Personal Stories of Healing, Social Justice & Activism
How do our personal relationships affect political movements and activism? What can we learn from Native American tradition to restore ecological balance? How can transforming capitalism help address global inequality and the environmental crisis? Dean Spade, Jericho Brown, Alexi Hawley, Tiokasin Ghosthorse, and Paul Shrivastava share their stories.
Executive Director of the Pritzker Architecture Prize
Fmr. Executive Director of Venice Biennale (Dept. of Visual Arts & Architecture)
When I started and I had to decide what to do in life - because I was working with museums, in exhibition design, and on the restoration of buildings - and then at some point, I had the chance to arrive at the Venice Biennale and my whole perspective changed. And it changed because I was working with living artists and architects. Until that moment, I was working around Old Masters, works in museums, and things that were there with the aura of history. And all of a sudden I was dealing with living architects and artists, and this was, for me, the most incredible experience. So I decided to leave all the rest, because I was doing quite a lot at the same time, and to concentrate on the Biennale.
ATHLETE · ACTOR · AMERICAN · ACTIVIST
DIAN HANSON discusses photographic homage to ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER
Why I was different from all the other boys in my town I cannot tell you. I was simply born with the gift of vision.
– ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER
It's not just that he grew up in a rural environment too. He was born on July 30th, 1947. And most of us today don't have any understanding or relationship to what Europe was like right after World War II. The winter of 1946/1947 in Austria was the most brutal in decades. The people already had too little food. They were in an occupied country. The summer potato crops failed. As Arnold has said, his mother had to go from farm to farm to farm, begging for food to be able to feed her children. His father, like all the men in the village, was defeated by the war. And he saw them all physically, emotionally, intellectually defeated and taking it out on their wives and children, that he was beaten and his mother was beaten. All the neighbor kids were beaten, and they were beaten into a kind of placid defeat. And he alone would not accept that. He could not see that life for himself. And so he wanted out of that. And as a poor boy, he had nothing but his body to work with. That was it. There was not going to be any college. There was not going to be any of that. There was going to be some kind of menial job, or he could use what he had - his body - to get him out of there.
Vice President · Head of the Paris Office
UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network
The SDSN was set up to mobilize research and science for the Sustainable Development Goals. The development goals were adopted in 2015 by all UN member states, marking the first time in human history that we have a common goal for the entire world. Out of all the targets that we track, only 16 percent are estimated to be on track. Currently, none of the SDGs are on track to be achieved at the global level.
Emmy & Golden Globe-winning Executive Producer · Director
Tokyo Vice · Six Feet Under · Tales of the City · My So-Called Life
I think all great work comes from the need to say something. And so this is the challenge for young artists and also maybe one of the essential elements that can never be completely taken over by AI because there has to be something you feel has not been said, and you feel an urgent need to say it. In fact, you can't not say it. That need to express is what gives birth to unique expression, which is where all of our visual, performance, and creative arts come from.
& The Limits to Growth with Co-President PAUL SHRIVASTAVA
Less than two weeks into the new year and the world’s wealthiest 1% have already used their fair share of the global carbon budget allocated for 2025. Climate change is here. It's already causing devastation to the most vulnerable populations. We are living with an extractive mindset, where we are extracting one way out of the life system of the Earth. We need to change from that extractive mindset to a regenerative mindset. And we need to change from the North Star of economic growth to a vision of eco civilizations. Those are the two main principles that I want to propose and that the Club of Rome suggests that we try to transform our current organization towards regenerative living and eco civilization.
Artists, Writers, Filmmakers Share their Stories
Marilyn Minter · Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy · Dean Spade · Laura Eason · Intan Paramaditha · Tey Meadow · Sara Ahmed · Ellen Rapoport · Dian Hanson · Kate Mueth on the importance of agency, owning the narrative, and the joy of creation.
with KAREN G. LLOYD · Author of Intraterrestrials · Wrigley Chair in Environmental Studies · Professor of Earth Sciences · University of Southern California
It's really changed my view of what life is. So many of the things that we attribute to the trappings of life look like requirements, like oxygen and sunlight. All the things that humans would absolutely die without — they’re not really necessary for life. Studying these things sort of breaks down what is necessary; what are the things that life has to have?
The Creative Process: Podcast Interviews & Portraits of the World’s Leading Authors & Creative Thinkers
Inspiring Students – Encouraging Reading - Connecting through Stories
The Creative Process exhibition is traveling to universities and museums. The Creative Process exhibition consists of interviews with over 100 esteemed writers, including Joyce Carol Oates, Hilary Mantel, Neil Gaiman, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Tobias Wolff, Richard Ford, Junot Díaz, Marie Darrieussecq, Michel Faber, T.C. Boyle, Jay McInerney, George Saunders, Geoff Dyer, Etgar Keret, Douglas Kennedy, Sam Lipsyte, and Yiyun Li, among others. Artist and interviewer: Mia Funk.
