[Moises De La Cruz] You come from a really extraordinary background; You were born in Damascus, and you've studied across the world before then returning to Pakistan, where you are now. I also understand there's a legacy of both activism and turmoil in your family history, so I wonder if you could briefly describe the historical forces that have informed your personal life and your art as a result?
[Zulfikar Ali Bhutto] Yes, of course. I was born in Damascus, to a Lebanese mother and a Pakistani father. My mother's side of the family has had a history of activism. My grandfather on my mother's side was a defector of the French army when they were colonizing Lebanon, and was actively part of the movement to depose the French in the late 1940s. She and my grandfather were part of the communist club in Lebanon which, at the time, brought my grandmother the opportunity to visit the former Soviet Union as a poet, to read her Arabic poetry. So she traveled to Poland, modern day Russia, and Eastern Europe, primarily. It was an interesting time that they were living in, and were fortunate to be a part of.
In the late eighties, my mother moved to Damascus. It was much easier––actually, it still is in some ways––to go between Lebanon and Syria; at that time, Lebanese people could work in Syria without any need for a work permit. That was part of the deal. So she worked in Syria, and my father was in Syria at the time as an exile. His father, my paternal grandfather, was prime minister of Pakistan, and was overthrown by a military coup in 1977, then executed by that same coup in 1979. At that point the whole family was in turmoil. My grandmother, who was also a political activist, was under house arrest, as were my two aunts. The two boys of the family were in exile actively garnering support for their movement, an anti-military-junta movement; This was during the military regime of Zia-ul-Haq, which had taken over in Pakistan. Syria was one of those places where they were able to organize safely. It was there that he met my mother, just by coincidence, as their paths happened to cross. Then they had me. Of course, I was born in exile, as was my sister; I also have a little brother; though he was not born in exile. My sister and I were raised in a constantly shifting political landscape, and were raised in the midst of the disastrous effects that politics can have on families; the way that it rips people apart.
My father was able to come back to Pakistan because he was elected as a seat holder in our provincial assembly in Sindh, and then in 1996 he was killed by police outside our home. At the time he was speaking out against police brutality within Karachi––the same sort of extrajudicial killings that killed him. In Pakistan at that time, there was a very violent movement seeking to make Karachi a sort of separate autonomous zone from the rest of the province and even the rest of the country, which led to a violent counter attack on that movement. The government responded by sending in a violent police force. I think in three years' span, around ‘93 to ‘96, some 3000 people were killed in what the police called "encounters," meaning that both sides fired. But usually, as with the case of my father, it was just the police executing people. My father was martyred in that historical context.
We would go back to Lebanon all the time. Syria is known at this point for shifting between being a peaceful, groovy travel destination, or being in some form of turmoil. In 2006, we were actually in Lebanon during the Israeli invasion. My mother insisted that we stayed and experienced it, because this was what she experienced as a child when she was there for the Israeli invasion in 1980. Israel invaded Lebanon three times, I believe, between 1977 and the early 2000s. They withdrew in 2001 fully from the south of Lebanon, and we were there for that too.
All of that has really informed my art practice, and a lot of my thinking––especially my practice when I was in the US––this sort of bloodletting as a form of identity making.
[MDLC] It seems like across some of your work, there's almost an express will to try and find a sense of lightness in the face of these dark and violent histories swirling around their periphery. The way you’ve brought guerilla fighters and their machismo into conversation with colorful textiles, for instance. At the same time, in the past, you've spoken about combating the prevailing ideas of masculinity and nationalism with softness. Is this something that you think is gained from interpreting masculinity through a queer lens? Or is that a softness that you think could be universally knowable for all people, regardless of sexual orientation or identity?
[ZAB] I think the search for a Western form of masculinity, which is rugged, rough, and colorless, has been a major problem in the world. Toxic masculinity, to me, refers to all forms of bravado, but I think in particular, the tasteless kind that comes out of the US. It's interesting because, countering masculinity with softness... I mean, this was a conversation I was asking as a Pakistani person living in the US, but not quite long enough to be considered an immigrant. I was perhaps going in the direction of ‘diaspora,’ but really trying to have a conversation with home, actually. I think a lot of people who are not from here, people who have spent any amount of time in mixed economic social circles in Pakistan, will tell you that masculinity is actually very effeminate here––very cuddly and cozy.
Of course it has its problems, but it's just not the same. Seeing how masculinity was interpreted in the west, I felt there was such a rigid binary. Interestingly, even though I was in the gay capital of the world, in San Francisco, masculinity was still so rigid that you had to be clear when you were interrupting it. The break from masculinity, even though legally speaking it was perhaps more acceptable, became a statement rather than just something that you couldn't help but do. That was something that I found interesting, especially in that there are subcultures with these almost prescribed identity sets to them. You know, there's the stereotypes of gay men, where you either fall along one of those categories, or you're intentionally subverting and standing out in a more obvious or original way.
[MDLC] And the subversive challenge of cultural norms in masculinity certainly is a very crucial aspect of your work. I think it's highlighted by some earlier works like the Malakhra photo collection. They're really wispy and suggestive photographs, and the way they suggest a veiled subtext beyond the culturally-accepted interpretation of the sport speaks to the way that you've managed to find unexpected inroads to queer self-expression within sexually repressive cultures. What suggestions would you have for others, whether they're artists or just ordinary folk, longing for these perfect cultural metaphors in their lives, for their identity? How do you empower yourself to really go the extra mile and search for those connections?
[ZAB] Well, it's not simple, and I don't think I've necessarily gotten it right every time. I don't want to speak from a place where I think my road has been a hundred percent clear and pure, or without mistakes. I think we all will make mistakes, and that's important; especially young people now. I'm 31 now, so I guess I fall into the millennial category, and I think we started this perfectly moral, ethical benchmark that social media or call-out culture has reinforced. I think it's important to make mistakes, and that's how we grow.
But to answer your question, it's tricky. If you're, let's say, an immigrant living in the US, and you have a cultural background from somewhere else, one of the things to do is to look at that culture with a lot of patience, and a lot of space for nuance and complexity. Know that there's certain things that will constantly be revealing themselves. One must go in with a certain sense of humility as well, understanding what those things are and what they mean to you, versus what they mean to those who are still living in the country, or those who are experiencing those cultural phenomena.
So for example, with wrestling culture, I had to go back to Pakistan several times to really understand what I was going for. I went from province to province, I sat and discussed… And then, I started taking photos. And I had the privilege of being able to go back in the first place, to be able to have those conversations, then those photos turned into the artworks that they did. That comes with patience, and that comes with what we call in Arabic "sabr." It's a very particular kind of patience that goes against the grain of a very fast and demanding world, and I think that's how we're able to really point at our own cultural signifiers.
[MDLC] Definitely. And as we speak about cultural uniquenesses to different parts of the world, I would add that there seems to be a tradition of radical or subversive vulnerability in contemporary Western liberation movements. I would imagine queer liberation, with its proximity to identity and intimacy, must have ideas resembling this as well. But I think it can be easy while living in the cultural hegemon of the US to lose sight of how that might look different in other places. So in Pakistan, the vulnerability that accompanies being queer might look radically different from here. Could you speak to this gap in lived experience?
[ZAB] Well, I think vulnerability exists in Pakistan in a very different way in general. Here, emotion is validated––even the kind of emotion that makes you cry. Men crying is very common; we come from cultures that cry. We come from cultures that show grief very quickly, and very readily. It's almost a religious obligation for some people to show grief, to cry, and to cry in the bosom of your best friend.
So one: we have a different concept of vulnerability. Two: I think the way that vulnerability is showing itself in the queer movement now is very different to how it was showing itself movement previously. Pakistan is going through several movements, but the focus point is the transgender movement, which has actually been going on for a very long time. And now it has pulled into itself other categories that, in the US, would've had acronyms like LGBTQ. Here we prefer to silently support without necessarily having to declare, “I am a gay man supporting the trans community.” That's really not the important thing here.
But within the transgender community, there's been a huge movement against violence against trans people. Pakistan has one of the most forward thinking transgender rights bills in the world––better than anything in the US. It guarantees safety, job security, and even police sensitivity; various different things. But of course that doesn't stop violence, and in particular gang violence towards transgender people. There are gangs in Pakistan that have formed over decades, which specifically target transgender people's birthday parties as places to raid. Transgender birthday parties in Pakistan are a particular cultural phenomenon because transgender folks in Pakistan have houses which they belong to, and those houses celebrate together. It's a support network, similar, but again different to, the various vogue or drag houses in the US. that have come to light through documentaries like Paris Is Burning. So there's a similar need for them to occupy a similar space, within the economic and cultural place of the queer community. The culture around it involves a very old tradition that goes back very far, and there's even a language that transgender people speak called Hijra Farsi.
So recently there's been a lot of activism against the violence that's been enacted on the trans community, and in some cases very successfully. One of the people who's leading that here is Dr. Moiz Awan, who is a transgender and queer activist in Pakistan taking up the mantle against trans violence. I think overall they've been met with a lot of support and acceptance. They have a huge fan following, not just of queer people, but of feminists, straight men, intellectuals, and academics. And because their Urdu is very good too, they’ve been able to transcend some of the class barriers in Pakistan which stem from culture and language.
So they've really picked up a big support network in this country. They've done that through vulnerability, through being angry at the system, through being angry at violence, and through showing rage. And that rage has a particular cultural place. Faith, for example. They are Muslim, they're very faithful, and after they were attacked during a raid at a birthday party that they were attending, they organized a big protest. Instead of the pride flags, rainbow flags, trans flags, they used these very particular Shia religious emblems––some that have actually inspired my work in the Tomorrow We Inherit The Earth series. They used the flags of the family of the prophet of Muhammad, because they were oppressed. The family of the prophet Muhammad––peace be upon him––was killed by the successive political regime that happened afterwards, even though they were Muslim. So they used this flag as a symbol of the oppressed, and I think that's what the west doesn't understand yet: how we use religion. Even though we are queer people, religion still suits us. There are many religions in Pakistan, so religion and faith help in bringing out that vulnerability.
[MDLC] It's really interesting to hear how all these shared cultural signifiers can be so unique to a people, but at the same time offer so much potency in these struggles that are very global and very universal. Finding those regional inroads to liberation is truly inspiring. I think people will be interested to hear about all the people doing what sounds like fantastic work. Switching to a discussion of your work proper, I'm interested in hearing about how the richness of materiality influences it. You've spoken just now, of course, about symbolism from Shia Islam. Throughout your career, you've covered a large variety of different media, from drag performance and workshops to photography, print, collage, textile, and embroidery. Not to mention films more recently, including animation. In addition to all that, you write as well, and are of course an avid curator of exhibitions and galleries. How do each of these different modes of expression offer different opportunities to you? Is there a strategy with which the direct somatic experience of fabric, for example, coupled with its historic relevance, allows you to enrich your studies in a way that other formats aren't capable of?
[ZAB] I love materiality, and I love fabric. I think medium is equally important to artistic expression. Some people might disagree with me (and that's fine), but I think your choice in medium enables you to speak to various different people. For example, textile art in the west is interpreted like, "Ooh, ah, wow," but I noticed when I moved back to Pakistan, that it's still considered a medium of the masses. Because fabric and textile work is everywhere in Pakistan, people take it for granted. This is a poor country, and the people couldn't believe that I actually did my own sequencing and embroidery and stuff. They were like, “Oh, why would you? That's not what artists do; as an artist, you could totally just outsource that.” That's what a lot of textile artists actually do here, they paint a canvas and give part of the canvas to what we call a “karigar,” or artisan. And here, artisan is not a polite word, like in the US. It's actually a classist word. So the work is given to an artisan in an atelier––another nice word in the US, which here is basically like a warehouse––and then they rework it. So I was faced with this huge classist system which textile fits into. Not just the textile itself, but the labor associated with it. That pushed me even further into the medium.
We also associate with textile very differently from how we associate with canvas. You know, we are inclined to come closer to it, and that's what I love about textile art: we are inclined to feel it and be a part of it. Much more so than other media, where we want to keep a distance from them, because they have a sort of certain magnanimity, or they feel more “sublime” or whatever. Textile is used in religion and in everyday use. I mean, we're wearing clothes right now. That, for me, is what really pulls me towards it: it has a certain kind of accessibility. Another thing that I'm really interested in is print. Right now, I'm working on a project where I use cyanotype. You use sunlight to expose a negative, and the chemicals involved create a deep blue color. I'm currently working on a project related to the River Indus and the River Indus Dolphin in Pakistan, a species endemic only to this country. Blue reflects water to me, in a water scarce country.
I’ve realized that it's not just the fabric that I'm interested in, but what goes on it. Mussulman Muscleman was a digital series with embroidered interventions. It was digital inkjet print on fabric, then screen print on fabric. I moved on to Tomorrow We Inherit The Earth, a series where I was looking at religious poster art, and religious flags and banners in South Asia that are normally screen printed. I would do appliqué on top of the screen print. And now I'm using cyanotype as a way to reflect water. So I think the textile is the accessible point, and I also find textile interesting because it's kind of like a sculpture. That, I really love; the kind of built-up and complexity that fabric has. As much as I've learned to be neat in my embroidery and neat in my textile work, I still sometimes prefer it to become messy, and for the strings to be exposed. That gives it more of a sculptural feel, and it allows people to understand how it was made. Instead of hiding the stitch, instead of the seam hiding the thread, why not expose the thread in certain areas? It makes it a little more human, I think.
At the same time, sometimes textile doesn't say everything. And sometimes you can't say everything. Sometimes you shouldn't be the one that says everything. I’ve realized this more as I've grown older, gone through projects, and collaborated more actively and intensively. That's why we go into other mediums, and that's why we go into curatorial work. I see curating as a form of organizing. I don't go into politics; I don't call myself an activist necessarily, so curatorial work is my form of political organizing. Be it within the Third Muslim exhibition, within the exhibition I curated just before the pandemic, during the exhibition I curated with Azin Seraj, Where do you want ghosts to reside?, in San Francisco just after the pandemic began. Now, I'm not curating as much, but I'm trying to gather––to reach out to artists who are working with water, and who are working with wildlife within Pakistan.
That's where I think medium is important, in the sense that you diversify your medium if you really want to get your point across. I recognize, of course, that fabric isn't necessarily supreme among mediums. It is what it is: one method of communication. And ultimately that's what art is; it's a form of communication. I think artists get really stressed out about being the change makers of the world, whereas if we start to think of ourselves as service providers––as people who invite others to think about the world––then, I think we can be truly successful. We help the environmentalists, we help people to shift policy, but we're not in those positions ourselves.
[MDLC] The point that you bring up about not being able to tell everything with a particular medium or a particular piece is really interesting––especially, if you're doing cyanotypes, an inherently low resolution process.I also wanted to pick up on the Indus River project that you've been working on: the Dolphin Diaries. I'd love to hear more about how you're taking on a more environmental approach to art, and I'm wondering if this is the first emergence of an ecological approach in your practice. Or, do you feel that's always been an undercurrent which just hasn't been as overt as it's becoming now?
[ZAB] Well, you're correct in both ways; in the sense that it is a new emergence, and also in calling it an undercurrent. I first volunteered for WWF and the wildlife department in 2005. One of the main reasons why the river dolphin population is rising currently is because there are concerted efforts to rescue them from Pakistan's massive canal irrigation system originally built by the British, particularly the Sukkur Dam. There's one particular network of canals that is especially disastrous for dolphins, and it's from there that wildlife officers have been able to rescue these dolphins, placing them back in the river. And they've been thriving, they’ve been doing really well.
I went on one of those rescue missions in 2006, and it was an incredible experience. One, because the River Indus is a sand bedded subtropical river, meaning it's as much water as it is sand. So you can't actually see through the Indus; it's very brown, naturally. If you were to ever swim in the Indus––which I love to do and have done many times––there's no visibility, literally. I've swam in there, put my hand inches from my face, and not been able to see it. But during the mission, I was able to see a dolphin up close. Normally you only see them when they jump out. I was able to see this incredible animal while I was in this ambulance taking it to the river. The species is still prehistoric; technically it's the ancestor to the Marine dolphin. It has this long beak that looks like a crocodile's, and it has these very close-set teeth. It has no eyes––it's blind, so it just has these pinholes for eyes. It doesn't look like most dolphins, and it doesn't look like most animals. That's what I found so beautiful about it, that it’s such a unique animal.
Doing this sort of work from the US was difficult when I didn’t have access to the related material, and at the same time I knew environmentalists were very actively working in the field back home, so I didn’t feel an urge to involve myself in it. When I came back to Pakistan, the urgency of the matter really struck me, and it became my new obsession.
I recently went and lived on the River Indus for two weeks; the team lived there for three weeks. I was there for two weeks living on the Indus, just counting dolphins with various different environmental groups and collating data––these surveys are incredibly important. This is the level of obsession I feel with wildlife and Pakistan, and this is what's actually brought me back. There were some other people from my province who were also interested in a lot of the things that informed my process, and who were also working in environmentalism. So it's struck new collaborations with people who I likely wouldn't have ever met, or who I never would have collaborated with. Had I been in the US, it just wouldn't have been accessible for either of us, whereas I think here, the possibilities are becoming more generous.
And the urgency of the matter––again, as much as I think queer liberation is important to our sense of self worth, the planet is also going through a really tough time. Our world is so much more resource-strained than it used to be, and rivers have become the target of a lot of exploitation. River flora and fauna, like river dolphins in particular, are under a lot of strain. I think one lesson that people learned the hard way was the extinction of the Yangtze river dolphin in China in 2006. That was a huge shock for a lot of people, and it happened within a span of only a couple decades. So that's why it feels urgent; these are lives worth protecting, and there's a whole community, culture, and ecosystem that surrounds it as well. It's also ever expanding. And that's what I love, you know? I love projects that expand more and more, because I love to devote myself to a project for several years, sticking to something for a while before I move on.
[MDLC] And that's a big jump too, from mainly dealing with a personal or identity-based liberation to an environmental and communal focus. Not just the human community, but the ecological and global community. It must be a different head space, I imagine, and a different way of looking at work. Going forward in that direction, continuing to find these new collaborations, what are you looking forward to most? What kind of work are you hoping to build off of this?
[ZAB] You know, it's still early. I had one solo exhibition around this work, but it was very much like field notes, you could say, for the project. It keeps evolving. At first it was about the cultural and historical legacy of the area in which the dolphins are most numerous, and that was mostly because I wasn't as deep in the research. As the projects get deeper, I’ve realized so much more.
One thing I'm looking forward to is understanding how there used to be indigenous communities that hunted the dolphin back in the day. And now those very same communities are at the forefront of conservation and have a deep emotional commitment to saving this species. It used to be hunted for medicinal oil––which is not actually medicinal––and also for oil to coat boats, none of which is needed anymore. So these communities have turned towards conservation. It's funny, because some of the people I'm learning about now, I met years ago in 2006 when I was volunteering for WWF when I had no idea of their legacy and background. Now, I’m learning more through other people and through various writings, understanding who these people are; I’m gaining a much more intimate look at the dolphin through the people that have been crucial in its conservation. I'm looking forward to getting deeper into that, as well as playing more with cyanotypes. Yesterday I went through a flurry of printing digital negatives, so I'm looking forward to getting more into the pieces themselves.
[MDLC] That's wonderful. Just now you phrased it as "getting to know the dolphin through the people," and it sounds like it's just as much getting to know the people through the dolphin, too. It's great to hear that all these opportunities are opening up for you!
To wrap us up, maybe we could circle back to Faluda Islam, and reprise that role a bit. Previously, it seems like that alter ego has certainly played an organizing role in your practice, and was a central character that would appear across different performances, offering an ideological, political, and mythical organization to the work. I'm wondering if that still factors in; if you've worked with the character at all recently. At the same time, I’d love to hear about the storyline that follows Faluda Islam, leading up to this speculative Third Intifada of queer liberation. In your mind, does the fulfillment of that narrative resemble a tightly-choreographed dance, with prescribed rituals and chapters centered on Faluda as a leader, or is it more of a push and pull that you imagine between the many other struggles of the world, with her jumping in to reinforce their fights?
[ZAB] I mean, Faluda Islam has gone through a lot of different changes conceptually, and that's why I say it's important to make mistakes. I don't just mean mistakes like, "oops, I offended you." I mean mistakes in knowing, "oh, is that direction that I wanted to go in? I did the thing, but I didn't like it––let's try again." I think Faluda Islam has been that for me. She keeps changing because she is my way of testing the limits of queer liberation alongside other forms of revolutionary struggle. At first, yeah––I imagined her as a leader, because I'm a Leo. So of course I imagine myself at the center of it!
But you ask, has she come up again? I'm currently just finishing up a film series intended to ‘archive’ her story. Basically, I'm sort of done with Faluda. When I was here in Pakistan, I was simultaneously researching for Dolphin Diaries (Bulhan Nameh) and completing this film series. When you speak about this idea of the push and pull, the battle and the closure, the Third Intifada... I am dedicated to that closure. The story needed to feel done, and she needed to feel archived before I let her go. In this particular four-film series, I make it less clear as to whether she's a leader, or whether she's just part of a movement. I try to stress the fact that she's involved in a movement which doesn’t just take place in the future, but has been going on for a very long time.
And I don't just mean a queer movement––I mean the anti-imperial and anticolonial movement that's been going on for a very long time, and continues today. That for me became the focus of futurity and of the project, where it’s not just about the revolution and the future, but the ongoing historical struggle. And the futuristic element was queering that struggle. It wasn't necessarily me looking at queer liberation alone, it was me looking at liberation that’s happened in the Middle East, the Arab world, and in North Africa––all of which has been very much anticolonial––and asking how we understand those types of struggles through a queer lens? It sometimes irked me how separate the queer struggle felt from all struggles, in some way. In the US, you see this friction a lot. It becomes this sort of white-versus-people-of-color, who did it first... and it segments itself from other struggles. So for me, Faluda Islam was a way to try and unify these worlds.
[MDLC] I definitely see what you're picking up on in terms of the fragmentation of struggle. It seems like sometimes we can't necessarily wrap our head around the idea of tackling multiple things at once from different angles. There's always some headbutting that happens.Across your work, the religious themes and symbolism––especially with regards to numerology––call to mind a conception of the esoteric centered around manifestation. Here in the west, words like manifestation have become a cultural shorthand for, in essence, wishing for something very deeply. On the other hand, you practice a faith that is very deeply focused on imbuing everyday life with faith, for the purpose of empowerment in a different manner. Is there an alchemical ambition to your work: an idea of changing the world or at least affecting others to change the world, through the power of the work itself? Especially if you're curating or setting up a gallery, is there a will to imbue that space with a transformative power that seeks to organize chaos into something direct and intentional?
[ZAB] I think magic is very important. When I was researching for this series, I found that magic actually formed religion, rather than vice versa. Magic and religion were once not so separate, which is why so many of the Abrahamic faiths began emphasizing separate types of magic. There's the magic of Moses versus the magic of the Pharaoh's sorcerers, for instance. There's a moment in the Quran, the Bible, and the Torah, where Moses is brought before the Pharaoh as God's prophet, and the Pharaoh asks him to prove his worth. How is he better than the king's sorcerers? So the king's sorcerers produce snakes from their magic, and Moses throws down his staff which becomes a bigger snake that eats the two others. Magic is an interesting thing because we often ask, whose power are you possessing?
Within my practice, what I found very interesting was the place of magic within Islam, as a space of manifesting, as a space of goodwill, and as a very physical thing, too. In order to manifest in Islam, there's a lot of geometry, writing, and drawing involved, with talismans and such. Not only is it aesthetically pleasing, but it's also about remembering that you are trying to hone in on God's blessing, on God's power. Only the positive force and the positive will, will result in positive outcomes. This is something that I think is very interesting and important. This factors into my last series, because if we're not within struggle or liberation, and if we're not looking towards a real collective world in which we can live together, we're going in the individual, ego driven direction, which can be disastrous. That's something that magic and esoteric informed me of, within that series.
[MDLC] What does that kind of community-powered magic, or community manifestation look like to you, and how has your work allowed you to develop that idea?
[ZAB] There was something that the Palestinian-French artist Jassem Hindi said to me, that futurism has to be a collaboration in order for it to be positive, because any solo venture in futurism is an egotistical one. It reflects the futurist movements of the Italian fascist regimes of the 1940s. And it reflects the futurism of Dubai, and its grandness and its scale, and its destruction of the cultures that lie underneath it; the futurism of the Wahhabi regime, for example, in Saudi Arabia, that also paves over the history that it prefers didn't exist. This is why the collective is important: it challenges the ego. It humbles, and makes you realize you're not the center of everything. You have to remember that sometimes, especially as an artist. For me, that's, that's the magic, in the humbling and in the modesty. Magic is understanding that you are only as powerful as the community that you surround yourself with, and that you are powerful together.
Recently what I've been finding within a new community is a shared purpose. While doing the dolphin survey, I realized there were 20-odd people from all over Pakistan, from every income group, every background; people who spoke different languages, had different cultural backgrounds... all with one goal. And that one purpose was able to unite us for that amount of time. I think that's where I find the magic, as we say, within community: that shared purpose and understanding that we are limited. Human beings are limited, but we are limitless if we are able to collaborate with each other.
[MDLC] That puts a wonderful wrapper on everything. It definitely seems to summarize where you're at now. Departing from the somewhat solitary performance work that you might have started with, where you may have felt a little bit more isolated––especially living away from home––and returning home, where you're working with a community of what sounds like wonderful people who have much to offer in terms of wisdom and lived experience. Not to mention the shared struggle, whether it be environmental, personal, cultural, or political. It's truly exciting to hear that you're heading in this new direction. I know there's always much more to do in terms of ecology and wildlife, so good luck with everything that you're tackling presently, and keep doing what you've been doing!
