ROBERT OLEN BUTLER

Robert Olen Butler has published sixteen novels, amongst them A Small Hotel and Perfume River, as well as A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, which won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. 

In 2013, he became the seventeenth recipient of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature. His stories have appeared widely in publications such as The New Yorker, Esquire, GQ, The Paris Review, and many more. Butler's works have been translated into twenty-one languages, a few of which include Vietnamese, Serbian, Farsi, Estonian, and Chinese. He is a Krafft Distinguished Professor holding the Michael Shaara Chair in Creative Writing at Florida State University. He lives in Florida with his wife, poet Kelly Lee Butler.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Xander Guidry. Digital Media Coordinator is Yu Young Lee.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process.

JOSH PAIS

Joshua Pais has appeared in over a hundred movies and TV shows, including recurring roles in Ray Donovan, Mrs. Fletcher, The Good Wife, Maniac, The Sopranos, and Law and Order: SVU. His film work includes Motherless Brooklyn, Joker, Touchy Feely, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Music of the Heart, Assassination of a High School President, and I Saw the Light. The son of holocaust survivor and theoretical physicist Abraham Pais, Josh is the founder of Committed Impulse, a comprehensive acting technique which involves creating from the energetic (atomic) truth in the body.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Austen Juul-Hansen. Digital Media Coordinator is Hannah Story Brown.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process.

JACK THORNE

Jack Thorne is an internationally acclaimed playwright and BAFTA award-winning screenwriter. His adaptation of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials is currently airing on HBO and the BBC, and his new series The Eddy was recently released for Netflix. Thorne’s screenwriting career began on the Channel 4 series Shameless and BBC series Skins. Later this year, his feature adaptation of The Secret Garden will be released and feature films Enola Holmes and Swimmers are on the way. Thorne’s films include The Aeronauts, starring Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones, Wonder, starring Julia Roberts and A Long Way Down starring Toni Collette. As a playwright, Jack’s credits include the Tony and Olivier award-winning West End and Broadway hit Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Leni Sperry-Fromm. Digital Media Coordinator is Yu Young Lee.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process.

RUTH BADER GINSBURG · 1933-2020 · The Creative Process remembers RBG

Ruth Bader Ginsburg became the second female justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Born in 1933 in Brooklyn, New York, Bader taught at Rutgers University Law School and then at Columbia University, where she became its first female tenured professor. She served as the director of the Women’s Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union during the 1970s, and was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1980. Named to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1993 by President Bill Clinton, she continued to argue for gender equality in such cases as United States v. Virginia. She died September 18, 2020 due to complications from metastatic pancreas cancer.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Dahlia Haddad. Digital Media Coordinator is Yu Young Lee.. “Winter Time” was composed by Nikolas Anadolis and performed by the Athenian Trio.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process.

CHARLES BAXTER

Charles Baxter is the author of the novels The Feast of Love (nominated for the National Book Award), First Light, Saul and Patsy, Shadow Play, The Soul Thief, and The Sun Collective, and the story collections Believers, Gryphon, Harmony of the World, A Relative Stranger, There’s Something I Want You to Do, and Through the Safety Net. His stories have been included in The Best American Short Stories and he’s a winner of the PEN/Malamud Award. Baxter lives in Minneapolis and has taught at the University of Minnesota and in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Leni Sperry-Fromm. Digital Media Coordinator is Yu Young Lee.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process.

ALBERT SERRA

Albert Serra has been called one of the most radical and singular filmmakers working today. Born in Banyoles, Spain, he studied literature and art history at Barcelona University. In 2006 he wrote, directed and produced his first feature film, Honor of the Knights, followed by Birdsong; both were selected for the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes. In 2010 he made Els noms de Crist before directing, a year later, El Senyor ha fet en mi meravelles for the exhibition Correspondencias at Barcelona. He is best known for his films Story of My Death and The Death of Louis XIV starring Jean-Pierre Léaud. His most recent feature film Liberté explores libertinism at the time of the French Revolution.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Tea Prerodovic. Digital Media Coordinator is Yu Young Lee.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process.

TRISH SIE

Trish Sie is a multi-talented director whose work spans the realms of music videos, commercials, and short and feature films. After spending a decade as a professional dancer, championship ballroom competitor and choreographer, she built a successful and championed career in filmmaking. The first music video that she produced, “Here it Goes Again” for the band OK Go,  won her a Grammy award. Her success expands to the world of films, where she has directed the likes of Pitch Perfect 3 and Step Up: All In, using her dance and choreography experience to make magic happen on camera. Along with the Grammy, Trish has won a number of awards such as the Youtube award for most creative video, the Smithsonian Ingenuity Award, and multiple accolades for best short film at various film festivals. 

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Lexi Kayser. Digital Media Coordinator is Yu Young Lee.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process.

VLAD SOKHIN

Vlad Sokhin is a Russia-born documentary photographer, videographer, and multimedia producer covering sociocultural, environmental, and human rights issues worldwide. His projects are supported by various UN agencies and international NGOs. Vlad’s work has been featured in over 40 publications, including National Geographic, NPR, Newsweek Japan, BBC, and The Guardian. In 2014, he was named Best Photographer in Russia, and in 2017, he was awarded the Visa d’or Franceinfo: Award for the Best Digital News Story for his “Warm Waters, Kamchatka” series. Vlad is a citizen of the world. He is currently based in the Asia-Pacfic region and continues to work on photography and video projects there, in addition to Africa, Europe, Russia, and the Middle East.

VLAD SOKHIN

It's not about money, as my teacher said, "If you want to be rich, go to advertising." It's about lifestyle. It's what you want to achieve, what you want to share with people. And in terms of topics I choose...somehow these topics choose me. I just happen to be there. For example, I moved to Australia, and then I was exploring the neighbouring countries, back in 2011. That's where I found my first big projects that I started working on. And one of them was gender-based violence in Papua New Guinea. So of course, I travel far away, but mostly it's something that is in my neighborhood, around me. And that's where I also encountered later on stories that are related to climate change. I was sent in 2013 to cover deforestation and illegal logging in Papua New Guinea. Australian online media sent me there, The Global Mail. I did one story, I did another for them. And then I thought, oh, it'd be interesting to keep telling these stories and connect the whole region together. And that's how Warm Waters was born.

In Alaska, they're moving villages. There's the village of Newtok. They're relocating the entire village to a new location where they hope that they won't be affected by permafrost thawing and coastal erosion. Those new houses they built, they already built them in such a way that they can be slid somewhere else. So, they have this in mind that you can put them on the slides and then move them somewhere else, easily. The village of Shishmaref in Alaska is where just a few years ago, they voted for the entire relocation of the village, and before they spent millions of dollars building big sea walls, hoping that this would protect them. But it doesn't work. In places like Tuvalu, for example, people also try to immigrate, try to move. It's not only because of climate change, it's also because of overpopulation. It's because of lack of jobs, many things. But climate change is also becoming one of those important factors. And yeah, they move to New Zealand. Tuvaluans try to move to Niue, another Pacific island that is more protected. It's a big volcanic elevated rock in the middle of the ocean, and they face the other problem of depopulation. There, people have New Zealand citizenship, so they move to New Zealand and nobody wants to stay there. So, these are interesting shifts and migrations we can see in the Pacific. But many of them now are associated with climate change, especially in tiny atolls, because the people there are most affected.

I'm sure there are some people who deny climate change, they have different reasons. And now I think, of course, every Pacific Islander who lives on this front line of climate change, they wouldn't say it doesn't exist. They see it every day. But also they have the understanding that some of the processes are also natural, or man-made, which makes effects of climate change more visible. You know, they feel more. But it's started by men. In Kiribati, there was an island in the middle of the lagoon. And then they started creating causeways, building roads between little islets, and the water flow changed and that island disappeared. And then people start with the same, "climate change, climate change, sea level rise," which it is not. So it's good to understand: this is what we do; this is what climate change does. Right? And how humans are involved in that.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

And I'm curious also about your childhood, your upbringing, what drew you to your journey towards photography and why you decided that that would be your lens to tell these stories, as opposed to some other way of telling stories or engaging politically?

SOKHIN

Well, first of all, I'm trying to stay away from politics. I'm speaking generally without saying names. I'm trying to stay as far from politics as possible.This is not my thing. Photography is a natural thing. I'm a visual person. I like to see, I connect through it. But I'm not one of those photographers who always walk with the cameras, as well. If I work, I take my camera. If I don't, I like to enjoy life and take photos with my eyes. They inspire me. But, I do it every day. So for me, it was a natural choice. I just chose this path. Because, I do write as well. And for me, writing is also a way, especially if I accompany my story, but it's not as expressive as visual storytelling.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

And in these societies there are, you know, they're vastly different, some of them, but from things that we understand, whether it's rituals or superstitions or being less inclusive in terms of gender preference. There's a lot of different customs and things that you're navigating, but what do you find are some universal truths that have ignited your experiences?

SOKHIN

The universal truth is probably: there is good and bad. That's the universal truth. Believing in witchcraft, for example. In some societies they do believe in it, in some they don't believe. But, in some societies you are a Democrat, and you're a Republican. And for those people, it's witchcraft as well. So it depends on the point of view. Good and bad is a division, and then people are divided. They believe that there is a duality that exists, that this is "me" and this is "other." In fact, there's no other. That's when I talk about changing the way you think, about climate change, about yourself. There is no other. It's not the "other" country, or these "primitive people," as some call them. No, it's us, as well; it's like your leg, or your finger. But humanity is one organism. If we understand that, there will be way less problems in the world. Some people are still in this stage of development. But, would you blame, let's say, your child for trying to walk and walking a little bit wobbly? No, just give it time. Papua New Guinea was a very remote country, isolated from the rest of the world. They didn't have universities. And then recently, suddenly they were introduced to the Western way of life. It's not better or worse, the way of life that they lived before. It's just different. So, when we introduce it, and we introduce it very fast, people may not be ready for that. That's it. We just need to understand that.

And I'm not saying that they are less developed, it is not that. It's like: there is yellow color; there's blue. Why is blue not yellow? Because it's blue. That's it. And that's what was with them. They just live differently. And now, there's a lot of people trying to reconnect. There's the thinking, "Ah, what do the elders say?" In the United States of America, or in Australia, every new big thing– they now call their native people, and they ask them, "Why don't you do a ceremony to call the spirits?" Now, it's changing. Now, they tap into this truth, to this, let's say, ancient knowledge, that probably people would forget. Now the governments invite these people. I've been to many festivals in Sydney that start with inviting Aboriginal people to do a water blessing ceremony. So, it becomes part of the shifting of awareness: your way of life is different from ours, it's not worse or better, it's just different. So, let's also include it in the way we live and share and exchange.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Khrystyna Tsunyak. Digital Media Coordinator is Yu Young Lee. “Winter Time” was composed by Nikolas Anadolis and performed by the Athenian Trio.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process.