the people who are not here have there are actually speaking. So to listen to the disease to say, okay, how do we hear what the disease is saying? How do we hear what the ocean is saying? How do we hear what the atmosphere is saying? Of course, here in California where there are still two fires burning that cannot be put out at the moment. There's huge winds going on and the flames are just spreading and we've had millions and millions of acres of forests. Disappear and refugees in the state of California, refugees from California going from place to place in California losing their homes, losing everything. And this sense that here in California not only is there this loss of people and a disease in the hospitals overflowing but the sky being red in the middle of the day. And this sense that the air cannot be breathed right now and the particulate matter is so intense that last month, people with solar panels on their homes got no energy because the sunlight is not reaching earth. You know, this is intense stuff and all of it combined, although I think it's a message. And so I think it's not about let's keep going as we were going. It's a message that you have to stop and you have to go forward very different. And to have major institutions bankrupt and in collapse and in universities obviously but also here the healthcare systems and the disaster of the justice systems, the disaster of policing, the disaster of the unequal treatment of entire sections of the society and the presence of just absolutely the impunity of sheer injustice from most structures of justice. What was amazing is people coming out by the millions and saying this must stop. And that message that people in lockdown just poured into the streets and said, we have to stop killing black children, black adults, black, you know, this sense that, you know, certain lives are worthless and the sense that, no, those lives have deep wars and are the essential lives at the moment. That's, again, at a moment of deep loss, the idea that the loss from the disease is augmented by the loss which would a few months ago go unreported and now the shooting of every single person is being reported. And there are people in the streets of Philadelphia today and large numbers of people committed to bringing in a new era of justice. So that's a very, very powerful moment to be alive. We were to be together in February, you know, this winter I was to come to Los Angeles and be with you there with the students at UCLA and now it's been postponed to when it will be possible again. And one of the things we started talking about while preparing for that was that the necessity to connect with a piece of land and to intimately connect with it. So that we move from the abstract discourse of saving the planet or saving the world into saving this tree that I've been sitting under for many years and I feel that it's being threatened. So I will hug it, I'll care for it, I'll water it and I'll try and bring some nutrients to the soil so that this tree can keep going. So I'm not saving the world, but I'm saving one tree. I've identified a tree, I've identified a park and to be able to be there and to care, to provide spaces of care and from these spaces to ask ourselves what kind of stories can we invent from here? What kind of stories can we tell? Now, this is where when I think about the future I want to go more and more. I think the work we've been doing as Studio Kamako has been now about that about creating spaces to care about one another in a world that's so violent that it becomes impossible to find any care at all. So putting this film together this year with the 21 artists and art collectives from the continent is part of that. Yeah, to just say, there's this space here to just say we care. And whether it's in the virtual world of the internet or we're sitting in the same space, it's about caring. Identifying clearly that very small entity that you can care about and doing something about it but above all finding ways of telling those stories, sharing those stories. How is that even possible right now in Los Angeles and California? As I'm asking that, the irony of this situation is that for many years in Congo, that it's the same with many artists on the African continent in general. We were stuck in this one way of thinking, which and we convinced ourselves that back home was only the place to source for stories, so to speak. But these stories could only exist on stages across Europe and North America. So when I look at it today, I feel like a mining company, you go extract wealth, but for the enjoyment or a few out here. And so for us, we were convinced that the only way for our work to be economically viable was to export. And now that all the infrastructures that made this system possible outside the continent are collapsing, I stop and say, oh, how ironical it is that it's still possible today in the Congo to bring people together and have a performance. Like I did in Banataba and like we're doing in the coming weeks in Kinshosa, in Kisangani, that is possible. How can we think of a future where these dynamics are being kind of reversed? I've spoken too much. I want to hear you. Oh, no, the other way. Keep going, keep going. You're just on the edge. Keep going. Just go right over that edge. Please, please, please go, go right, go right over that edge. He's incredible. I'm sorry, I'm just trying to write all this down. Just imagine, just imagine that the only place where the luxury of being in the same physical space and getting bored together without saying, oh, we only have 40 minutes of free zoom. We have to use every second of it and all that. If that luxury can only be possible in the Congo or elsewhere on the African continent. And let's imagine that that's the only space where you could be able to present the magic flute by Mozart. So you'd all come to the Congo. Of course we don't have enough electricity so you need to rethink the lighting design or the whole concept of lighting design altogether. But we have opera singers who have bodies who can stand in that yard and make the air vibrate. But then, because there's still money in the North, we get all this money down there. But we don't build walls that keep the majority of people outside theaters. But we invent spaces where theaters become again those spaces where people come together. They make, to experience something together, to dream together, to fear together. Just imagine. But then, because the first time I went to the village of Obilo, which is the journey I talk about in Le Cargo. And I met this incredible percussionist. When I asked them if they used to get paid, the answer was, well, playing drums is not my job. So I couldn't live off that. I go farming, I go hunting, I raise animals. That's my job. Playing drums is this other space. So I'm in this space where maybe there's something I can learn from this, where making performances, it's not my job. But it's this space that I need to connect, to always reconnect with myself and the people around me. And so I need to maybe grow beans and maize, but then make art as I'm doing that. Because I just heard during lockdown, I came across this quote, which is attributed to Confucius, but I don't know if it's true. But anyway, it's just saying, if your project is for a year, plant rice. If it is for 10 years, plant trees. If it's for 100 years, educate children. So I want to plant rice, plant trees, educate children and ask myself, what about poetry in the middle of all this? Do you think I've gone over the cliff enough for you to jump and join me now? No, I'm joining you no matter what. But also, this is super exhilarating. And again, for me, it's the kind of thinking that only a crisis brings us back to ourselves. And that power of coming back to what is real and let all the rest fall away is, it takes a serious crisis to just reverse everything, because of course the world is upside down. And what does it mean to reverse every one of these relationships? And also to, again, make structures where it's not the money speaking. I always try and say to my students that what you're paid for is not what you're on earth to do. And who you are is everything that you do that you're not paid for. That's actually who you are. And it's everything you'll do no matter what. That is who you actually are. And what you're paid to do has nothing to do with who you are. And because it's also, we're all here in a, it's all offering, it's all offering, it's all offering. And it's not money. And we keep creating structures where the money is running up. And what is it if we stop listening to the money and we start listening to everything else? The money, of course, has not saved a tree. The money goes the opposite direction with the life of the tree. And so what is it? Is it to create a zone of value that is not about money? Which I think is why we're here as performers because we're creating something that is a giant expenditure of human energy without any possible way of recompensing it. And I think we're here to create value, to create a different type of values when you say educate children. I mean, that's the power of creating education outside of a capitalist system where you are, right now, most people, even most students in college, are going to college to get a job. And not understanding, no, the achievement is to become a human being. The achievement is to become a powerful and humble presence in the world that is capable of serving a larger set of goals than getting through the week and making this quick profit. So I think each of the actions you're talking about, both rice, which for me, one of the deep things about planting rice, even though the cycles are quick, in fact, it's about infinite patience and it's about grain by grain. And rice is just this lesson in patience that we don't have. And so if more people actually had to harvest rice, had to plant rice and harvest rice, you know, the question of patience in the world and what it takes to grow things is incredible. And obviously, you know, planting trees is what we're doing with just not about quick results. You're not gonna check the result every five minutes. You're not gonna have the latest poll every, you know, 12 minutes. It's a tree is something that, again, it's the lesson is patience. The lesson is long-term. Deepening roots, the lesson is long-term change. And the other lesson is how do you create breathable air? How do you actually not, not just plant yourself and create breathable air? Which I think is one of the deepest lessons for artists. Is we're actually in a time when literally what people are chanting in the streets is, I can't breathe. And we all feel this suffocation. What does it mean to create air that you can breathe? To me, that's, that is our role. And to generate, to create this space of breathing in a place where people are suffocating and also have forgotten how to breathe and what it means to breathe deeply and what it means to feel your whole being in the in-breath and in the out-breath and have this breathing that's not just hurried and short-breath as if every second we're finishing some damn race. But really quite the opposite. This long, long breath of drifting down the river and arriving at an island and finding the future by drifting, which of course, in the Confucius mode it's also a really deep Chinese thing of what it means to understand drift, what it means to not just make everything about human willpower, but to create this radically open space that accepts the place that we're drifting to rather than we saw the island we rode towards of what it means to drift and to allow this drift to deepen your way of thinking and get out of your own personal plans and your own outline of everything and recognize that the actual movement in the planet is this deep drift and how do you feel the wind and move with it? How do you feel the current and move with it? How are you part of something larger than yourself? And recognize that there are other forces that are going to have you arrive at that island. I also have to say, first and for me, just in terms of capitalist survival tactics, I really do, I think I've told you often, one of my very favorite things was meeting the old man who trained three generations, four generations of dancers in Bali. And he always has the difference between a good artist and an excellent artist and a great artist. And it's exactly what you said, a good artist knows the music inside and out, understands the moves, can execute everything perfectly. An excellent artist is someone who knows the moves, knows the music, can execute everything perfectly and understands the inner meaning. But a great artist is someone who can execute the moves, knows the music, understands the inner meaning and is a trauma. And again, we're all here to grow things and we're all here to nourish each other. And so these actions are not just jobs. Farming is not a job either. It's truly a larger project and it has to do with taking care of the earth. It has to do with taking care of ourselves and taking care of the earth, which is what farming needs to move in both directions, of course. And so what's very inspiring is a lot of my students have just created small farms and created a way of protecting the planet and a way of actually feeding the planet. Feeding each other and people around them with something beautiful made with committed love and care in both directions, both for the planet and for human beings. And to use this period to generate, you know, a non-capitalist sense of work, that work actually has meaning and beauty and is not just wage labor, but work itself gives meaning to life. And the way we work actually is about creating meaning. As a farmer, as whatever we're doing, work is not just a job. And until, you know, the Industrial Revolution, the High Capitalism work actually was an exquisite thing in life, not dredge work, you know? And in fact, it's very interesting that, you know, after High Capitalism, then the vacation had to be invented because work was so horrible that you needed some break from work, as opposed to before that, where work was about creating this high level of craftsmanship, which was about the deepest levels of satisfaction, of deep impulses, which are both immediate and transcendent. And that's where, you know, most beautiful works of art from most parts of the world were created, not by salaried people, but by people who were committed for another set of reasons. And so for me, one of the questions of the future of the arts is now that arts organizations are in profound financial collapse. For me, one of the projects I'm working on right now is about redirecting the arts economy into healthcare, into agriculture, into the justice system, that the arts are not here for themselves, they're here to make everything else work. They're here to open everything else. They're here to make everything else more real. And to create the space where difficult things can be said, in an atmosphere that is inclusive and deeply reinforces real value. And that is so needed in the justice system, that is so needed in the education system, that is so needed in health. And because we need justice and we need wellbeing, we need care and we need beautiful food, not food that's poisonous, and that is poisoning the planet and poisons human beings. So for me, I think the future is to imagine the arts as part of every other economy, not as themselves in an art space, but quite the opposite, that every space needs to be deepened to become an art space and every art space needs to be deepened and become useful in people's lives and in the life of the planet. And to put back in place or to actually create a new way of understanding this deep inner connectedness. And right now, again, the capitalist system has siloed everybody in what your field is. And for me, the arts exactly cannot accept that. We have to make sure that our field is every field and that our life commitment is to creating more justice. And so therefore, I think we need to be rated into the justice system, rated into the health and system of wellness. Obviously, we're understanding that justice is rarely delivered by the so-called objective structures that have been set up. Those structures need to be, just as you've talked about your tree, you need to make that same, same discussion for a human being in a justice system and for a human being in a health care system. And so this place of caring you're talking about, I think is what the arts are meant to create in every field. And so perhaps we need to actually create an economic understanding of that and have artists earn their living by participation in all of these fields and create ways in which in every field there's a cultural component. Because every field is actually, every human action is a cultural thing. And once it's understood culturally and not simply politically and not simply economically, then we begin to have value in every action. And every action is charged with meaning and is recognized for what it means or what it doesn't mean and should be challenged because of the meaning as well. And so that space of reinforcement and that space of nourishing and that space of challenge is very present. And of course the arts are also crucial to a space of challenge and a space of challenge that is not simply vicious, that's not simply targeting other human beings but is actually creates a space of challenge where no one has to die and no one has to lose their home but at the same time, the challenge is present for a whole community. And we can understand challenge together without creating the good guys and the bad guys but we can actually say whatever people are doing, it's in a space that belongs to all of us. And so we actually have to create and sustain the community that has to say, is this what we want it to do? So for me, all these processes are, I think why theater was invented and why the arts were invented. And so to me to use this time where everything has to actually go to the ground again and start over from the ground up and at first principles. And meanwhile, first principles in a way that we can't say, oh, let's go back to earlier societies because now that's over with and the earlier societies are gone except in the way that like your children, of course, it's a new incarnation of people that go back many generations that are showing up in these new bodies. And I have to really feel this also about art practice is that things that are very old now need to show up in new bodies and in new forms and in new ways of creating solidarity and deepening solidarity. And so to me, even Zoom is part of that now. We have a, you know, for me, one of the things that I'm so moved by in your work is can we look at current technology but in the terms of the demand for meaning and resonance that were used in ancient technologies and can we recognize the continuity and can we recognize that something has been waiting to be born and is only now able to be born now in this generation? That's really beautiful. Now, because somehow we are still negotiating still negotiating with the existing structures, structures which are refusing to die and very violently so even though everything is saying that should retire now and structures that are using every bit of power that they can wield to keep sustaining themselves at all costs, which most times means against everything and everybody. But those are the structures that we have to deal with now. And it is within these structures that up until now we've found ways of surviving economically as well. When we begin to ask ourselves these questions, how do we relate to these structures? Because it's very easy to say, them versus us, good guys, bad guys. Until I remember a couple of years ago, I was working with Hengie Wenusheba, beautiful artist, human being from Johannesburg who lives in Johannesburg, but she's from Komashu in the Quasum Natal. And she was talking about the uncles in Isizulu called the Malumes. And it's like we have the Malumes that are making our lives very difficult. You have Malumes in the neighborhood and who are there and who are molesting small girls, but no one says anything because it's the Malume anyway. Malumes in parliament and in state houses, you have Malumes everywhere. But when we sit and look at what's really alien us as a community, can we afford to leave the Malume outside? How do we deal with the Malumes and all these structures that are making sure that these questions don't find a latent space to exist? How do we begin this work of creating circles that don't exclude? Because it could be quite easy for me to just say, okay, I'll go back to Congo, forget about Europe, America and just do my stuff there. But I don't want to pass on that kind of world to Luis and Almaci, our sons who are teenagers today. And I want to pass on to them a different world. And I can't do it alone. So like where you are today, how much of these questions are being shared or is it a deeply lonely place? I'm gonna have to, for me, one of the things that is a total privilege about being, you're calling oneself an artist is that you can be in some corporate boardroom in the morning and you can be in a gang meeting in the evening. And you actually have access to both gangs. And so strangely, the passport of an artist is to cross social lines and to cross, again, disciplinary lines, to cross lines. And we can get a visa. And so in a way that we could begin to create the structures that allow the people that we're able to meet to actually meet each other. And frequently it takes the image of an artist to interest the power structure. And the power structure wants to feel, okay, I'm with an artist now and the artist is gonna create something and that will be interesting. And it's a sign of how enlightened I am that I'm engaging this person and so on. And you actually have, in the Grioche tradition, a way of getting the ear of somebody in power. And them actually paying for it. And that's amazing. And to me, that very specific African tradition of the praise song and then the epic that flows from it is very, very important. Because nobody ever improves by you telling them how horrible they are. It just never happens. And you don't get to your third sentence. You just, you don't. There's not an ongoing conversation or relationship. And I think what we all need to do is, as you said, create in the super, this time of unbelievable division, how do we create and maintain long-term relationships, not short-term relationships. And say, no, no, we're in this for the long haul. Which means you need to use everything at your disposal to, of course, be entertaining, to, of course, create a space where everybody is able to respond in a certain way, in their way. But that is something that draws them in and lets them know they're being addressed and not ignored. And then I think you've done this with your practice really beautifully. I've had incredible moments with this where you're actually able to get everybody in the room that normally is never in the same room. And that's the beginning of some model of shared space which is otherwise not existing in the society. And so every project is a project of in what way can we create a space that is newly shared? And then the question is, how do you sustain it? How, what is the next step from the first meeting? You know, what is the way that creates a mutual sense of ongoing commitment to each other? And again, that's where I think now thinking outside the structures of this show, that show, but recognizing a long body of work and being able to claim a long body of work and be able to present what we're doing, towards Sipin, the designer I work with a lot. He just, you know, we've worked for 30 years and he said, Peter, it's one show. It's just, it is one conversation that is happening across their entire life. And the more we can, you know, get out of the, again, supermarket marketing of the arts where, you know, everything is its own thing and it's an own package. But in fact, this is a long-term commitment. It's life work, just like the tree you're talking about and definitely like the children you're talking about. You know, you do have to feed your children every day and it's an ongoing project. And there are good days and bad days and there are inspiring days and there are devastating days. All of that is, you know, is a long-term commitment. And it's not just, oh, this was a great day and let's have some applause and what else can we think of to do now? You know, but there will be tomorrow with the same group of people and the same and deepening commitment, if anything. And as you know, as with the tree, as with the children it doesn't get easier as you go. It actually gets more complex. And so again, to let the performing arts deepen into those structures of commitment and complexity and say, okay, what is the life work that we're all doing rather than what is this week's show? I think that's really an important context to draw. Huh. So we can afford even on Zoom to just say, to listen and be silent. Because I don't want to say anything after this for now. You know? It is actually what I do with my mother because we can't be together. And so we just put FaceTime on and then we can just sit there for an hour and not talk, but my mother knows that I'm present. And then I'm listening and every once in a while something can come up, but we just quiet together but we're together. It's beautiful entering silence into silence with you, Peter. And looking forward for more and more and more and more. Stay safe, stay beautiful. And love to all the beautiful people in that apartment with you. So, see you soon. See you soon. See you soon. Thank you so much for this day.