This Beautiful Shot is Not an Accident

“This is what I am, do you read me?” Cleopatra Kambugu is a biologist, activist and transgender film personality. Her wish to understand her gender expression led her to study genetics and molecular biology in university and later undergo surgery to help others decode what she felt she already was. In today’s episode we talk about Cleopatra’s resilience, her experience in Uganda during the threats that came in 2013 with the Anti-Homosexual Act, her participation in the award-winning documentary, Pearl of Africa, and her ideas about change, that change is a marathon, we are planting seeds take time to grow. And while they grow we must remember it is important to enjoy the life we have.

Can books from one culture bring empathy to people from very different backgrounds and experiences? Post-doctoral research Tom Kellner is researching the translatability of Israeli literature being published in Germany. In this episode we speak about the process of understanding what books sell, why they sell, and the possible reasons for which works readers read. What readers understand and if empathy increased from reading the stories from another culture is more difficult to determine. Kellner shares a different definition of empathy, one from philosopher Emmanuel Levinus, that empathy is accepting that people are different and we do not understand them. And yet we care. Join us as we explore these ideas.

Biases in search engines are not only an issue of algorithms, our bias is built into the beliefs we have about the world. And our beliefs are influenced by the stories we absorb through our culture and more and more the information we find online. Today I’m speaking with Michelle M. Wright, distinguished professor or literature and Emery College. She has been researching how blackness is constructed through the stories that are told in the public sphere. Today we talk about new stories coming into the culture and ways we can strive to be more inclusive when telling our own stories, looking at the questions we ask others and holding space for ambiguity.

Inclusion and equity don’t just happen because it is part of your mission statement. Creating a space where all members feel a sense of belonging is a process. And today I am in conversation with Dori Tunstall who has been working in the area of diversity, equity, inclusion and decolonization. Dori Tunstall is Dean of Design at Ontario College of Art and Design University in Toronto, Canada. Our conversation stretches from the language of inclusion to the insights that mushrooms and design thinking bring to our understanding of our fundamental interconnectedness.

What is needed to create an economic system that supports human and planetary flourishing? Renegade Economist Della Duncan speaks about what is needed, deeper connection with our values. Della is founder and co-host of the Upstream Podcast where she invites listeners to imagine what a sustainable, just and democratic economy might look like. In our conversation Della shares the journey she took to reimagining economics, and shares ways we can move from consumption to connection.

Today I’m talking to filmmaker, installation artist and photographer Mischa Leinkauf whose work explores the borders, borders of buildings, bridges, public space, laws, and nation states. This season I’ve been talking to artists about their first solo show. Many of his works are performative interventions and the definition of a show is somewhat nebulous. Who sees the work, when they see the work, do they even know it is a work?

The ecology of emotions is a concept Wild Anima, musician and sound artist Alex Alexopolous has been developing. It is a practice of mending the broken parts through our inner process of photosynthesis. Her sound work and artistic practice center around the heart and healing through nature, meditation and love. Our conversation explores these connections, moving beyond the inner voice and acute shyness, and the importance of keeping a creative process.

Time and a sense of new possibilities are essential for the creative process. Today I speak with the co-creators of KuBa Kulturabahnhof where I’ve been in residence for a month about the artistic process and the gifts of the residency sharing space with the villages of Klien Warnow and beyond. I also speak with the artistic team of Hyenaz, Kathryn Fischer and Adrienne Teicher about their week of research on the topic of extraction, capitalism and the arts.

This week painter Jamila Barakat and video/audio artist Laura J. Lukitsch speak about how their work has developed during the three weeks at the artist residency at KuBa Kulturbahnhof. Jamila shares how she was able to break through her previous painting style to find a new dialect to her painting language and Laura found a way to incorporate augmented audio into her installation. The conversation documents their lessons learned both in terms of their work and their way of thinking about the inner critic. And they share reminders of methods they use to reconnect to their creative flow and inner voice.

The creative process is not a straight line. This week painter Jamila Barakat and video/audio artist Laura J. Lukitsch share reflections on their creative process during their artist residency at KuBa Kulturbahnhof. The conversation covers feeling like a fraud, thoughts on beauty and disgust and a discussion on finding balance between pleasant and controversial material.