Untethered Reflections: Artists Navigating Late-Stage Capitalism

Special Series

Nov 20

Part of the “Soothing the Itch” Series

by Alejandra Duque Cifuentes, Brinda Guha, Gonzalo Casals, j, bouey, & Yanira Castro

Listen to all 7 parts of the Soothing the Itch Series

Conrhonda
Greetings GIA listener!

In this segment, we embark on an exploration of the complex landscape that artists navigate amid late-stage capitalism. Alejandra Duque Cifuentes sets the stage by highlighting the intersection of art, identity, and economics. Joining her are visionary minds – Yanira Castro, Gonzalo Casals, j. bouey, and Brinda Guha – voices that challenge norms and delve into the essence of artistic expression within a broken system.

Together, they contemplate the role of artists in an ever-changing world and confront us with poignant questions:

What does being an artist in the United States truly mean today?
How does money shape our creative pursuits, and can it be harnessed to empower rather than divide?

Listen up as they embark on a conversation that transcends the superficial and ventures into the heart of community, the pursuit of purpose, and the urgency of accountability and action. This dialogue captures the spirit of these turbulent times, inviting us to reflect, connect, and, ultimately, create change.

Alejandra Duque Cifuentes
All right. Well, folks, thank you so much for joining me for today's conversation. My name is Alejandra Duque Cifuentes and I am a consultant in the arts. My pronouns are she/her, and I identify as a White Latina woman originally from Medellín, Colombia, currently living in Lacey, Washington which is the homes of the Nisqually people, the Cowlitz people, and the Puyallup people. I am coming to you from my home office this afternoon. It's a beautiful day here in the Pacific Northwest, we got a little bit of rain. It's been quite dry the past few weeks so we've been celebrating the rain. I'm wearing my brown hair back in a ponytail. I have a bright salmon t-shirt with a blue jeweled necklace, and a little bit of blush on my cheeks, which is a new thing that I'm doing these days. I'm very excited to have this conversation with a group of friends, folks that have been asking a lot of similar questions that I've been asking about what it means to be an artist in the world, what it means to be living in this moment in time in the US what it means to be living in late-stage capitalism, what it means to be making art, art that both is asking questions of the world, but also asking questions of ourselves that wants to live in reciprocity, and in community. And so I decided to bring us all together to talk about it. Instead of having a million WhatsApp threads separately and instead of random conversations while driving to get a thing off my chest, I thought we'd all come together and have an, have a chat about things that matter. So let's talk about what, where are we coming from in this, in this conversation? The first thing to name that feels really important is that this conversation is being recorded at a time where we are mourning the murder of O'Shea, a beloved member of our dance community and someone who, with what occurred is, is highlighting the reality of the tension of the world that we're living in, right. What does it mean to have the freedom to make art, to dance? What does it mean to be able to live in this world? We're coming at a moment where multiple groups of people around the country are rising up in strikes, they are asserting their right to fair labor, they are asserting their right to make a living wage, to care for their families, to care for their homes. We are coming at a moment where wildfires are ravaging different parts of the country. Where the effects of environmental racism and climate change are being lived day to day. We're also coming in the middle of the summer in a month when people are yearning to disconnect, are yearning to enjoy nature to be with each other to process the closing of the season as they gear up, again, to the start of school, to the coming of the fall, to the changing of the seasons. And so it's an interesting moment. I think it's also Leo season and so there's all of that happening in the air. So it's, it's a time that is full. That's effervescent and it's also a time where we're caring morning as a community in the middle of a continued resurgence of COVID, and the ways in which the structures that we've been living in continue to fail us and that we also have to continue to work within. So with all of this context, right, we have our artistic community that plays such a big role in American life, right? We have - artists are a part of almost every single part of a person's life, they are either listening to the radio or watching Netflix, they're either wearing clothing, or consuming advertisements on social media. They might be, you know, performing in their communities, or taking a mommy and me dance class, they might be going to the movies on the weekend, or watching a street performer in their local neighborhood, sing a song or play an instrument. And on top of all of that, there are artists and the different ways in which they show up in the world, right, some folks are working in for-profit, commercial spaces. Some people are working in large theaters right now, many of which are experiencing the reality of a delayed financial effect from the pandemic with closures and layoffs. And then we have the community artists, educators, folks that make art at home that don't sell their art, and that's simply experienced it themselves with their families. And often, when we talk about artists, unfortunately, it's often referred to as like a higher class kind of group of people that ask these like lofty questions and are in museums, but are also wildly classless because most are working class people that don't actually have access to what the persona of the artists that might exist in the psyche of the general public might be or have. And I've been thinking a lot about, you know, given all of these realities, you know, what does that mean? What does it mean to be an artist in the United States today? And what does it mean to contend with money, I've had money on my mind a lot. I recently left my job at Dance/NYC. It was the first time in my life that I had a position that paid me enough to not live paycheck to paycheck. It was the first time that I was able to start saving and I left this job to start a business and so I started to ask myself these questions about money. How does money work? How does money? How do I get money? How do I save money? Do I love money? Right? I was asking myself like, do I love money? Like am I like doing everything that I'm doing to just get money? Why do I have this desire to get money all the time? And I started to think about the ways in which, you know, when I was growing up, my mom would say, "Well you know, money doesn't buy happiness." I'm like, Well doesn't it? Doesn't it though, doesn't it give me the opportunity to rest? Or doesn't it let me not worry about where we're going to live? Not worry about what happens if you get sick that I can take care of you mom or dad. And so I've had money in my mind and thinking about money inevitably means thinking about capitalism, right? And the reality of how money shows up, how it's structured, how it's mechanized, how it's institutionalized, how it's both a tangible thing, and also an elusive thing, right. The dollar is what it is because of the faith we've put into it. Our federal system is no longer backed by gold. So it's actually all an idea that we have all believed and given value to and yet somehow it has such a permanent impact on my life on the lives of the people that are around me. And then I think about a fact that I learned recently. I have a dear friend of mine, her name is Nathalie Molina Niño and an incredible person who has so many hats I won't attempt to try to convey, but she's working right now, in a group called Known Holdings. It's an investment company that's focused on helping to generate wealth and steward wealth for BIPOC, the global majority of people, right, and one of the things that Nathalie and her colleagues at Known, have been articulating is the reality that while the global majority, while people of color make up more than 70% of the world's population, and while we are the drivers of an economy that is nearly $4 trillion, we actually manage and own less than 2% of the world's entire money. So while we are 70% of the people, and generate $4 trillion in economic activity, BIPOC folks are only managing about 2% of the world's money. And to me, that's something that's wild and frustrating, because in capitalism, what we've learned and what we know, is that the way to build wealth is by being owners of the means of production, is by owning a business, is by generational wealth, is by the kind of amassing of land and resources, and then the limiting of who has access to those, to that land and to those resources. Right. And so I, you know, I'm like, okay, so what does that mean, as an artist? What does it mean, when artists are working in their communities? Okay, so are, are they businesses? Should we be acting like businesses? How can we continue to own the end-benefit, financially, from the things that we create? How can we benefit, in our communities, benefit from the things that we create, I think so much about the hip hop community and how hip hop is one of the most profitable cultural exports that the United States has and yet somehow, the founders of hip hop on the 50th anniversary year of the founding of hip hop, do not have access to this wealth, do not have access to this, to the reaping of this explosive economy that has been born out of their creativity. And so I'm left with so many questions. I'm left with so many questions about: Well, then why, what what is nonprofit? What is nonprofit? What is for profit? What are fiscal? You know, how does money work in the United States? How does it, how does it work with the IRS? Are we, are we even doing this right? And why do we feel compelled to keep doing it in ways where we find ourselves at a loss for the things that we need as people, as workers, as communities, as institutions, whether they're nonprofit or not institutions could be groups of people that have decided to do something together and to build a structure around that. So I'm just left with a lot of questions. And I'm here to talk with my friends about all these questions that I don't have the answers to. So with that very brief introduction, about all the things I'm gonna open the floor to any of my friends to jump right in.

j. bouey
I would like to just jump in real quick. Hi, this is j. bouey, speaking what up. Lowercase on the j and the b of my name, be the Bible. I actually need to do that my Zoom does not say that. Let me go ahead, and he said I was talking on mute on that one. Okay. So hello, this is my voice. I am a Black, AMAB person which means, it's an acronym for assigned male at birth. I do not have a gender and I do look like a traditional masculine male. My nose is here with a septum ring in it. I'm wearing a blue bandana upon the noggin. I have gold rimmed glasses, a green shirt that does say Hamilton High School and it's my uncle's shirt that I stole (laughter) when I come to visit and my background is blurred but it's in my living room. Um, I am a part of the The Black people of this nation who are a part of the African diaspora. My people are both of the continent of Africa indigenous to these lands. Speaking of indigenous lands, I am occupying Lenapehoking and Canarsie lands, also known as Bed–Stuy, Brooklyn. Shout out to hip hop and its 50th anniversary. I am also a whacker, which is a way of life as well as a dance practice. So for those who see me in the visuals, my hands will be moving, because that's just how we communicate with that last thing said. I'm really happy to be here. Thank you for having me Alejandra. Popcorn to Brinda. Hey girl

Brinda Guha
Hi! My name is Brinda. And Hi J. Good to see you. Good to see everybody here. My name is Brinda. My pronouns are she and her. I'm here on Mannahatta, Land of the Lenape people. I'm wearing a black turtleneck. My hair is very curly today. It really showed up. I have many rings. I have big silver dangly earrings, I have dark lipstick. I have brown skin, a nose ring. And I identify as a non-disabled cast privileged, brown skinned South Asian woman with Bengali heritage. I am a dancer, I am an arts administrator, and events producer. I am many things. I am stepmom, bonus Mom. I am a daughter. I hold many spaces in different capacities. And then in the arts, I would say that I'm you know, visible and not visible. At the same time. I do a lot of work behind the scenes, but I'm also an active performing artist. So I'm really happy to be here. And I wonder... your grounding Alejandra for this conversation gives me a lot to think about. And I'm trying to figure out how is it that I hold so many, someone like me, holds so many spaces in the arts world and feels completely lost about all the things I'm supposed to know about running my four businesses. So I'm excited to be here and kind of, you know, really listen to you all, and contribute in the ways that I think makes sense. But really just mull over some of these ideas of my relationship to being a business owner, and, but also being actively practicing my art within that space to give context to being a business owner. And so I'm figuring it all out, but I'm still thinking about your, your framing. So I'm gonna take a minute and really mull that over and I'm gonna pass it to Yanira, if you want to say anything.

Yanira Castro
Hi, everybody. This is, I'm Yanira Castro. Today I've got my white, bob hair, I actually, I actually blow dried it, which folks, this is not something I do. My kid is like who are you? Usually it's waves in a mess, but I wanted to try it out. So here it is. I also have on a pair of headphones and a pair of dark Ranta glasses and I got no makeup on because I don't have time for that. I have a white, sorry, this is black linen shirt buttoned down with a metal necklace. And behind me is this tree that I've been growing since the start of the pandemic and belongs to a dear friend. And so it's always there as a reminder, it's to my right, and then there's windows behind me. And all the connections, I am an artist and a maker. And I actually feel like important to this conversation is grounding a little bit how I came into being an artist and a maker, which is the mid 90s. And some of you might remember what happened in the mid 90s. It was a giant shift in that: Oops, no more art funding for you artists directly. Right? So I came into artists making going like no one's ever gonna pay me in the way that my mentors had been paid. So there's this whole new system that's being created: funding wise, theater wise. And I also want to name that I am a performance maker. I'm an interdisciplinary artist, but the work is grounded in performance and performance has its own really difficult nut to crack around all of this because we work with so many collaborators. And because we're indebted to one another, we are walking communities in our art making. And so that really sets up these conversations in really thick mapping, relational ways. I am Boricua, born in San Juan, Puerto Rico on the colony, that is, that of this country currently called los Estados Unidos. And I am in currently Lenapehoking, the land of the Lenape, Muncie, and Canarsie people in Midwood, Brooklyn. Yeah, so I wanted to ground that, and I'm going, to give it over to you Gonzalo next, but I just want to say one thing about what you said about capitalism, supposed to be about being business owners and owning our means of production. I'm going to push back against that, I don't think that's what capitalism is about at all. I actually think capitalism is about dividing us from our means of production. And generational wealth is actually a really prime example of that. It's not so much about production, but it's about systems of finance, that separate us from our own action. It depletes our action. It depletes our efforts, and very intentionally. So Gonzalo, you next.

Gonzalo Casals
I just want to sit here and listen. Thank you, Alejandra for having me and great to meet all of you. It's amazing. My name is Gonzalo Casals. I am a middle-aged, White passing Latino, that's what I was told that the term is. I'm queer, I'm an immigrant, and I mentioned those identities, because although many of those may signal that, you know, I faced some oppression just for identifying like that, all the privilege combined that I had outside of those identities, have forced me, so much privilege that I cannot even, you know, claim any oppression, but I feel like it gives me a little bit of a opportunity to build empathy for those within these identities: immigrant, Latinx, queer, to understand their realities. I also, I talk about, you know, coming out as when you have the privilege and you can do it as a responsibility. And I feel like, I feel now I have come out three times already in my life: as a queer man, as an immigrant undocumented, that had to marry for papers, people don't think that White men like me need to do that, that, you know, the system will allow them to find different paths to citizenship. I also came out as, as somebody that suffers mental health issues, anxiety and depression, and lately, I'm coming out as somebody that has mild but you know, long standing, Long Haul COVID. And if you notice that I get a little emotional, that's one of the symptoms that COVID and my Long Haul COVID has. And I bring that up (and I'm going to do my accessibility check in a minute) because Alejandra, I want to add too many reasons on the many contexts that you brought. The idea that I, we are finally hopefully realizing, coming to realize in the long lasting effects of COVID in our society, right. We were pushed to go back to normal, to move on really quickly. And the long lasting effects in individuals in communities and society are so big, that they cannot deny them anymore. And I just want to make sure that's also part of the context. I'm wearing my black glasses. I'm wearing a blue shirt, and sitting on my favorite chair, which is a yellow chair, and you have some books or picture books, that is marked behind me. And I just want to create a quick parallel, because I'm an educator, a policymaker and cultural producer. Want to clear a parallel a little bit of what you said Alejandra, when you said about you know, 70% of the population and we don't own you know, not even 2% right, and Brinda what you said about "I don't understand why? I cannot manage my project, my businesses, I don't know what I'm doing." You know, the system that has been created for nonprofits, which is what I know, it's a replica of capitalism. If you go all the way back and read The Gospel of Wealth, that was written by Carnegie, basically a sad apology to capitalism, and they see the nonprofit system as a way to colonize. "Let's grab those that don't belong to our communities, grab those few that race to the top and through alter, convert them to us, right." And it's a system that doesn't allow us to participate in wealth creation. But it's also a system that is so pervasive, and so divided, Yanira as you were saying, that makes us believe that our failures are because of our lack of skills, our lack of... in resources, and, and it's not, it's a system that is failing us. And I'm going to leave it at that for now.

Alejandra Duque Cifuentes
Ale here is. Its getting juicy. All right, we can unmute our mics, we can cross talk. Um, Yanira, I, to your point on, you know, how I define capitalism? Uhh... Definitely, I think what I, what I keep thinking about in terms of the ownership of the means of production is this piece of surviving capitalism while it is occurring. And while as an individual, I am unable to affect levers that systemically change it. And so I wanted to kind of qualify that within my definition of it as opposed to the kind of the extractive nature that it that it is inherently built upon, right, this kind of like ah usurping, extracting, you know, weird, absorbing thing that it does.

Gonzalo Casals
There's that, quote, that is attributed to Slavoj Žižek, that says that "it is easier for us to imagine the end of the world, than the end of capitalism" right. We'll see, well, yeah, but the economy, right. So, so pervasive, that we cannot live without it.

Brinda Guha
And leave it to Alejandra to really start the conversation off with capitalism as if that's just like the first thing which we can we can tackle today. Laughter

j. bouey
Basically. We got to set the context. Laughter in the background. One of the things that really hits me about that quote that you shared Gonzalo is that: effort. I like to emphasize the word easy. It's just easier for us to imagine the end of the world before we can imagine ending capitalism. So on the other end, is it just harder to imagine the end of capitalism before the end of the world? And if we're only talking about effort, where do we place our effort at? The easy part? Or the hard part? That's the question, I asked myself in response to that question.

Gonzalo Casals
It's a great point. And if you think, that, the system keeps you occupied thinking that, you know, you're not getting the grant, because the proposal is too complicated, right? That's an... that's a tiny little complication in the whole system, right? That again, that you're... it's your fault, and you need to build capacity, right, you never get to see the system in order to change it. So it is an effort right? To imagine it.

Yanira Castro
This is Yanira speaking. So many thoughts are kind of coming up. The end of the world is spectacle, right? The end of the world is spectacle. And we have many ancient texts that talk about different ways of thinking about what the end of the world is like. And, and many of them the end of the world has happened several times. Right. So this is like something that we know, but the the other thing I want to think about is, you know, when you think about the history of us being on this planet, human beings being on this planet, you know, capitalism is not that old. Umm and one of the things that I've been thinking about, and Ale, you and I have many conversations around this kind of word transformation. And I often think about, you know, transformation is becoming something you have never been, and how frightening that is, right? So if you're a creature that crawls, you can't imagine what it is to be a creature that flies. And yet, this happens all the time. And that's what I've been thinking about lately, I've been thinking about like, actually, transformation happens all the time. It happens all the time. And so I don't have an answer. But what does that mean? Is it a crisis of imagination? Does, does the fuzzy crawling creature imagine itself as the flying creature? No, but it has, and this is what I think is really exciting, it has the column imaginal discs built into it, that has all the information to become a butterfly. And so somewhere inside us, maybe it's our ancestry, maybe it's our - it is there, the potential is there. And so... I don't know how to clue into it. I mean, I think that's the that's the biggest question is like, what, how do we form that cocoon? What we need to form a cocoon, because before you go, that is the space in which you like decompose yourself, and then become something else. And I think many of us thought that maybe the pandemic would be that. And I think we discovered that if it is it is the tiny beginning of a thread that's starting to get built, maybe, but we're not there yet.

Brinda Guha
Also, like

j. bouey
oh, Brinda I had already spoke

Brinda Guha
Oh sorry, I was going to say. This is Brinda speaking. And, and everything you're saying Yanira is like, just reminding me as a performer, like, as a dancer, as an artist, it's reminding me of like, what it's like to, you know, what it's like to practice, what it's like our daily reias, our daily practice, like, what practice feels like, like, where do we put our efforts, like, we put it into things that are the hardest and the things that we don't know if it will come true, but that's what we work on the most, you know, and it's just reminding me of like, literally dance class, like how how dance functions, you work on the thing that you don't even know if you can do yet.

Alejandra Duque Cifuentes
And there's dedicated time and there's stewardship and there's place and intention set aside for that practice. And it what you were saying Yanira, makes me think a lot about the The Nap Ministry, right? And the the work that, the Nap Bishop Ticia is constantly putting out when speaking about capitalism, right? And when speaking about like, how do we rehearse for revolution? Well, we have to start, the, the kind of offering that she brings us, you have to start with rest, right and divesting from that, and that depth that you're describing Yanira means a willingness also for us to also relinquish the benefits that we might also be getting from capitalism as it is right now. Which is part of the tea that's hard for me to drink right. I think a lot I think the conflict between the way we've just been taught that satiation, to be satiated, to have like what you need, is a is more about consuming and less about actually tending to what you and yours need, right? And so we we've lost this the levers or we've lost the sensors that alert us to, okay, make make room make space for others release that thing, you know, and when I think about artistry, I think about the ways in which we've defined success as fame. Or we've defined success, as like the prodigal, the prodigy artist that stands out in their generation, and is the voice that represents the blah, blah, blah, blah, right. And I think about the kind of structures that we have that reinforce that right now, right, whether it's major awards or umm platforms.

Gonzalo Casals
You know for the longest I used to say half jokingly, but also it's very true, right, that the best part of my job and the worst part of my job is working with artists. I'm working with artists, right? Because of the very same thing, which is, it's amazing to work with creative people are thinking outside the box. But it's complicated, right? Because it's unique, it's different, and it changes all the time. And basically, if you think, how dangerous are all you all of you to the system, just with the three, four ideas that you just shared? And how consistently, we're trying to put you back into the system, and to adapt, right? To the way that we're all all of us think and work and, you know, make money or not? And how actually giving you access to money just enough to complicate your life. Right. And to put you in the mold, it's a way of cutting you and keeping you busy, and just curtailing your imagination, and not being able to think outside the box and feeling bad because you're not being successful.

Yanira Castro
100%. Yeah, I think there's a lot of busy labor. Umm around... alignment, are you aligned? Alignment is constantly changing. Your artist statement, the statement of the whatever organization that you're applying through. Umm... and it and it yeah, and that keeps - and because there's this, there's, there's no other way or not that there's no other way. But this is a means in which we're told, like this is how you act and move ahead. It keeps us all, you know, inside of this web of constantly, constantly activating outside of the actual work. I'm not sure that I'm being that clear about that. But

Gonzalo Casals
And competing. And competing

Yanira Castro
And competing and creating this idea around scarcity. And, and also, I mean, to be quite honest, there is this sort of idea that we can't save all the artists, so we'll just save the few.

Brinda Guha
Right? That part.

Yanira Castro
Yeah.

Alejandra Duque Cifuentes
Ale here, let's talk a little bit about the role of the artists in society because I think that that's, there's a conversation of like, what are artists? What like, what, what why, why do we matter? Like, what's our role our lane? Because to me, there's that there's that conversation? And then there's a conversation of how does art happen? And what how are - how are the ways that art is happening? And what are some of the things that we've all been noticing and how that's been showing up for us. So when we think about the role of, of artists in society, there's a few threads that come up for me and and and how I've been thinking about this has been informed through a few things. It's been informed through, of course, the work in the sector, all of the conversations with the artists, there is a phenomenal text that I have been reading lately. That is not yet available in English. And umm this is a Spanish writer, and policymaker, and historian. Her name is Jazmín Beirak who recently released a book titled "Cultura Ingobernable" which the translation of it is "Ungovernable Culture." And she has a really interesting analysis on the roles of art in society. And that's been really informing my thinking, so just want to give credit to her in this conversation. But really, the ways in which art show up in society there's, there's the very kind of most obvious way which is art as a performance or an object or a painting, right art as a modality, a thing that you might experience or, or, or create, right? There's art as and culture as a way of bringing people together of telling story of passing information down. There's also art and culture as just a way to describe the way that people are with one another, right? Language, food, all of these different ways in which culture shows up in our world. And the artist is often either an educator or the provocateur, right, the person that's asking questions, or pushing boundaries, or memorializing something. And often when we think about art and when we think about humans as a species art is in many ways, the thing that distinguishes us from other animals right? We have this ability to tell story. We have this ability to remember. We have this ability to perceive beauty in these different ways, right? One of the ways in which we're different. And, and often art is the way by which you can assert, who has lived and who had, who's story has the right to be told, right art is how we remember our, our, our shared humanity through time. And so the artist, has been present throughout society in many ways, right? They, you know, the artists wasn't always like the Artist, capital A, a job in capitalism. Artists, were sometimes just like the storytellers in the community or the seamstresses, or, you know, it wasn't the sole identity and it also wasn't about a job per se, or a particular function. It was more of a modality ... a practice that many people could have engaged in and engaged in different ways at different times. And then with the Renaissance, we have the commissioning of artists, right? We, we start to have a different kind of visibility and function of artists and so on and so forth through time. But when I think about art and its importance in the world, I think about art as this modality of thinking this, this ability to ask questions to imagine what you were saying Yanira - making something that isn't, into being. Bringing something that isn't into being is in many ways the definition of what artistry is right? And in healthy societies art is kind of like the way in which you train up a citizenry, to be able to be in relationship with each other to be able to collaborate. There's this quote, umm Arthur Miller Foundation put something out this week on their social media was a quote by, and I might be mispronouncing this person's name, Dana Gioia and the quote says, "The purpose of arts education is not to produce more artists, though that is a byproduct The real purpose of arts education is to create complete human beings capable of leading successful and productive lives in a free society." And I think a lot about how in the US right now, often the conversations about art are framed immediately around capitalism, as opposed to art as a common good. Art as a fabric of how we relate. Art as a way in which we stay resilient and reflective, and honoring of who we are, as people in society except right like. Art as more than just the thing you own, to show your class, or the thing that you commissioned to show that you can, or the thing that you associate yourself with to show that you're an intellectual. Right? So I think a lot about, okay, the way in which we are seeing artists is informing, in part, the systems that we are willing to let artists be working within and be in society around.

Gonzalo Casals
You know, a couple of things. This is Gonzalo This is a quote that probably 10 years ago, and I can never know who, who said that, but basically says, "We're not in the Renaissance anymore, in which you know, arts and culture is what defined and changed, right, and advanced society. Now its science and technology, but it is arts and culture that allow us to make sense of those changes." Right, you know, what you're saying about arts education. But as you were describing other moments, in time of the artists, you were talking about the seamstress and you know, like, just, if you think that most creative careers we have separated, right, the production and the intellectual creative process, right, and the production is done by, you know, low-skilled, low-paid worker, or a machine, right. And the creative is separated or relegated for a few, right? And when I look at the screen, and I look at the four of you, you're sort of the frontline of what's left of that production and the creative and the thinking and you know, and, and that system that you're talking Alejandra, is the way of like, like separating you from that is a way of creating the competition, and is the way of making you think that only a few can rise to the top. Whatever the top is, right? That only your work is valuable if somebody sees it and pays for it and buys it, right. And the work needs to be done for others, not for yourself.

Yanira Castro
This is Yanira speaking. You know, you said "Art is..." a few times and I was thinking about what are the other things that art is and I was thinking art is civics, art is also ritual. Umm and the idea that these are all pre-capitalist ideas: art is ritual, art is, civics, art is a public good. Umm so, so how you know this, this comes back to this idea of like being inside of a capitalist situation where you are separate, where the ideas are separated from the production as Gonzalo so concisely said. So then, so then what? So then, so then, so then, what do we do? And so, we have constructed all of these meantime, strategies, you had to figure out how to like fit ourselves and feed ourselves and work somehow, inside of these systems. And I guess, you know, the questions I have to ask is, okay, there are artists, but then there's also all these organizations that purport to be in the support of artists, so. So how do we, how do we use whatever capital there is? And there's there is capital to create situations in which art is the public good? And how do we create that public? I've been thinking a lot about, you know, dwindling audiences, you hear about this all the time dwindling audiences, and then I go to shows and they're sold out. So I'm just like, what's so what's, so what's going on dwindling audiences, there's the it's a certain kind of audience that they're talking about number one, but also number two, there is a dearth, there is a gap in this country, of creating a way to involve the public inside the work. And so I think about creating, creating ways in which art is free, in which children are constantly present. Children need to be constantly present from tiny, tiny to all the way through high school, because that, and that that is actually the long game. That's the long game. And so what can organizations do, to do to, to feed that common to feed the commons, the people, the public, it's got to be free. It's got to be kids. It's got to be intergenerational. And I think there's a lot of ways in which we can partner in doing that work as artists, as arts workers, as organizations that have spaces. Umm... yeah.

j. bouey
Thank you Yanira for saying that children should be there, because children should be there. As well as like, being an artist that doesn't really make work for children. Like, you know what I mean, like, I'm like, children should be at art, maybe not my art, but at art. There's an age limit. Laughter. Um, but I think that's also like an intentional force in this realm to have is like spaces in which children and we, as people understand are not welcome for us. Like, I think when we talk about like, the kind of art we need, I'm also thinking about art that is only possible because the ecosystem is full of fat Black queer femmes, like if I'm if I'm not fat, black queer femmes who are experiencing disability, like if I don't hit that, that frequency, you know, what I mean, in my being and my physical form, and I'm not welcome. I'm like, Yes. Like, I'm glad to know that that exists. And I'm happy to experience the existence of that thing from outside. So I'm going on that long tangent partially because like, it's a hard thing to do as an artist is like, I think like spiritually is to imagine boundaries and like respect them. Cause we do so much boundary crossing and shattering and we're often rewarded by goaded to do it even in some ways as well and that ends up being a flavor of the competition I know we talk of, but we contend with the boundaries of reality, more often than not, and if anything, I think the hard thing that I would like to speak to the, to the to the people who have the power to shift funding, like... I would invite you to just do the hard thing. Like when you asked, Yanira you know, like, what can we do? I'm like the hard thing. The hard thing that we know, like sits at the back of our mind and right over our shoulder, and you kind of don't want to look back at it too fast. And if anything, like build a relationship with it. I remember, there was a moment where I was taking cold showers at the beginning of the end of my day, and it was on some like, dance body inflammation type experience, but it came back to me in some YouTube video where someone was like, one of the psychological benefits of taking cold showers is building up a flinch tolerance, because oftentimes we stop at the flinch of something that we knew was going to be hard or difficult. But when we incorporate the flinch as something to have a relationship with in life beyond just that one heart area, like drinking bitter tea, first thing in the morning, like breaking a sweat, like doing a physical if that whatever the challenge is for you, but embracing the flinch I learned what that reflection was like really helping me to navigate through a lifelong commitment of like, changing - align my identity to transform away from being a man, but not jumping into another box of something that's happening. So like, not immediately saying I'm trans, not immediately saying I'm non-binary, not and also not immediately, like changing my physical form outside of what naturally feels pleasurable or what explorations of pleasure I'm looking for. So not even performing it for other people. There's a lot of flinch tolerance I'm reflecting on that was embedded in that because I risked connection. Like I risked going to... I honestly feel up until going to O'Shea's vigils and protests I felt very disconnected from Black gay men because of how clearly, I was like I'm not a man. Laughter. You're gonna have to use they/them pronouns like it started in the dating and sexual realm. But now it's like, oh, also friendships were, were like floated away because I was no longer identifying within the same realm as them. So that was a hard thing that I did because I believed that patriarchy is no longer necessary for the human like evolution. Like it's Big Mama time is black femme time. It's like, who were the darkest people, who are the people who need the most support to navigate through this physical realm with accessible means like, who are the people on the margins that we need most? Put them in the center and decentralize everything else. And that's, I bring that in lastly to like, I gotta get this off, so then I can like chill back again. And then I think this might be the last thing I say. Laughter. Which is cool. No, it's no shade. I just want to speak less. Chuckles. We're talking about the butterfly and I was really curious about if the caterpillar knows if it's actually going to be a butterfly. Like in the stage of being a capitalister... haha capitalist-er! Hahhahaha!!

Brinda Guha
that's amazing

j. bouey
HAHAH, zzzZZZZ. This needs to go on the gram. Okay. Screenshot

Brinda Guha
Yes, yes, let's let's, let's really release this part of the conversation for sure.

j. bouey
Yes, so I'm wondering whether the caterpillar knows that it's going to be a butterfly while it's just following his pleasure, like I need to eat, I just want to eat or want to consume and nap and consume that, and then a nap turns into a deeper rest than you thought. And then you're like, are starting to reemerge like I'm I have to, I want to assume that the butterfly is just as amazed by its wings as we are. And then flight ends up being the next stage of ease that it experienced as a consequence of a uncertain transformation.

Gonzalo Casals
You know, there's, there's a movie, probably 10-12 years old, called Sleep Dealer by Alex Rivera. Basically, the premise is that in the near future immigrant workers don't have to cross the border anymore because they can just fly into some kind of technology. And from the south, south of the border, they can move toward some machines. And you know, the, the sort of the slogan of this company that selling these these technologies like "we're giving the US finally, exactly what they wanted. The work, but not the workers." Right. And for somebody that's coming from the visual arts, it's unfortunate but it's really great to hear how your body's has performed sensors right are so present in your work. But unfortunately, Yanira, they don't want the artists, they want the experience or the object. Right? And, and if when they said, you know the audience's are dwindling, is that you know, the experience and the object that you're producing and giving them is not enough to afford all the middle peoples that, you know, that paid a context for that experience to sell that experience and that object, right. And again, it's another way of like, bring it to the system, bring it to the system.

Alejandra Duque Cifuentes
Ale here, I want to use this phrase that you mentioned, J., the flinch tolerance or breaking the flinch to kind of guide our, the rest of the conversation, because to me, the question is, what is the flinch tolerance that, for example, in our funding community, we have to push towards? What is the flinch tolerance as artists that we may need to push towards? And I asked both of those questions in the context of: I think, I keep having this thought of, I want to I want to be and live my life and be in the world in a way where I am imagining and, and participating in the thing that moves us to butterfly, right? I want to imagine that this is not it. And at the same time, my rent is due in two weeks. And so right here, how do I hold the space for those two realities and an understanding that right, not everyone in our community is is going to participate in both. Some folks are about the in between strategies, right. Some folks are about making the pathways for what we need to figure out right now. Some folks are, are revolutionaries are visionaries that are helping us to stay true to imagining something different, right, and not relenting around that and taking the, the moving in the direction of that imagination? I hope that I can hold both as an individual. And I and I… my sense is that for all of us, right? We move in and out of those roles in different ways, right, depending on the moment in our lives. But that to me, the flinch tolerance of like, what is the thing that we… that we might need to push just a little bit and develop just a little bit of dexterity around so that we can move into that new reality. When I think about the system and what we've reinforced, I keep thinking about the way in which we assume that in order to make art, we have to be nonprofit entities. And, and I, I I'm just kind of fed up with that, because I keep learning and I keep noticing, as I'm building my business, that in as much as I don't have access to these huge swaths of generational wealth and influence that I can just lean on, there are actually a number of very interesting things that already exist for businesses that I could be taking advantage of that I can be applying that allow me to have a very different experience of my work as an artist and as a cultural worker that I didn't know about until I started to ask some people that had done it and start it and you know, thank goodness for Instagram and for Tic Tok and for all the ways in which we are learning in new ways from one another, right, but like, I realized that, you know, if I'm a sole proprietor, I am paying twice as much tax than if I incorporate as an LLC, but then also file my taxes as an SCorps, that now I'm like, saving $30,000 that are in my hands that otherwise would have gone to the IRS, that if I make this little trust here to redirect my savings, instead of putting them in a regular savings account, then I'm actually building my generational wealth at three times the speed, you know, like, there are actually a bunch of structures that I didn't even realize existed, that yes, they function within capitalism, but that I can be in relationship with right now that can support my my, my personhood in my community right now. And that I've been absent of that knowledge for so long. And it's been kept from me because I've been so busy trying to make ends meet working the 15,000 jobs, that there was no way that I was going to get that knowledge and I didn't come from the wealth that already carried that knowledge. Right. And so I keep thinking about man, I want to tell artists like don't give up your, you know, your ownership of your work. Don't Give up, though you're right to the ownership of your means of production, screw the nonprofit, make the LLC make the SCorp. Remain the owner of your things. Let's let's, let's use some of the things that are there. I think I remember when I called Yanira during the pandemic, when I saw, and I remember this conversation cause Yanira said to me "I'm gonna try." And then when she said to me, "I got it". When they did a relief like a relief for, and Yanira, you might be able to explain a little bit better. But as a sole proprietor, because you filed a Schedule C, you had access to this. Go ahead and you tell it better?

Yanira Castro
Well, no, I mean, it's March 2020 of the first things the current Biden government did was say, we're going to do another series of federal, small business loans, but there's a few important things that they did. The first thing is that they said: last time was on net, this time, it's going to be on gross. This is really important for artists, and particularly for performing artists. And the other thing that they said is: the last time this happened, it went open to everyone all at the same time. And so what happens, right, those businesses, most of them very large businesses, and have staff whatever, could get in and swooped in and took the money first. They had a very long period of time, it was over a month, where small businesses applied first. So it was the easiest application in my life, it literally took five minutes. And it was going directly to the bank, and basically saying to the feds, this is how much money I made in the last two years: gross. And why does that matter? Because especially for performing artists, we might bring in money. But so much of it goes back out to our collaborators, right? And to, you know, the materials that we need. And so the fact that it worked on the gross and that they understood that it was about your capacity to bring in money, again capitalism, as opposed to you know, and they were not going to count against you if you were spending that money - was really critical.

Gonzalo Casals
You're right

Yanira Castro
What

Gonzalo Casals
You're talking about the PPP, right?

Yanira Castro
Yeah, it's the PPP loan. So, you know, with five minutes worth of work, I made $20,000. And it was in my bank account a couple of weeks later. That is the kind of work that needs to happen. New York State did it too, in 2021, I believe, too. They did it. But all of this is gone, of course, after the pandemic, but what I'm what I, what I thought was really radical. Besides that it was gross. Is that an artist? I was paid for my labor? If you count, you know, the bottom line as a sign of labor, right? It wasn't what did the work look like? Nobody asked. What kind of work do you do? What's your artist statement? What's your vision statement? No, it was simply based. Did you work last year? How much did you bring in last year? Here's a check. I'm really curious about if we thought of funding differently in that way.

Gonzalo Casals
Alejandra and I worked together on the City Artist Corp. That's how we got to meet each other and became good friends. I hope so. Laughter. But my thing was like, the city of New York cannot give money - I was Commissioner at that moment - the city of New York cannot keep money away for free. We needed to be an exchange of a service. We left it very, very open. For a no questions asked grant, we figured out that $5,000 was going to be the maximum that we could give per person. To me, relief in that moment wasn't enough. And I didn't feel great about it. What the unintended outcome, but at least to me, I don't know Alejandra if you saw it that way, was the pride that artists felt that the city of New York had paid them money to do their work to recover the city. Right and proudly say I'm a City Artist Corps. right, was so much more than the $5,000 that they used to pay their rent.

Alejandra Duque Cifuentes
But there, there are two important things that I want to highlight here. And then I want to talk about the right to demand for your service versus the right to a living wage as a worker, because those are two different threads that I think we need to tease out. One thing that's important, but what Yanira mentioned is part of the reason why Yanira had access to PPP was because Yanira has incorporated her artistry as a business as, you're a sole proprietor so you do a Schedule C.

Yanira Castro
Sole proprietor, so you do a Schedule C.

Alejandra Duque Cifuentes
But, but you are intentionally are a sole proprietor, which when you think about - what a lot of folks sometimes don't realize is that when you're a freelancer, you really are a sole proprietor. And if you, if you take advantage of some of the different fiscal structures that exist, you are able to have access to some of these government benefits that are about generating commerce generating economic activity that are not tied to the subjectivity of do you like art? Or, or what kind of art matters? It's about creating the opportunity for like, for jobs or economic development, etc. And so there's like a whole huge world of resources and, and financing that functions, actually much simpler than the methodologies of the nonprofit structure, and of the standard kind of philanthropic system of applying and having a peer, you know, a jury of your peers evaluate if it matters or not what you're doing. And so that's one thing that's really important a lot, and a lot of artists because they want the flexibility of being freelancers, but really need the benefits of being employees are sitting in the middle, not fully understanding how some of these economic systems work, and therefore the benefits that are available to them that they can actually take more advantage of. Right. So that's one thing that I want to name that's important about why Yanira was able to apply for that PPP loan because of the Schedule C that she was filing in her IRS. With City Artists Corps, the other thing that's important to name is that the funding for that, this was not an arts funding that came to DCLA like CDF or some of the general usual grants that people apply to, this was money that came from federal relief money to create jobs and we redirected that money to create jobs so that artists are doing their job in an acknowledgement of art as labor that needs to be compensated, that creates economic activity, right. So much so that in the Dance Industry Census that we're now analyzing the data, one of the things that emerged was the number of folks that are doing work outside, not inside a proscenium. And what we know, historically, from the data that Americans from the Arts has collected is the way in which communities that are rich in artistic activity, spur economic activity in other industries, like restaurants, like hotels. We look at Beyonce and Taylor Swift's tours, the federal government put out a statement saying that they have affected the economy, because of the significant increase in hotels, restaurants, the mobilization of people around art, shifts, the economy. It's one of the largest ways in which we bring people and generate wealth. And so I think a lot about the importance of the tools that we need and the ways that we can allow, yes, J. mentioned in the chat nail shops, were experiencing a huge boom, fashion, like people were dressing up, they were going on out there, all kinds of industries were being supported by these concerts, right. And so it's an, I want to name that importantly, right? The.. the fact that the money for City Artists Corps came for job creation, and a part of why Yanira was able to take advantage of that is because of how she's been managing the financial infrastructure of her artistic work, right. And that's an important thing to understand. Now and to close this out, and Brinda, I'll pass it to you. The two things that I wanted to name that are important to name is that because art and the way that artists make art and performing artists are involved in art, it's both a job but it's also a calling it's also an identity right for for some folks art is not just, you know, I'm gonna go in and like punch the card and do my thing and I went home. It's it's, it lives in so many different parts of their identity and of their lives, that it's hard to sometimes look at the product of that art within that framework of like a business and like the return on investment and this and it's a hard conversation to have. So this idea of like, what is our flinch tolerance? What conversations do we, do we need to start being willing to have us artists so that we can take advantage of some of these benefits? On the other side with funders. There's have been so many restrictions around funding artists that have LLCs or SCorps or that are sole proprietors because they, they, they need the nonprofit in order to prove that they know how to manage a business. And this is the remnant that we've had from the cultural wars. This is, this is the, the reinforcement of a particular economic structure that actually was not built for that. Right, how the nonprofit, you know, what the charitable causes are supposed to be doing in the context of the IRS, right. And so the the flinch tolerance there is, what if funding stopped being about simply the nonprofit and really about actual economic development, actually, really providing resources so artists can own the means of production so that they can properly copyright their work, so that they can build thriving businesses that allow them to have the flexibility that they need to do their work. Now, there's a difference, I would say, in capitalism as a worker, and the rights that a worker should have in terms of living wage in terms of access to health care, in terms of the different benefits that workers need to have when you are in that relationship that is different from the right to demand for your service. And what's tricky about that is when you make a business, just because you make a business doesn't mean that you have the right to demand for that business. Right. And that's one of the things that's of course, unfortunate, because when we're talking about artists taking advantage of some of these, like, fiscal models, or these opportunities, when you are the owner of the means of production is that it might mean that maybe there isn't demand for the thing that you're doing. And so what does that mean, right? Does it mean that your art takes a different form? Does it mean that you make a living in a different way? These are questions, but I do want to clarify the distinction, because often what I find myself, the conversations I find myself having with artists, is the mixture of those two ideas as if they're the same when they're actually not right. You must and should have the right to a living wage as a worker, which is one particular way of engaging with capitalism, but you do not necessarily have the right to demand for your service when you are a business owner in capitalism, and those are two different things, but they're often mixed in artistry. And so there's like pain and confusion and frustration that comes with that. Brinda, you were gonna say something?

Brinda Guha
Yeah, I mean, this is heavy. This is heavy. This is heavy for a lot of reasons, but I was thinking about flinch tolerance again, because I'm flinching right now at this conversation. I. Laugther. I'm, like, fully like, the thank goodness, I'm wearing a turtleneck. For me, I feel like... you know, Ale, you and I talked about this recently, like, it took everything within me to apply for a Fiscal Sponsorship, to realize that that's not a financial model. Like I didn't even know that, you know. When we think about, like, when we think about like, because basically, fiscal sponsorship is like, you know, telling people that, like, they have incentive to like, give us money, right. So like, they get, you know, they can give us tax deductible donations. And that's like, a way of receiving donations. But again, they still have to, like, sell and prove the worth of the thing, right to still, to still get that benefit. But regardless of all of that, it's like going back to the conversation of like, what can funders like? Actually do? It's yes, and Yanira was just saying in the chat, you know, fiscal sponsorship is a is a tool, not a fiscal model, no matter what funders say. And I was gonna say, like, you know, I agree with that so much, and and what can funders do? If we answer that question? It's like, everything you all are talking about. It's like, I have no idea and I'm in talking to institutions every single day. And for some reason, I don't know this, I don't, you know, I have, I have privilege I went to, I got an undergraduate degree from NYU, like, I'm a smart person who reads a lot like, I don't know any of this stuff, you know, but I'm working every single day in dance without knowing that I have access to this world of resources. And it's like, that's frustrating. That's frustrating for an artist who's always working like to know that, like, there's nothing like that there's a world like it feels large, it feels scary, and it feels large and it's like, I feel called to do the hard thing to figure out what that is. And I feel kind of like, betrayed that this information is kept from me. And then to like, be in touch with brilliant minds like you all to like, ask to like, point me in the right direction to even begin my own research on how to start this. And I know, like a lot of artists feel the same way. It's like, we're called to this stuff because of culture. We're called to this stuff because of identity. And to know that there is a better way like, but that I have to that I have to like, bend over backwards to really like figure out even like, where to begin is frustrating. And then artists get tired. And then when artists get tired, they become commodified. And they'd be the get used, but then you don't feel called to make art anymore, because you're tired all the time, you know? So it's like, we're stuck in this like loop. And so, I mean, the answer is, get it together, do your research, be smart? That's the answer, we know. But it's tough. And I just want to name that that's tough, you know, like, they can spend, you know, funders can spend, institutions can spend more time telling us or like educating us about these different models so that we, because we're able to do the thing we're able to do, for example, the five minute application, we're able to do all of those things, it's not like we're not able to do it, we just don't know that those opportunities exist, necessarily. So just hearing that now is really exciting, because I would have never known that, you know, as a sole proprietor that I could do that. But I also want to just say like, you know, we talked a little bit before about, like, doing the hard thing and becoming the butterfly. And for me, it's like, it goes back to dance, it goes back to the classroom, honestly, for me, it's like, how do we build trust really, like, if we don't trust each other. we don't trust the funders. We don't trust the institution. We don't trust the other artists, we certainly don't trust ourselves. Because we keep being made to feel like we don't know, have enough information. Like, you know, building from a place with a with, like a lack of trust, like a big hole in that is like, that feels like the first task for me. It's like building trust again, you know, counting on a community again, you know, being in circle again, like, you know, I just was introduced, three years of Fiscal Sponsorship. And I was just introduced to the person who manages my account, like just had my first conversation with them after three years. Because like, I didn't know I can request a conversation with them. It sounds really basic, but we don't know that we have, we have these tools. And so one thing that I think people can do is really let independent artists and freelancers know, what are the different options? I think that's a place to start, because I just feel so overwhelmed by even just the knowledge that there is a wealth of knowledge. I don't know where to really begin with that information, you know,

Gonzalo Casals
That's exactly how the system works, right. And you know, like, even with this moment of realization, you're still putting it on you, right. And there are four things I want to say really quickly. Number one, related to this. Number one, the way that you describe the impact of those concerts Alejandra is any given day in New York City, which is not one artists - is the whole community and ecosystem, right? But we're taking for granted. Number one. Number two is when you move, there's a dimension, you talk about a generational wealth, right, which either the money keeps you that you receive, that keeps you privilege, the knowledge of managing money gives you privilege, but there's also the emotional dimension of money, which is huge. Right? And having grown up in a household, which money is at issue, there's emotional trauma, right? And you don't have models. And that's when you know, funders need to do their homework. And before moving a model that has worked with PWI eyes, predominantly white institutions, mostly to artists of color, to community based organizations, to culture specific organizations. They need to understand that the relationship with money, just from an emotional perspective, is completely different. Right, and they need to do the homework. They need to figure it out. Because if not, they're creating more problems. And unfortunately Brinda, because they don't do homework, then you think you know you're failing because you didn't know this information up. You're not smart, stuff like that. There's also I was talking to a researcher that's doing research on gig work, sex workers, low-wage work, low wage workers, undocumented workers, and artists. The one thing that artists are completely different than the rest of the group is that the rest of the box, they see themselves and they hope that within five years, they're going to be in a better situation. Because art isn't only a business is an identity, artists think that they know, they keep, they need to keep trying to train and train, because that's who they are, and creates more emotion and more frustration and more failure. So again, whenever the one thing that I could say is that whenever you think something's not working on, you're failing, just step back for a minute and try to figure out what the system because that's when you're going to understand, you know, how to navigate it.

Yanira Castro
Thank you, Gonzalo. That was really, this is Yanira speaking that was really personally emotional for me. And, and this idea of knowing, umm you know, this idea of knowing or what, you know, what you don't know. Going back to the conversation on capitalism, it's about knowing how capitalism functions at a very basic level. It, you know, how do these financial systems operate? How can I utilize them to my benefit? And all these things? And, and what frustrates me is that the same, it's meantime strategies, it's not the world I want to create, but it's the world I have to operate in. Right. So. I, you know, yeah, there needs to be systems in which artists can support one another to know and do this work together. But going back to this idea of flinch tolerance, and I think it was J., who said something about, you know, discomfort, or what is the thing that is the hardest to do, do that, you know. One of several things come up for me with that: working communally, power sharing, working slow. These are the things that I think are really deeply needed. The long view the very long view, the career, you know, the time and creation of working together means having to deal with the trauma and the harm that has existed on multiples in this in this field, as artists, as as people of color, as you know, like there's just so if we're going to work communally together, inside of philanthropic institutions to create something else, all of that needs space to be be in conversation and in relation. And that's not something you can do fast. So that's what I think of when I think of flinch tolerance, letting go of control and moving slow.

j. bouey
Yeah. Moving slow is a real conundrum, but one thing that gets a light in my tunnel that sets a light in my tunnel, when you shared that Yanira, is the long view. Because like, everything is pretty slow in comparison to the furthest view, no matter how fast you're actually running. It's like are you thinking 1000 years in the future? Yeah, well, this day is slow. It's gonna take quite a few days to get there. But speaking of, speaking of like a long view, I was thinking of some stuff in conversation I'd want to read out before I leave it on the page. Early on Alejandra when you're speaking, I, I'd want I want you had me thinking about how much I want foundations and organizations to be transparent with us and really show us how their financial system flows. I think that should be that should be anything, but I know that as much as we've asked for how and to understand how things work. It helps me understand the value of transparency and relationship beyond like, if you dig for it, you can find it like nobody wants to be in a relationship with somebody who's like, I can tell you the truth, but you're just gonna have to dig, that's not fun maybe once or twice.

Brinda Guha
That part. We are tired. We're digging all day.

j. bouey
Thank you, like just come to the table and be like, "Hi, this is how we get money from these organizations, these companies these names and people here the people that receive this data though that and this is how it gets to you. And this is how you can get some more like whatever flow chart." Just transparency chile. Um, and then I'll have to also talk about like money, my happiness and I was thinking like, Okay, I this is my perspective on money from astrology in which like, money is represented by Venus, who happens to be in retrograde right now. It is, money doesn't this is what our money doesn't buy happiness that's happiness in itself is free. But money helps us survive capitalism, so that we don't die or fall into the delusion of the free happiness. Because what happens when someone's really happy, but like completely oppressed by capitalism, we may label those two ingredients together, someone experiencing great delusion, and not in the same room as us. They're experiencing happiness. So we need the money to like find alignment of other realities, because it's still possible to be happy. But you've got to survive. And be seen as a person worthy of connection. I think that's the other risk of like mental health and falling into like being, like mentally unable to connect with everyone else's realms, like you lose the ability to survive. And that as well as what we're seeing with many of our community on the streets. Speaking of streets, hip hop. American hip hop is like, it falls into the cycle of like Black art that is created, and Black and indigenous are specifically trying to harken back to jazz as created, that America is like, great, you make this out of the shit that we gave you. Wow, that is really beautiful. I'm just gonna go take this and sell around the world make myself more rich. I'm gonna keep oppressing you since that seems like that's the way that things run over here. So I will come back in a few years, see what else you made. So I can go wash, rinse, repeat and make some more money. Because the thing that's happening with hip hop happened with jazz and what happened with jazz happened with the blues, and then we just keep going back. And we keep seeing all these different technologies that have been created for the intention of stealing artistic wealth, rock and roll come on, like the, it tells us that it tells us that story is what I hear. When I reflect on the 50th anniversary of hip hop. There's this thing that shows I have two things. One, there's this thing that shows up in my mind that I want to speak and speak to as I share with you that phrase, like something outside of me makes me. Like you may be mad. Capitalism, pissed, makes me upset. You make me believe XYZ. When I think about, like, how I set up my relationship to the other, I've already given them my power. So I asked myself, like, is that thing actually making you or do you get to make you because like, I'm on some, on some real Aries shit. Like, I really don't like the idea of somebody outside of me making me it just sounds, it just, it makes me ehh inside. Like, ah, and I also know that when I'm in that hole of saying that in my mind to myself, I have a sense of direction on how to pull my power back, I have to do a lot of hard things after I get it back, which is like part of why I understand why I do relinquish it over to a thing. It helps me to not be accountable for my breath throughout the day. And when I take it back, then I have the challenge of being responsible for my breath and the consequences that come with how I decide to use each breath of each day. And I think that's the my that kind of segues into last thing because you're sitting there he was talking about the busy labor of alignment. And I'm like, yo, that is the thing is the function of oppression to distract you. Keep giving you so many more things to do to stay aligned. And what that brings me into this morning thinking about health. I heard someone on YouTube, you know, one of the YouTube gurus who was talking about like, if you want to be able to heal someone else, you got to heal yourself. And I was like, oh no, oh no, we all know if we first of all can even heal other people like I can invite somebody I can set up an ecosystem as best as I can for them to heal but me doing the thing like - that's you - like that's when we go through healing journeys. I think that's one of the first lessons we learned like oh shit, so much of this is me. I gotta, I gotta get a I got to think different. And then even then, like when you're doing stuff, you can't do it alone. So when I think about like, what is the environment of healing? I'm like, oh, it's an ecosystem. And we come in to create that. And I think that's what I'm asking for. When I show up to this conversation, understanding who's going to be listening to this and reading this is like, I'm asking you to be an intentional member in our ecosystem, to help us co create ecosystems of health for all involved understanding that capitalism is a very important for us that we have to navigate or that we have to survive within, like you're in it too as a human. We're here by relationship and connection. All the feats that Gonzalo and Alejandra were able to do that they mentioned earlier, is because of the human connection that they have within these institutions. So I like invite you to remember your humanity within these inanimate buildings and objects, and even the anatomy and ideology that you might share. And remember that you can never get out of the fact that we're all related in this universe, as much as you can imagine, $1 or a secluded island to do so, there is some form of connection, we're just asking you to honor that.

Alejandra Duque Cifuentes
Any closing statements from our other friends.

Gonzalo Casals
I'm exhausted by just talking about it.

Brinda Guha
I think, also, just a thought I'm having is that I think for the folks that are listening and reading later, you know, and participating with us in this way, I feel like one thing that they should know, everyone should know is that as far as artists or freelancers or individual artists are concerned, like we have, we were forced into a lot of us were forced into gig mentality. And like, then, because of certain support, we become entities. And then we have to start thinking about show, production, performance. We have to start thinking with that mentality, but we still have gig mentality on so a lot of us are kind of like struggling to transition from gig mentality to like, we're building a home for our art to last mentality. So a lot of us are in this in between. And if that informs anybody in how we can receive some information to help us make that transition a little bit smoother, you know, I invite and welcome, you know, that guidance as well.

Yanira Castro
Thinking about food, I'm thinking about tables and communal structures. I'm thinking about the collective and gathering people. I think the only way out is the release of individual control and opening to the communal good, it's really the only way. You know, and there's lots of writing about where this wealth came from, right? The origins of a lot of this wealth is individualistic. So extractive harm, so it takes a collective to repair that it takes lots of meals. There's been lots of writing about what's happening in the arts right now and performance in particular, and I thought maybe I would just end with this one quote, that - it's writing by Annalisa Dias, its called "Decomposition Instead of Collapse – Dear Theatre, Be Like Soil" it's in Rescripted, if you want to check it out. It was written on August 4, or it came out August 4. And Annalisa says:

"What if instead of dramaturgies of collapse,

we looked to the earth and learned from natural processes of

decomposition?

Decomposition is gruesome

Pieces of an organism get pulled apart.

Decomposition is intimate.

Decomposers digest the dead.

Decomposition creates new worlds.

Nutrients recycle and release back into the ecological system.

A dramaturgy of decomposition

Is a tender invitation beyond loss

Toward re-membering our interconnected futures.

Can we be like mycelium? Can we be like soil?

What might we re-compose

with the nutrients being released into the system right now?"

Alejandra Duque Cifuentes
And with that, we close today's conversation. Thank you for joining us as we wonder and ask questions. And we invite you to be a part of the conversation with us and consider your role in it and the actions you can take as well. Have a lovely rest of your day.

Next piece: Epilogue by Conrhonda E. Baker

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Alejandra Duque Cifuentes (she/her) is a nonprofit leader and advocate working to advance a more just, equitable, and inclusive arts and cultural ecology by developing measures that arts workers, businesses, and organizations can thrive. Her work is of particular significance to individual arts workers who have been historically under supported, including BIPOC, immigrant disabled, and low-income artists as well as small-budget art making organizations. She brings 15+ years of experience and expertise in strategy, general management, fund development, community organizing, arts education, professional development, and artistic production. Her professional and educational background encompasses business, creative, and civic realms, including a BA from Columbia University School of General Studies in theater directing and an early career as a theater artist, stage manager, and arts educator. She moves with ease and intelligence across sectors, issues, and among diverse stakeholders, from managing internal staff and teams to engaging community and philanthropic partners, artist constituencies, donors, and the general public. She is known for her ability to get results and draws on her deep community relationships to drive accountable collaborations based on trust and data. As a result of her leadership during COVID-19 pandemic, she was named 2021 Crain New York's Business Notable in Nonprofits & Philanthropy. She sits on the boards of Nonprofit New York and New Yorkers for Culture and Arts, and is a member of the leadership council of Creatives Rebuild New York.

In December of 2022, Alejandra transitioned out of her role of Executive Director at Dance/NYC setting in its place a significant structural shift for the organization aimed at creating a more democratic leadership structure for the organization’s future. As a summation of her work and commitment to the sector, she established ADC Consulting, a boutique arts consultancy firm, in order to equip mission-driven organizations to create long-term cultural impact through fundraising, grant making, advocacy, research and organizational change. After being a proud Queens resident for 17 years, she has set new roots in the pacific northwest in the greater Seattle area of Washington state. She identifies as a white, immigrant, latina woman, who believes healthy communities need a strong arts and culture sector and is committed to anti-racist practices that ensure artists can thrive in the United States.

Brinda Guha (she/her) identifies as a non-disabled, caste-privileged, cisgender and queer South-Asian American based on Lenape land, colonially known as Manhattan, NYC, and is a trained Bessie-nominated Kathak and Contemporary Indian dancer. During training and performing for years in the Kathak (Malabika Guha) & Manipuri (Kalavati+ Bimbavati Devi) dance disciplines, as well as Flamenco (Carmen de las Cuevas; Dionisia Garcia) and Contemporary Fusion vocabularies, she co-founded Kalamandir Dance Company in 2010. She's choreographed for many national stages and self-produced original feature-length dance productions which earned her artist residencies at Dixon Place (2018) and Dancewave (2019) to continue to develop work. Now, she is represented by CESD Talent Agency and is pursuing artistic direction, performance and arts education. She trains in Kathak, Manipuri, Yorchhā (est. Ananya Chatterjee), and Contemporary. Brinda actively dances with dynamic all-female multicultural percussive trio Soles of Duende, featuring Flamenco (Arielle Rosales), Tap (Amanda Castro), and Kathak (Guha). Her dream of having art meet activism was realized when she created WISE FRUIT NYC, a seasonal live arts installment (est 2017) dedicated to the feminine divine and honoring select women-led organizations. She is also the Senior Producing Coordinator for dance service organization Dance/NYC. Visit www.brindaguha.com for more info.

A cultural producer, educator, and policymaker, Gonzalo Casals currently serves as the Senior Research and Policy Fellow for Arts and Culture at the Mellon Foundation. Before this role, he was Commissioner for the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, where he steered cultural policy for the City of New York and spearheaded the recovery of the Arts and Culture sector during the COVID-19 pandemic. His efforts included a landmark investment of $25 million directed towards over 3,000 working artists, recognizing their indispensable role in the City's revitalization.

Before he was appointed Commissioner by Mayor Bill de Blasio, Gonzalo held executive roles at El Museo del Barrio (2006-2013), Friends of the High Line (2013-2017), and the Leslie-Lohman Museum (2017-2020). He also contributed as a consultant for CreateNYC (2016), New York City’s inaugural comprehensive cultural plan, and the NYC Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers (2017).

With a lifelong commitment to learning, Casals imparts his knowledge by teaching Cultural Policy at the City University of New York (CUNY), New York University, and Yale University.

j. bouey (they/them | Chumash and Tongva lands) is currently moving on pandemic timing

and prioritizing rest. As a Dance Artist and Astrologer, j. bouey. is finding their way back to joy by imagining the abolition of systemic oppression through their current project, S A T U R N.

In 2023, j. bouey was awarded a Bessie for Outstanding Performance. j. bouey is also the founder of The Dance Union Podcast, initiating the NYC Dancers COVID-19 Relief Fund and The Dance Union Town Hall For Collective Action to support the dance community through numerous world-changing events.

As a creator, J. is a recent 2021-2022 Jerome Fellow and is a 2022/2023 Movement Research Artist in Residence. J. Bouey was also recently a Gibney 2021 Spotlight Artist, Artist-In-Residence at CPR – Center for Performance Research, and 2021 Bogliasco Fellow. J. was also a 2018 Movement Research Van Lier Fellow, and 2018 Dancing While Black Fellow.

J. is currently a collaborator with nia love and an founding member of The Fabulous Waack Dancers under the direction of Princess Lockerooo. They were also a former performer with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, danced with Germaul Barnes’ Viewsic Dance, Maria Bauman’s MB Dance, Dante Brown, Antonio Brown Dance, Christal Brown’s INspirit Dance, and apprenticed with Emerge 125 (formerly Elisa Monte Dance) under the artistic direction of Tiffany Rea-Fisher.

Yanira Castro (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist born in Borikén (Puerto Rico), living in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn), and working at the intersection of communal practices, performance, installation, and interactive technology. Yanira forms iterative, multimodal projects that center the complexity of land, citizenship, and governance in works activated and performed by the public. She is the recipient of two Bessie Awards for Outstanding Production, and various commissions, residencies, and national grant awards. Since 2009, she’s collaborated with a team of artists as a canary torsi. acanarytorsi.org

Cultural StrategyPhilanthropic Practice

Grantmakers in the Arts GIA

Grantmakers in the Arts is the only national association of both public and private arts and culture funders in the US, including independent and family foundations, public agencies, community foundations, corporate philanthropies, nonprofit regrantors, and national service organizations – funders of all shapes and sizes across the US and into Canada.

https://www.giarts.org

Untethered Reflections: Artists Navigating Late-Stage Capitalism

Part of the “Soothing the Itch” Series

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Untethered Reflections: Artists Navigating Late-Stage Capitalism

Part of the “Soothing the Itch” Series

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