Art Impact with Raquel Bellastella
Art Impact with Raquel Bellastella
The Alchemy of Art and Advocacy in Cultural Narratives with R.M. Sánchez-Camus
As I sat down with RM Sánchez-Camus (Marcelo), the migrant artist whose palette of activism and creativity colours societal canvases, our conversation turned into an inspiring odyssey through the crossroads of art and advocacy. Marcelo opens up about his journey, blending public, social, and applied art to spark change, and discusses the layered complexities of his work within the UK's cultural landscape as a naturalized citizen. His narrative reveals how art can democratize cultural narratives and become an instrument for societal transformation, emphasizing the need for participation and representation within the arts.
Throughout the episode, we traverse the evolutionary path of the Social Art Network and its crucial role in uniting artists who harness creativity for social reform. Marcelo shares the highs and lows of his quest for recognition in social artistry and the collective strength found in a network that celebrates and supports this meaningful craft.
Our dialogue culminates with reflections on the profound relationship between art, society, and the planet's wellbeing. Marcelo offers his perspectives on how avant-garde art practices can challenge norms and ignite progress and how technology is being leveraged to democratize the creative process. We underscore the symbiotic connection between humanity and Earth and how harnessing our collective virtuosity through art can lead to healing on a global scale. It's a conversation imbued with passion and a shared commitment to knowledge, leaving us grateful for such exchanges and eager for future collaborations.
Check more details of this episode here.
I am Sanchi Camus, also known as Marcelo. Welcome to the Art in Podcast. I'm so excited to talk with you today. You can't believe you can imagine. I have tons of questions and I found your work really, really inspiring and, yeah, it has caused so many shifts in my work as well, just to get to know your work a little bit more and the work of Social Arts Network and all. So, yeah, lots of questions and, yeah, I'm looking forward to it. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me. It's nice to be here.
Speaker 1:Nice, nice. So, marcelo, I love to start our show with one simple and one of my favorite questions, which is tell us your story, tell us how, yeah, what, brought you to this moment, right now, and all the beautiful things you are doing.
Speaker 2:Gosh where to start.
Speaker 2:At the moment, I'm doing a combination of things, and I think that the kind of work that I do and the way that I've situated myself in an intersection between things like public art and social art and applied art has been really a journey of both being a creative person and wanting to create work in the world, but also being quite a socially motivated person and feeling that the work that I created needed to have a type of social purpose in order to find its value.
Speaker 2:And, alongside that, I think it's growing into understanding also what an experience is of a migrant to a new country, where you have new systems that you have to understand, including what cultural production means and, ultimately, how it's organized as an industry and as a sector. And so I've come on a really interesting journey where I now feel that I have, at this point and I think it just happens when you stick to it long enough, when you stick to your work long enough that you get to this point where you have a sense of how to make the work, but also how the world works around, things like organizations, institutions, both in the cultural sector and the community sector, as well as funding, and when you find those really good balances. I think it eases your relationship to practice, which I think for any artist can be a love hate relationship.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Yes, yes, yes, yes, it is, isn't it? Sometimes, oh, why can't I do something else, isn't it? Why can't my mind go somewhere else? And I can't be happy just working on a normal job and then that's it. Yeah, nice. So you said about being an immigrant here in the UK. So, originally, where are you from originally?
Speaker 2:My parents are from Chile, south America, and I was born in New York City and then I lived in Chile as a child as well and I returned to New York when I was 15, I did high school, in uni and then entered like the work market as an artist and kind of figuring out the way, and then I came to post 9-11, the kind of political situation was quite difficult at the time and I wanted to restructure my work away from what was really heavily involved in protest and anti-war and refocus on what maybe creative value I was getting from it and I decided to do an MA and that's what brought me over to the UK.
Speaker 2:It was a very different environment when it came between 2004-2005 and the country was in a very different place both to the US but also to where it is now, and since then I've become settled, I've become naturalized as a British citizen and I've started a family here and it's really meant that I've become quite embedded in what it means to not just be an artist in the UK but to be somebody that is interested in cultural production and citizenship.
Speaker 1:Tell me more about that.
Speaker 2:Well, it's an interesting intersection because when you work in, when you use your creative forms to do what's called cultural democracy so in terms of what participation is in cultural production, who gets to have a say and a voice, who has access to certain organizations and organizations, how those that potentially are less represented or misrepresented can have more self-narrative around, how they tell not only their stories but their perspectives of the world, and how these things shift our understanding of self.
Speaker 2:It's quite powerful when you work within centers of power, and so, although my family comes from the peripheries of Latin America, a very mixed background, both ethnically and racially to then have been spent a part of my life in New York and then most of my adult life in London means that I have been subject to what centers of power look like, while also choosing to be a creative person, which means that you often struggle economically but you also foster a lot of intellectual development.
Speaker 2:And I think that's what artists do and they hold a really specific place, because it's not a place about money making really, very few of us are people that make loads of money, especially when you're working in social practice art but it is about a type of almost like philosophical, intellectual research and understanding about who we are and also how we can be different and potentially better.
Speaker 2:And to me that is a really political stance. And I don't mean political in terms of political parties, because political parties, as we can see by the current government, are a complete joke. I mean political in terms of the polis and the groupings of people. And when you're at the center of power and you're doing that work, you're really doing quite deep, embedded, decolonizing work, and to decolonize from the center is really powerful responsibility to sit in. And I know quite a few artists of mixed ethnic origins working within a UK context who are doing similar work, not necessarily similar output or medium, but in terms of conceptually understanding citizenship and, by doing so, reframing who and what this country is. I think that's really powerful work.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, yes, yes, yeah, that sounds, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. We thought we said he would come here, he goes. What is he or is she? It's a day, it's a day. What's their name? What's that again?
Speaker 2:Aukka.
Speaker 1:Aukka.
Speaker 2:Aukka, and Aukka is a Mapuche word, the Mapuche, the indigenous group of Chile and Patagonia, and it means rebel, and it really fits him.
Speaker 1:Okay, so he's part of our podcast today. Yes and yes, I have so many things I would like to talk about all of the things you just touched upon, but I would love, before diving into this sea, I would love to give one step back so our listeners really understand better your work and the things that you are building and creating, and so they can have even more like tactile experience of what is that about? It's not about just ideas or concepts, but it's very real. So can you tell us first about your work on the applied live artists studio? Sure, so what it is what you do there. Yeah, sure.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, sure, so I you know, my work started as a solo practitioner and trained as a visual artist and I worked a lot in performance practice. I also worked in the intersection between community development and it was a journey really to understand how to situate the different kinds of practices I did within what we now call social art, because there wasn't those terms before and I was borrowing from quite a lot of different historical lineages, mostly within the visual arts field, but also within things like applied drama and live art, performance. So I was really thinking about this from an applied point of view, working with people. So it would manifest itself in often live events, installations, performances, and I work a lot with text. So I'm really interested in language and text and in the last couple of years, social drawing and social drawing is a term I've just developed in terms of thinking about how drawing is a type of social communication that can often express things that language and words cannot. I think that was really important during the pandemic. So there's quite a couple of pieces that I developed that work around, including the one that I'm using as a backdrop today. If you're listening to the podcast, you won't see it, but it's scrolled life stories from birth to death, scrolled life stories, which was at the Horniman Museum. So so these are.
Speaker 2:I don't. I don't consider myself to have a singular medium. Yeah, yeah, I think about my work as the intersection between a site, responsive public art and that might be within, within purpose built spaces, like in this case I'm talking about a gallery exhibition within a museum. Often it's an outdoor spaces and sometimes it's in published text or wearable costumes. So it manifests itself through both working very responsibly to a site that I'm at and collaboratively with people.
Speaker 2:So people are at the core of my work. Yeah, and there are times that I'm being responsive and I'm creating things, but often there's an element of co-production. And because co-production and collaboration is so central to the work I do, I've now moved past a solo project to having a social practice studio and that means that I have artists that I collaborate with, that I bring them in to share authorship of the work, as well as students on placement that I take come in and go on a journey of learning to understand kind of more of the ins and outs of what would be the business of being an artist afterwards, as well as a current board of advisors and an external critical friend, all of which are helping move the practice into a non-profit organization.
Speaker 1:Interesting, very interesting, beautiful, very nice. And then tell us also about the social arts network that you, yeah, you are one of the may I say one of the leaders of the organization or one of the ones that founded the organization? Yeah, tell us more about it.
Speaker 2:Sure, so many years ago I participated in a group that was called Community Geeks. That was fantastic. It was led by some very, very inspiring people that I know and it was about people who are interested in civic development and at the time we had people like the would come to these meetups and like the junior doctors who won strike many years ago and they were the ones that led the strikes would come in and talk to us about the work that they were doing. And so we're really understanding community development and organizing from the inside and I could understand that a lot of the artworks that not only I did but a lot of artists I knew were doing were not too dissimilar, but yet we were artists and since that we were really that were there more of us and that we needed to somehow link up.
Speaker 2:And then I met Eileen Lee who was running a peer forum art quest had loads of peer forums photography, sculpture and she had put together one for collaborative arts and put a group of people together. And it was great because you got to like meet some fantastic artists and she was very good at putting together some really brilliant people. When that ended I was really interested in putting and I was by then organizing community geeks. At that point I wasn't just going to it. So we said let's keep this going and let's think about what artists that are doing the kind of work we need need to stay together and to meet each other as a type of peer support. And so we called it social art network, because at the time social art was being picked up institutionally as a title, not really as a medium but as a way of working.
Speaker 1:Yes, as a process, I can say Absolutely yeah.
Speaker 2:So you might be a filmmaker or a muralist or an installation artist, but you might be working within a social art process, and we put together the first social art summit, which was really a test to see if we could do something like a biennial or a triennial or a quadrennial of social art, because why wouldn't social art have one?
Speaker 2:There's so much I can't unpack into that, but it was in 2018 and for me that was like an explosive moment, because from then until now, social art network has really, really grown and it's across the country, held by hubs which are different representatives that want to just hold the conversation and be part of a movement, and that movement is really in development and, though I co-founded it, by no means does it belong to me.
Speaker 2:It is an intrinsic part of my practice and I saw it as a piece of mine, but in these kinds of work that you do, those pieces often belong more to the participants than they do to you, and this has been really wonderful because it's finally achieved, I think, a beautiful place where those who feel and have and work around collaborative ownership of social art network have really moved it forward in a fantastic way, and we are having our first our second sorry social art assembly, which is all the meetup leads on the 26th of November in Brighton and the morning session will be streamed and open to the public.
Speaker 2:And then we are hosting our next social art summit next year in Scotland. Of course you know we all lost two to three years because of the pandemic, so everything was on hold. But now we're really in earnest picking that up again and that feels really exciting because it gives you power in numbers, whereas otherwise you might feel quite isolated or working in a silo. It is an underrepresented, under recognized sector, while at the same time having a big push around public funding to have participation.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:So there is a little bit of a discrepancy there, because actually you've got some amazing leaders but they're just unsung and what we're trying to do is elevate those voices of those experts to be able to really guide us into this next era of what does participation and cultural production look like?
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, woo, yes. So, oh, my goodness, I love this so much. You can't believe it. You know, it's just for me just sharing a few what was my, my personal experience and why this is so important for me.
Speaker 1:I never, I never heard the term social arts before until I think, maybe last year or so, when I was like scrolling on the arts council you know website by chance, and then I met a little post from Cristiana Boccegela, which is a common friend of ours with, like offering a few sessions for social artists, and I read that and I just thought, oh, but that's me, you know, that's me, but I never, I never met anything, you know, that would describe what I was trying to achieve, or put to the table, put a name on that you know before, or or describe it with so many details. And then, through her, through her, she then recommended me, said, oh, have a look on social arts network, I think you are going to like that, and and there we go. And then I got to know your work and everything, but for me just sharing like how indeed this is a place of growth, of much needed growth, and and and, ray, and first raise awareness about, because, as an artist until that point, and then that was the very beginning, and now I'm in a completely new position. But at that point was all like, oh, there is a first, like there is a space for me out there. You know, I never thought there was. And then, oh, ok, and then now I I'm not only know that there is a space, but it's like a very needed and very powerful space.
Speaker 1:But it took me at least one year, one year and a half, to really build some confidence, because the stories that would I would have before that was always stories of misalignment or not fitting, misfitting, you know, or oh, I'm not, I know I'm not a studied theater, that is my medium. And then physical theater later. And then, first of all, oh, no, I'm not an actress, oh, but I love theater. And oh, but I'm a director for directing and for writing. But none of that, none of those things make sense if they, if I'm not also collaborating for a social change. You know, and and I and I didn't find a space for that before you know felt, oh, no, maybe, maybe I'm not as so good as an artist. That's, that's why I'm looking for social change. I don't know, it was so confusing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Confusing, yeah, yes, tell me yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm going to respond to the last thing you said, because I think it's not just it's not just you.
Speaker 2:I think that's really common around how we judge our practice, what we think is good or bad, and this is up to our definitions of critical aesthetics.
Speaker 2:So aesthetics have been quite myopic in its definitions Right, and we think of aesthetics as the focus of appreciation, and that has been really driven by a market economy. So you place, like freeze art fair and everything is glossy and ready to buy straight off the shelf, not everything but many things, and really it is the antithesis of the kind of work that you might find at the summit, social summit. There is no work for sale, it's not in the financial exchange, it's in the social relationship. So if you are looking at work from a process driven point of view, where social relationships have really incredible value and it doesn't take away from appreciating the beauty of the work but it adds value it means you have to redefine your understanding of aesthetics Because if you come in with a surface reading of work, you will not understand the piece Right. So we are able to do this because we're able to look at a Jackson Pollock painting and appreciate it, because we understand it's an action painting.
Speaker 2:And that it goes off the edges of the canvas and that we're not looking at splattering of paint on a canvas. We are looking at the movement of one individual's hand. So we're already able to do that within an art form. But you can buy a cell in Jackson Pollock for millions and people that don't appreciate it. They might say, oh, my five year old kid can do that, who cares? Okay, we actually are undergoing the same kind of transformation within social practice, where you might look at the work and, unless you're understanding a larger process of appreciation of how that was developed, you do not understand the work. Except the people that are saying, oh, my five year old kid can do that are exactly those institutional artist, artworkers, curators, museum professionals who live in social practice and are not actually learned enough in their aesthetic appreciation to understand that this has massive value. And that is because the conventions blind them and it's gonna take a very long time to move those people out of their positions, but it will happen.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, yeah, and I totally, yeah, I'm totally with you on that, and I think what like something that I see like such a need or urge today, like kind of art, what for what for art in our days, like with all the big problems that we have, like many of them look impossible problems to solve in the future, and there is a civil narrative of art based on appreciation and aesthetics, and some kind of a luxury narrative, and that really, I think it's out of resonance and we feel, yeah, I think we feel that so maybe so strongly, so transparently right now, and isn't it? And I think this thing of art, and now we see a shift, at least here in the UK. A shift for the arts comes to participation led projects or community based project, which I think completely makes sense, even for thinking of public money and things like that. So, yeah, so I think there is this big shift that is really, yeah, really happening, really happening Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And just to respond around. You know why. What's the purpose? What is the purpose of art within this? I'm gonna frame it with two examples, right? One is a question that I often ask within spaces like conferences or if I'm giving a talk, and I like to ask the room when was the last time that you woke up and you didn't think the world was at crisis?
Speaker 1:I mean, I can't remember.
Speaker 2:So we just hold that thought for a moment. And then the next example that I'm gonna give you is research work that I was doing around refugees and asylum seekers, and I did quite a lot of work on that topic and I was at the Kelly refugee camp in Calais and as part of that research I met Bobby Lloyd, and Bobby Lloyd she's a fantastic artist and she ran the art therapy tent at the Calais refugee camp, and there is a fantastic anecdote out of that tent from a man who walked from Iran to Calais, and this is a common experience of many asylum seekers or refugees.
Speaker 2:I met some of them that had walked from Afghanistan and when he arrived he went into the art therapy tent and they were making art. And he said why? Why do you think I need clothes, I need food, I need shelf, why are we making art? Until he made the art, and then he said it's giving me my humanity back. So when we think about.
Speaker 1:What is the purpose of this?
Speaker 2:why are we doing? It is because we are so divorced from the planet itself, including ourselves. To be divorced from the planetary ecosystem is to be divorced from ourselves, and I think that the kinds of work we can do can begin to realign. The healing has to come from every single sector, every sector and the creative arts sector, both within social practice. But no matter what field you're doing has to have an element of that kind of planetary healing or we won't make it. It feels essential. So I do think that for me, when we talk about the world, that for me, when we talk about things like the avant-garde in art practice, I wholly believe that the artists that I have met and that I've known through social art network and beyond, that this kind of practice are the current avant-garde, Because to work in a dematerialized practice that goes against the material commodity structure of late capitalism is to really shake conventions, break things up and to tread new territory, and that is exactly what the avant-garde does. So I feel inspired by it.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, definitely, natalie, and me too, me too, and going there. I would love to touch on that. So, of course, there's a field that is for me, and even like it's so lovely that we have many, many more words to describe and now, but I feel it's still information and it's not clear for people out there, the differences, or one question that I have in my mind for example, when I was in university, when I was studying theater and those like big professors or the professors, there was this thing about talking art in periods where art mixed with ideology. You know, like art in the communist, in the communist time, or for the when Russia was a communist, or art, and then like, but very badly, you know, it was always in a bad light. You know, like every time that art mixed with some kind of purpose, or even like art in service of the church, you know, in medieval times, or you know so, every time that art mixed somehow, was mixed with some kind of ideology, it became propaganda, it became and it became less art, you know, and so it was kind of this really at that time, and I think this has changed a lot but really this kind of separation, you know, art was not really to be mixed with, you know, society, or social problems or social ideas, or you know, otherwise the art would be impoverished.
Speaker 1:And what I find during this time in my own work and all, is that, if there is a difference, I would love to hear your takes on that as well. But what I see is that there is a difference between art being, how can I say, have like as a motor, as an engine to propagate an idea, and there is a difference between art wanting to serve some people, serve someone you know, be of service, create a change, you know for people in a good change, a better place. So it's very different, very different approaches. And yeah, so what are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 2:Like art and ideology, yeah, yeah, I think that this has to do with a very, very important aspect here, which is how the role of the artist has changed. And when the artist, as the sole practitioner, was the expert that was somehow coming with these boons of knowledge to share to everyone, it was about virtuosity. And we're moving past that. And we're moving past that culturally, socially, and a big part of that is convergence technology, so the fact that everybody has the ability to somehow be creative and build content. So things like the smartphone in our pocket, the advent of things like YouTube and TikTok, instagram that has made many people express themselves creatively, curatorially, it has really exploded out the definitions. So now the role of the artist conventions are very hard to break. So, of course, the obsession with virtuosity and with the expensive item of art making it persists and it exists. The art world, the art sector, is one of the few industries that is completely, 100% unregulated, which is why you have a lot of wealth being hidden within the art market, because it's a way to tuck your money, just like real estate. Those two are big cancer within our capitalist system art and real estate. That is a way of expressing that role.
Speaker 2:What's happening now in terms of the new role of the artist as a provocateur, as a facilitator, as Boal says the joker. That role is about how you uncover, discover and reveal and create collective virtuosity, and that is wonderful, because that is really about shifting perceptions and it is also about taking responsibility, moving away from victimhood. These are all things that I think have been a big problem in the world, this notion of us and them and breaking that down and it is again not to go. I mean, I've been really thinking about our relationship to planet Earth, but this is exactly part of the problem that we've had is that there is this planet and then there's us, which is absolutely not true, like there's literally no difference between the two, and this relationship is very similar to what I see as the relationship between the creative practitioner, as an artist creating work in the world today, and what that relationship is with people and its effect on people.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay, okay. So say that again. Say that again. There's less of a so, this phrase. So one of the problems is that we separate our work from the effect that it has on people. Is that it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that either we are expecting the expert, which is one way to look at it, the artist as expert. Another way is that the artist reveals the experts, and that is another way of producing culture. And this is the kind of parallel that I'm making between us and the planet as a bio-organism. There's either us and this planet that we extract things from, or there's us and this planet that we are part of and that we're revealing things from. It's a very different power relationship, so I think there's a reflection there between the two.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, yes, I'm so glad, yeah, I will be able to listen to this conversation again, because it's so beautiful and so deep and it's really a mind shift. I think you know it's really.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's really a mind shift, it's a spiritual shift, and I'm not saying that from religious terms, I'm saying that from, like, how we understand the metaphysical, which the arts. Let us do the arts, let us go into these wonderfully metaphysical places where we might experience catharsis. We might really work through things. We might see it when we see a film or watch a performance, or even see a painting and meditate on it. We have this experience and it's a very metaphysical experience, and I think that those are the kinds of relationships that we can channel through collaborative practice.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah, marcelo, a little bit back, because I think we're talking about something so important and so deep. What's? Tell me again, what's the real? Okay, there is this moment of static appreciation and all the richness that it gives us, and what is the relationship from this moment that each of us can have, like individually, you know, and the collective? What are the link? What's the link, then?
Speaker 2:Well, this is really interesting. We're going back to the conversation around the expert. What we've always relied on is the expert to tell us how we understand aesthetic appreciation.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes.
Speaker 2:I consider myself an expert because I also have done so much research around what I do. I have perfected my skills. But what that isn't a sword to wield above others In the conventional form of critical appreciation of arts practice it is. I am the expert, you are not. I write the review, I curate the show, I know what is good this is. This is an old way and that way is dying and the new way it's coming up. And when the new way comes up, as we are now, your feathers are still very thin. You can't fly that well. And why can't you fly that well? Because, for example, we don't have enough language around. What does collective critical appreciation look? Like Books about it. We need more people writing about it. It's not that we don't know, it's there, we understand and there is stuff out there. It's just not that much and we're strong, and so existing in this form of cultural production today is to be writing that history.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yes, yes, great, great, so amazing, so amazing, woo, and then so, so, so then, social, yeah, so then, so, so the difference, I would love to to maybe to finish for today, because I feel we could do, you know, a series, a full series, but for today, like, of course, I have one last question. So, of course, well, in my experience at least, when I go, I don't know, when I go to the National Gallery and I go and I see Monet and I see Van Gogh and I see, I don't know, maybe Caravaggio and and probably they didn't have all these ideas and they were not motivated probably, to change or to connect socially, you know, to connect directly with their audience. It looks so.
Speaker 1:They were making the paintings, probably for themselves, probably for maybe, and then selling them. Well, the connection with the community that they were part of is isn't? It doesn't feel very strong, it doesn't feel it's like on top of their mind or part of their process. Part of the process, yeah, but I go there and I see those things and I have this beautiful experience.
Speaker 1:And this beautiful experience, you know, is very nurturing and I know it enhances my, it's version nurturing spiritually, enhances my well-being, my mental health. I can tell, you know, I go with a friend and don't go by myself, so the experience bites and I'm surrounded of people, so there is a collective experience happening anyway, you know, okay, so, and then there is someone who, who tell themselves, or who is really interested in creating through a social art process, or who does discover, as I discovered is not really something that I created, but I just discovered that my creative process is a social art creative process. For example, like when now, gladly, we just received some funding to develop a theater project, that is, that will offer a puppetry and storytelling sessions for kids who are in care, and then we are going to take those, make those workshops and then take those stories and then create a little show for the children, for the moment, to celebrate their experience. And for me, like then, okay, then my work came full circle there, you know, like that is the process.
Speaker 1:For me it's not okay. I don't know if I'm going too long there, but what? My question is what's for you, if any, what's the difference between an artist who creates with this, with this very aware connection with the community of some people, and this not so much aware connection Is there? Is there any difference there? Or, you know, wouldn't?
Speaker 2:Of course, yeah, yeah, I do, I understand. Congratulations on your funding, by the way.
Speaker 2:Thank you, yeah. Yeah, there is a big difference and I've seen it. I've seen it with artists that I know who are not so necessarily social engaged artists but have to do aspects of social engagement in their work and and how they approach it, and that they're really, that they need guidance and so and I think that the push for public funding around arts and arts and social engagement is wonderful, but I think it's dangerous Because it needs care. It needs care because you need to care for your participants, need to ensure that you're actually giving them added value and that you're not just mining them for participation.
Speaker 2:Yes because it's really risky. It's really dangerous territory and you can harm people.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And one of the things that we're really interested in in terms of the mutual aid network is thinking about how artists who work within a social practice methodology could become leaders for other artists who are either interested in working this way or have no choice because they have to if they want the money. Yes, so how do we help you? How do we help you work better? Because good participation, ethical participation, inclusive participation, is incredibly labor intensive. It requires real dedication and care and it requires feeling the urgency without rushing. In a contemporary, modern life, we are all rushing all the time and when you rush, you can't provide care. So it's really reframing how we sit and be with each other. The whole system is rigged against you. By the way, you get money, it's limited time frame. You have to report on it. You have to rush your participants because your money is only there for three, four, five, six months, maybe 12. You don't really have projects that last five years. You finish the project and then you know goodbye. How do you establish longer term relationships, even if you want to? It can be very difficult. The system of care is not set up within the funding system. It doesn't come from malice. It just comes from short-sightedness and a need for quick wins, but again, we are slowly trying to change that.
Speaker 2:I've seen so much change in my life In the time that I've lived in this country. This is not the same country I moved to. Some things are phenomenally better and some things are really not going so well as we can see if we turn on the TV. But some things are going very well and there is, socially, a lot of things that are going well as well, and understanding and recognizing that and finding a balance around the narrative is really important. I think artists can do a really good work with that in their practice.
Speaker 2:What is the story we tell ourselves? I'm really interested in how we write contemporary mythologies, and by that I don't mean storytelling, I mean how we live our life according to the mythologies that we know and inadvertently write new ones. I think that's something I really like to uncover in my work. Is that kind of storytelling. I don't say I'm doing that, but underneath that is really one of the things I'm looking at and that helps you create new systems. It helps me think about new systems of production, new systems of co-production and also different ways of thinking about delivery, and then when I deliver something, I can talk about it in very specific ways that makes you or helps you view the work in a different light.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, great, that's so good, that's so so good. Wow, marcelo, you need to make us a master class in social arts. Please Guide us through there.
Speaker 2:I feel really passionate about the subject and I want to always be in a really generous place with the knowledge. I only can speak about this from my experience and the work that I've done, but I really, really come from a deep place of caring and trying my best. I don't always get it right, I don't, but I try.
Speaker 1:Yeah, good. Yeah, thanks for trying so much.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:And so many times. Yeah, yeah, it's beautiful. Yeah, I'm really in awe of this conversation. Marcelo, thank you so much for joining our show today and, yes, speak soon. Let's make another one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, great, it's great to meet you and thanks everyone for listening.