I'm co-instructor of L&S 25 Public Art and Belonging. Today's event is the last of a series of public lectures and conversations organized for our course. In considering public art and belonging, we recognize that this class is organized at Berkeley and takes place at least in part on the ancestral and unceded land of the Olone, the successors of the historic and sovereign Verona Band of Alameda County. I'm zooming to you from my house in South Berkeley and some of you may still be on campus or in the East Bay. Regardless of where you are physically, we recognize that every member of the Berkeley community has and continues to benefit from the use and occupation of this land since the institution's founding in 1868. We acknowledge and pay respect to Olone ancestors, peoples today and Olone futures to come. This lecture series and the course is part of explore relationships between art and belonging, race and place, history, memory and the imagining of just futures. As you know, if you're watching this, UC Berkeley has currently canceled or postponed all large events and has asked instructors to move course content online. Today, we're so happy to be virtually hosting this panel, our final class event in collaboration with TDPS, the Theater Dance and Performance Studies Department at Berkeley. An undertaking of this magnitude would not be possible without generous support. And this class is part of the series thinking through art and design at Berkeley, supported by the Office of Art and Design, a campus initiative under the leadership of Professor Shannon Jackson with support from Paris Coates and Suman Sioux. Andy connects and fortifies the creative life of departments, schools, centers, museums and student clubs throughout the Berkeley campus and the Bay Area. So a quick word about this virtual format. We want to acknowledge that Zoom isn't secure or private. It's what the university is supporting during this time, but that doesn't mean that we don't wish we could be doing just about anything else. In the past few weeks of online learning, we've been thinking about the resilience necessary to get through the present, but we've also been thinking about the future we want to live in. How can this seemingly sudden emergency bring into visibility a more durational crisis of injustice and inequality? We've been talking about resilience alongside our shared responsibility to change the existing systems in the world that don't work for most of us. We're eager to have a conversation about arts role and theater's role in these transformations. So with that preamble, I'll introduce and then turn it over to this panel's moderator, Yuki Baker. Connects people, ideas and movements with visually translated scholarship. They're a queer, zayinchi, activist, artist, scholar, and thinker finishing their PhD and performance studies at UC Berkeley. They recently published the Black Feminist Study Illustrated Theory Atlas with their co-convenier, Rah Malika Imhotep as an offering of the embodied spiritual political education project, The Church of Black Feminist Thought. Their dissertation looks at how cross race and class change work is being enacted in East Oakland through the individual and community reparations. So please join me in welcoming Yuki. Then we would usually clap. Thank you so much, Lauren. And thank you to everyone who's joining virtually right now. I'll be moderating today and wearing a couple of different hats. So one of the hats is sharing logistics with you all. So the first 10 minutes is going to be me sharing introductions and some housekeeping and doing some grounding with you. But first, the logistics, I'm going to put it in the chat space as well so that you can reference that. So once we get to the Q&A time at around 1pm, I'll ask folks to either raise their hands if they want to speak verbally or you can put your typed questions in the Q&A box, which should be in the bottom panel of your Zoom session. And then if you have technical questions, you can direct them at John Paul or Ben Dillon in the chat space. And then also, you probably heard we are recording this so you can choose whether you'd like to keep your video on when you're doing the question asking. And then most importantly, I think for all of these Zoom meetings that we've been on, video calls, please take care of your bodies in whatever way you need to. We're going to take a collective break for five minutes right before the Q&A starts. Okay, so those are the logistical questions. If you have other questions, you can ask Ben or John Paul. So speaking of our bodies, I want to lead a quick grounding exercise. So let's take a deep breath together. One more. Just check in with yourself right now. Notice how your body is feeling and your breath. And now ask yourself, what emotions and questions am I bringing to this panel on inclusion and curation in the arts? And what do I want to get out of this time together? I'm going to put that in the chat space too and ask it again. What emotions and questions am I bringing to this panel on inclusion and curation in the arts? What do I want to get out of this time together? And so just take a couple moments to jot down whatever is coming up for you. And I'm going to create space on the chat section if you want to share what's coming up. But just a couple words. Take another 30 seconds to wrap up. Okay, and you're welcome to put it in the chat space, but it's also just for your personal reference so that you can look back on it as the panelists are speaking and remind yourself what you're interested in hearing more about in the Q&A time and how you want to orient yourself today. Okay, so now I want to introduce our amazing panelists by reading their bios. So I'm going to go in alphabetical order. Gerald is first up. Can you wave? Gerald Cassell is a San Francisco based dance artist and director of Gerald Cassell Dance, a graduate of the Juilliard School. He holds an MFA from UW Milwaukee. Cassell is an associate professor and associate chair of theater arts at UC Santa Cruz. He received a Bessie award for his work with Michael Clark, Steven Petronio, Zvig Gothiner, and Stanley Love. Cassell's choreographic research and social practice complicates and provokes questions surrounding colonialism, collective cultural amnesia, whiteness and privilege and the tensions between the invisible, perceived, obvious structures of power. Thank you, Gerald, for joining us today. Okay, next up is Dustin H. Chin. Dustin is a Seattle native whose plays include the Ensemble Studio Theater, Sloan Commission, Herschel, Portrait of a Killer, Let's Ninja Science Ranger Team Get, and Colonialism is Terrible but Fuzz Delicious. He's developed work with the Mayi Reuters Lab, Ars Nova Play Group, Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep Summer Residency Lab, ACT's Newstrands Festival, The Bay Area Playwrights Festival, University of Washington via Melon, a Melon Creative Fellowship, Space on Rider Farm, UMass at Amherst Newplay Lab, and Vampire Cowboys, some of his best friends are white, he wants you to know. And then Maria Jensen, we have it here, is recognized as a leader in the arts for advancing innovative strategies to sustain creative communities in the midst of rapidly changing urban environments. As creative and executive director of SoMarts, Jensen has deepened the organization's commitment to racial equity, creating clear pathways for Bay Area artists to cultivate new ideas and grow their careers. Through her leadership, Jensen has expanded SoMarts' public programs, advanced new public-private partnerships, and fostered groundbreaking exhibitions, such as The Black Woman is God, The Third Muslim, Queer and Trans-Asteric Muslim Narratives of Resistance and Resilience, and many more. Thank you for joining us. And Mina Morita, last but not least, is the artistic director of Crowded Fire Theater, a critically acclaimed intrepid, love that word, intrepid female-led company dedicated to developing a fierce contemporary theater canon that reflects the plurality of our world. Previously, she served as the artistic associate at Berkeley Repertory Theater and a founding member of its ground floor program, as board president of Shotgun Players, as a 2014 Lincoln Center Directors Lab participant, as one of the founding members of Bay Area Children's Theater, as community artists, arts panelists with the Zellerbach Family Foundation, panelists for the Getty Leadership Summit, and guest artists at UC Berkeley and Stanford University. Some of you may also know that Mina is currently directing the UC Berkeley production of Snowflakes or Rare White People, just by our co-panelist, Dustin Chin, which will be presented online in a hybrid radio play format next week from May 1st to the 10th. So I just registered for that this morning. You can donate. It's free and accessible to you all, so just check that out and join in for that. So this is a really dynamic and talented group of people, and I'm so excited that we get to have the range of their art practices at this virtual table. And so last Friday in preparation for today, we gathered the panelists and I, and what emerged was this much needed brainstorming session across the different art practices about how to be in this embryonic time of the global pandemic. We talked about how this pandemic has exposed the weaknesses of hypercapitalism that were already there, things like how there are no safety nets in place for living artists, particularly queer and POC artists, who were used as Maria puts it, window dressing on larger institutions' websites. I love that. It's so true. But on the flip side, smaller organizations, like the ones that our panelists are part of, have always been interdependently supporting artists and staff and the ones that are most vulnerable. So now is no different in making sure that everyone has their needs met. We discussed qualitative and quantitative data about equity in the arts moving forward and how the quote normal was never actually normal. So how do we create, how do we co-create a creative revolution? So that's a little summary of what we discussed last Friday. And we were even saying, oh, we should have recorded this at the end of our conversation. But luckily we have the recording going today. And I do have some specific questions for the panelists and as a whole. But really, I think it's going to be brainstorm session number two for the panelists to just organically see what's up for them today. 40 days into shelter in place, at least over here in the Bay Area. So I'm excited to see what's alive for you all. So hi, Mina, Gerald, Marie, and Dustin. Thank you so, so, so much for being here. Again, it's really an honor to get to be in conversation with you all. So really, yeah, where would you like to start? What came up for you as I gave that little summary? It's funny. We were just really jamming last week. And now all of you have joined us. And so now it's a little bit more on the spot. So just acknowledging that. But I do think I was very much inspired by this conversation in terms of how for so long, we were looking at growth and institutional growth as a way to hold artists and expression and creativity. And we're at a moment when our institutions are not enough. And I think that all of us in different ways and then different timelines on non hyper capitalist timeline are trying to really digest and care for and think about what care looks like in getting resources directly to our artists. And then thinking I was really inspired by what interdependence looks like moving forward. And again, to use the term hyper localized way, I think for much of my lifetime, it's been so centered on sort of national larger, larger measures of value and success. And so actually, how do we think about now our local grocery store as something that is valuable and essential to us and looking at our food chains, looking at our communities directly and wanting our neighborhoods to be intact. And also different as we in terms of our investment as we move forward. So those are things that just continue to resonate with me. And I'm excited to hear any additional thoughts that people have, I'm still marinating. Well, I'll chime in. That's tremendous marination. So thank you for providing us with that. I love that we were talking so much about kind of like the collapse of capitalism right now and how we discovered that capitalism was basically founded on a very weak system of scaffolding to begin with. And in terms of where we are right now, where resources are ever more scarce. And so those of us with smaller institutions and those of us who are focused on the real application of diversity and inclusion are finding ourselves really scrambling to find this funding right now. And I thought that one of the takeaways that I kept thinking about is how capitalism really prioritizes outcomes, whereas the work that we do at arts and culture organization prioritizes creativity. And so there's been numerous diversity and inclusion programs from museums, institutions, tech firms, everyone has a diversity and inclusion department that is now even known as the DNA kind of, you know, diversity and inclusion kind of, or it's thought of as an acronym, you know, it's so much part of everyone's conversation. But when I think about the work that all of us do, and I don't like to think of us as being people on the bottom, because sometimes that's how we get labeled. But we have been trying to, you know, create a not even a system, just a reality and experience of creativity that has the space to be boundless, to be aspirational, and to move away from the quantitative aspects of it.   And these are the things that I was thinking about when I woke up this morning, about this panel, but also about just arts and culture production in general, that we do need to create, we do have the opportunity to enact a structural change right now so that, you know, institutions and organizations can better serve the communities that they say that they're supporting to begin with. So that's my marination. I can respond to that. And I can relate to your description of capitalism as, you know, a stage for producing outcomes versus creativity. And I think at this time, I've been thinking a lot about how creativity doesn't have to be in service to capital, that it could just be what we need to do right now. And if we don't have to rationalize it, it doesn't have to be pumped through a spreadsheet or placed in higher arcs, that this is a time and space that feels one of the rarest moments when I feel actually alive. And one way I know, and this is my response to Miyuki's question, initial question is, is how my body feels. And as a dancer and choreographer, I'm really aware and paying attention to bodies in space and also in time. So there's a strong urge in me because I'm grieving the fact that I can't be in a studio with other dancers and choreographers and collaborators, a kind of, you know, a desire to recreate that state, that physical energetic state. And there is no returning right now to that. So the part of my grief is really deeply embodied. And I can tell because sometimes my back hurts or like I have a foot issue that I've never had before. And so really trying to take the time to pay attention to what my body needs and how it's processing this moment. And trying not to get into the spirit of let's reset, let's reset, let's return to normal. Yeah, just feeling those edges that feel scary or unknown. I also think I'm feeling the loss of a group embodied practice that's such an important part of dancers and choreographers' livelihoods. And yes, we can attempt to do it through Zoom, but it really doesn't translate very well. One of the things that I'm tuning into as well is how my body is experiencing time. You know, a lot of people are saying, I don't even know what day it is. Is it today's Thursday? Okay, but who cares? You know, there's like a false resonance in terms of a quotidian experience. So connecting that to my body and as a somatic practitioner how we always say that there's a body felt understanding. And now that really translates and resonates when I think about how I feel in terms of time. And it's also a larger question that I've been thinking about in my work, especially how when I've been thinking a lot about race and the dynamics race plays in dance, how people of color have dancers of color experience time differently than white bodies. Okay. In the week that's gone by, I've thought a lot about what it feels like. There seems to be an air, this pervasive sense of nostalgia which ties into questions about the whole concept of normalcy and what some of the institutions that are talking about moving forward, how I got asked by another artistic director the other day about what do you think audiences will want going forward? And my first reaction was like, that's kind of your job. But it got me thinking about how it's, there's so many manifestations of what nostalgia has, like I think in what we choose to spend our times with, what kind of art we participate in watch and listen to. I wanted to tell this other artistic director, like I always wanted to press upon them, like there's the whole question of giving audiences what they want versus what they need and have ties to the larger question about the concept of normalcy and the way that POCs and other communities experience time as Gerald was mentioning. And I'm so on edge these days whenever someone says I want things to go back to normal. I just like snapped to attention about that because the latest instance of that was one of my friends was just tweeting out like, oh, I even missed the subways and living in New York City.  Like you really, you honestly miss that. And I personally don't. So yeah, that was for some reason that was sort of this horrible grounding image of going forward. I feel a sense that on the one hand, I'm unsure about giving definitive answers about anything, but I do know that I find myself kind of dreading the feeling of when other institutions move forward that it's going to be a huge swath of work that is by, oh, let's remind people what our values are and let's bring back all these dead artists. And it was something that happened, that was conversation that was happening, that was struggling with before the lockdowns happened. And now it's brought even sharper into focus. And it seems like as these large organizations are having all these releases now and like talking about moving forward, and some of them have even optimistically started releasing of theater-wise, like within the theater world, they're starting to release like, oh, here's our upcoming season. And it just, first of all, made me think about like the sheer optimism to go forward with those plans, but also how as obsessed I was about the questions of programming before, what was it like going forward? I think it's interesting the through line of time that we've been talking about, and Dustin, you're bringing up the theater world's optimism, but I remember last week we were all talking too about just this American trait of productivity, that we have this thing in common, like we want to be producing. But I want to bring Gerald's point up of like this moment of feeling so alive and of being, you know, at the same time as there's grief in your body, just the sense of creativity that's not in service of anything, and that we do have to halt, and that we are in this embryonic stage, and we don't know what's going to happen. We're so used to knowing, we're so used to wanting to create and be able, and we can create as artists, right? But what does that look like right now in this moment of dismantling the gates or breaking down the gates as this panel is called, right? In some ways, the pandemic has broken down many gates. So I'm curious what practices you all are witnessing or taking part in in this, in the aftermath of broken down gates. It's thinking a lot about this in terms of the radio play, because I think if I hadn't been midstream with that, I don't know that I would have wanted to create something with it, like, in such a structured way right now. And the, that is because I think I would, I've also been going through just sort of the reactive state of trying to, Maria, you've said this, you know, catch all the plates, and needing to grieve and, and the sheer exhaust, emotional exhaustion we're all feeling of this moment, and to acknowledge that. And yet, what I've really come to realize is that, that the act of learning actually, because I've been learning as much as the students have been learning and pivoting to a new medium or the active, collectively learning has been the thing that has really, really fed my soul and kept me grounded in this moment. And I wonder at everyone in their own, in their own spaces, how that is manifesting, because we're all, it's such a moment where we're all saying we're in this together, but in fact, we're all in such different places within it, economically, in terms of security, in terms of our ability to focus on a day to day level. And I also have come closer in touch with the idea that I do have this brain that keeps wanting to come up with ideas and plan, I'm so bad at meditating, like I can, I will sit there and 10 ideas will come up in my mind. And I have to, and maybe this will come after I'm done with production. And, you know, we even call it production, right? So for this radio play, maybe we need to change our language, language has power. But after this time, I'm actually very much looking forward to, to the silence, while yes, still running an organization. So that comes to mind. And one last thing that comes to mind for me is that we've been slower to move within our organization once we were like very clear that all of our staff will be taking care of as planned for the rest of the year, which feels fantastic and was like the first stop of care. The next is like, how do I start to move some of the resources we have directly to artists without asking for anything, any creation of anything in return, and that, that each artist can do what they want on their own terms, because, you know, the first, the first thought is really like, how do we make sure everybody has shelter, food, water, you know, and, and some sort of care in that regard. So little as a small organization, we have limited resources, but I've been working with our team to really start to think about that. And when we come back, maybe productions don't look like productions anymore. Maybe it's a community gathering that celebrates the creation, the creative spirit in us in different ways, or in tandem with something that is, you know, a creation. So and while feeding each other, food, spirit, exchange of skills, knowledge, abilities, spirit, all of these things. So those are the touch points that I've been holding on to lately. Thank you for sharing that. That was really quite beautiful. I think, for me, one of the things that I've been thinking a lot about is just, I feel that so much of what we've been trying to do, or have been forced to do in terms of this particular capital capitalist structure that we've been working in. And I'm not here to just keep talking about like anti-capitalist ideas. I'm not trying to do that, although I am very much an anti-capitalist, but I feel like, you know, within that reality has, it seems to have removed our ability to mourn. Like there's something about the availability of having different places to go to and different things to do, just so we can avoid feelings.  I felt like, well, I can reconcile this because if I have an opportunity to be on my own and, you know, do a lot of reading or catch up on emails or, you know, I can find activities to do, but I was watching this, you know, young child who, you know, children pretty much are the definition of life in motion in some ways and just seeing how he came to a halt. And I had to respect that because I couldn't say, oh, let's go to a movie tonight. It'll make you feel better. Or let's go down a Santa Cruz boardwalk. Let's go here. There's no place to go. And so what I feel has been, you know, I don't know if it's grounding me because I feel like I'm fairly grounded. I've been through a lot in my life, but I'm getting a sense of a collective groundedness, which is different, that people are literally coming out of their apartments, out of their houses, out of their various ways of manufacturing their day because I feel like our life is pretty much manufactured. And the technology we use kind of, you know, advances that in some way. It's a tool, but it's also that something that removes a certain amount of our emotional life as well. And just witnessing grief in a 13-year-old or a young child, it's overwhelming. And I learned that I couldn't rush in to soothe it. And I had the momentum. I could feel like to your point, Gerald, a lot of this is somatic. So it starts in your body. I could feel my legs, my arms, everything getting ready to go into this kid's room and try to tell them everything's going to be okay. And then I said, that's a total lie. Don't even, don't let your lips form those words. And I had to sit with him and actually hold him and cradle him and let him express it in whatever form that he felt was appropriate. And that was like such a, you know, I hate to use the term learning moment, but I was just like, yes, we're all like raw again. We're all feeling what it's like to not run away from feelings. We have nowhere to go. And so the thing that comes up for me is like, well, if we can collectively sit with these very complex feelings and be okay with things not returning to normal, because our life has always been constructed around a sense of normalcy, which is a bourgeois trapping of capitalism anyway.  Normal feels like the most pathological thing a person could say about life anyway.  So I think the American contraption of what is supposed to be this ideal life, the American dream, we've had it destroyed for us many, many times. If you look back in history, almost every decade has been violent. There's been political upheaval. There's been oppression. There's been street fights. There's been protests. You know, a lot of that now has been kind of beautifully coalesced into what I would say is like real advocacy, where people are merging together, you know, really intense intellectual thoughts, community thoughts.  But nonetheless, we've never been without a time of an issue. And so for those of us who are black, brown, queer, whatever, we've had whatever national issue is going on, whatever global issue, and then the issue of our skin color also being a problem that we take in to all of these other things that are going on. So now it's interesting to me, I said to a friend the other day who was a writer, I said, is this a time when privilege takes a holiday? And it's a question that I've been thinking a lot about, because privilege, and that's where we learn to sometimes what we do when something's upsetting to us, we reach for whatever amount of bourgeois comfort or privilege we actually have access to. But now we don't have that. And so there's this very raw feeling, you know, it's very raw. And at Soma Arts, what was interesting for us is that we didn't, you know, rush to create an institutional or organizational message to send out to our constituents. We actually spent time kind of sitting with this, absorbing this.  The first thing is, you know, you're angry about it, you're upset about it, you fight against it. Then when you accept it again, you go, well, this is the reality. This is what's happening right now. And it wasn't even a question of what do we want to do about it? Like, oh, it's time for us to get into the virtual space, we've got to create some virtual programming, let's rush, rush, rush, rush, rush. That would be the continuation of, you know, that hyper capitalism that we talked about together as a group last week. But, but rather try to, you know, meet some sort of invisible obligation to do that.  It's all of that. And to have our building be, you know, empty and without that particular ability, I felt like I wanted to wrap my arms around that very state, that the building is empty. And we actually have to be respectful. There's a pandemic going on. There are people who are really sick and there are people who are dying. So my sending out an institutional message from the director of Soma Arts, we know you're experiencing challenges during this time, it wasn't appropriate. And I'm thinking of this as literally the death of many things. And so I'm just sitting with the mourning phase right now. Thank you for that, Maria. Yeah, I think that the grief and mourning is a real necessary space that we need to hold. And I know too, though, that there's just a lot of different responses around the world in the arts communities to how to engage. And I know that there has been an outpour of creativity as well. And since this panel is on curation and inclusion, I'm really curious. Well, yesterday I actually just participated in a live stream that was free of Toshi Regan's Parable of the Sower Opera. I don't know if y'all have heard of that, but it was streaming from Abu Dhabi. And I was like, this is amazing. There are 3,000 plus people joining for this remarkable piece. And so I'm just, I'm curious if any of you have thoughts on this kind of double-edged sword, maybe of, you know, like everything moving online, that it has its beauty, and it's also dangerous. But when we're thinking about accessibility, and public art, and yeah, just who gets to feel belonging. And now we're all in our own spaces. So if any of you have thoughts, I know, Gerald, you were about to put on a show and Dustin, you're like days away from this too, and Mina, right? So I'm curious on this other side of the grief or through the grief, what's possible right now in terms of curation and inclusion? Well, in response to Maria's, that was beautiful, beautifully said. And I, you know, yeah, all of those things. It's very basic and human to want to avoid suffering. And it's a very common condition that we are born with. Unfortunately, we've learned how to profit from it, to make money from it and capitalize on it. And I think this pause has given us some space to imagine, to answer your question, Miuki, how we're going to change the structures that perpetuate the structures of the invisible structures of privilege that we have been used to. So, you know, I feel like as artists, we've been training for this for a while. As a meditator, I know what the human urge to want to pretend that I'm not feeling that. But I think we have to lean in and go deep. Like, you know, even though it's going to be painful, understanding how capitalism benefits from difference and oppression and how it really, if you think about it, started with slavery, how that perpetuated a condition of wanting more capital and belongings and kind of disregard for certain populations of existence to benefit a few, right? So, it's a really great time to think about that question of what is curation going to look like from here? I'm part of the racial equity working group with the San Francisco Arts Commission and the Human Rights Commission of San Francisco. And one of the tasks I'm leading is to gather data. So, we're going to get quantitative data soon, how much money have institutions lost, how many jobs were lost, budgets, all of that will come. But I think it's a good time now to capture the qualitative data, how artists are feeling and more than feeling, but how it's affecting other artists and other communities. And what we're doing to help during this epidemic, as someone said in our meeting last Tuesday, as second responders, because artists provide a space for healing, a space for being in our bodies, a space to imagine alternative futures, to capture this moment in terms of quality. What are the dimensions of grief and what are we doing to imagine an alternative future? And then going with your metaphor of grief and the stages of grief, the final step is hope. How do we get to that part? And how can we feel uplifted by each other again? That's the thing that I'm trying to really ask my students, right?  It's really hard right now. We can't go outside. We can't be together. But what are you, what are you going to do after this is done? And what are you going to, who's the first person you're going to hug? What is the first dance move you're going to do across the floor, right? And so it gives us a kind of trajectory, at least we might not get there soon, but at least we know that hope is coming. Yeah, as far as discipline goes and seeing other peers within the fields, coming up with new stuff, I've alternated so much. There was a period of time when I said I'm not going to engage with any of it, because I'm just trying to process it in my own way where I only wanted to deal with things where that had been merited in on for a while. For instance, just a back to Mina's point about working on a process where sort of the bones had been thought collaboratively for a long time, but I think that's something that's right now easier for me to reengage with. For instance, put it another way, like starting something new has been tremendously difficult now. And I thought to myself, maybe I should just revisit something that I've been working on, or even revisit something that's in the near past. I had a play recently, and the last scene is in the present day, that's where the State Directions say. And taking back on that, I'm going to have to change it in one of two ways. One of them I should just change that State Direction to say, like January 2020, or rewrite the scene. If I was going to update it, so to speak, for what this is going forward. But the person I was having a conversation with about this particular play, I said to them, I'm going to have to get back to you on that. And giving myself the space to say, I'm going to put that question on pause. I'm glad this person asked me this question, what are you going to do with that play and that last scene? And I said, I don't know. And giving myself permission to say, I don't know. And to say that I know I'm going to have to do something with it, but I don't have to attend to it right now. And that process of arriving at those permissions, I think was very helpful for me with that particular question that was put my way. And for the longest time, speaking about being able to engage with new work, just being able to work period took me a while to get to. And strangely enough, I sort of unlocked that part of my brain again by doing jigsaw puzzles. Speaking of bourgeois comforts, I said, I haven't done a jigsaw puzzle forever. And so I had one and I brought it out. And then I was just, I said, this is dumb. This is dumb. And they go, well, is it really dumb? What else are you going to do? Because you have all this time. And so I started working on this thing. And it was the cheesiest metaphor almost. I completed the border and I was putting things in. And a part of me said, oh, this is some sort of moving around of pattern recognition and memory and blah, blah, blah. And then I got to a certain point and I put it aside. And then for some reason, I just went back to my computer and it started doing some things. And another part of my brain says, great, you're doing things again. You don't have to share that publicly. Like me, I'm giving you permission not to like put this out in the universe. It's totally fine. And that seemed at least that those sort of conversations inside my head of giving myself permission of dealing with this in these ways that felt very emergent and very personal. That for colleagues who are out there who are putting stuff out there in the universe, like in 24 hours, whatever, it's like that's what they need to help them to process. That's fantastic if it helps them. And it's also fantastic for me not to feel exactly the need to engage with that if I don't want to. So because we're still very much in this, so getting through the in this is a large enough concern and question, I think. And it took me a while to arrive at that for myself. Wow.  Sorry. I think, you know, Dustin, you said that word embryonic last week when we were meeting and the idea that we're in this, the state that is so different from day to day, including Maria, thank you for your beautiful and really important thought process around grief, because I'm definitely feeling that. And also like that we're in our grief, there's also what does feel true is when I'm creating or feeding myself or others, like making a meal, moving my body around, sitting in the sunshine, being in rehearsal, learning something cool and new with the students that feels absolutely healing. And that this virtual sphere is going to be a combination of all of those things. I think everyone's throwing a lot of, as I've heard a couple times spaghetti at the wall, the thing that I personally am trying to keep myself from doing around this idea of producing is to do it for the sake of a capitalist tendency, even if, and this is where it's hard because I understand that fundraising and everything is really necessary to keep some of these organizations alive. But I also need to be quite frank, I'm like, if this is the moment, and I, you know, even in the GIA summit, you know, conversation is like, what is a healthy organization look like? Is it a community center? Is it a church of a kind? You know, is it where is it a matchmaking house or a mutual aid kind of space where we're connecting people based on different kinds of hunger and need? Is that actually the way forward? I don't know. Again, we're in this embryonic stage and my brain always just to go to the hope part. That is my way of dealing, I think. But I do think having these buildings is really questionable right now. And I really think about access. What is great is that people who have been trying to be heard all this time to that they can see things from home is something we're learning that's a huge positive. I hope the unions can get out of the way of that and can really support it instead, to be frank. And I hope that we put more behind this idea of sustainability instead of growth in terms of buildings over artists and people and how do we really think about our people as the fourth, the most important value in any kind of curation, gatekeeping that starts to happen, any kind of this idea of, again, interdependence and there's dance in that. How do we move together next? And it's not going to be perfect coming out. It's going to be all over the place and very messy and everyone's going to have different ways in. And I don't think anyone's in a position to judge, frankly, like even as I do say these things out loud. But like, you know, I think we're all going to be trying to figure out who we are. I think we're all figuring out who we are, who we really are. Yeah. So on the note of figuring out who we all are, we're going to have to actually take a break. So we can transition to Q&A. It feels like we were just at the tip of the iceberg. There's so much more that can be said already. But I'm also taking a look at there's 14 people who have their hands raised for after the break. And I'm realizing that with this online platform, it might be easier if y'all who have questions could type those into the Q&A section because I'll then be able to see if there's some overlap and just kind of mash some of those questions together. And also the panelists will be able to see. And I think we can save some time that way. So and let's maybe come back at 110 if that's all right. And so take care of your bodies, you know, settle into what you just heard and we'll see you at 110. Okay, I'm looking at the chat space as people trickle back in. It looks like some questions are being cut and pasted from the students. So I think we can all see though. Let's see. We have three different questions so far. So the first one is about, is everyone back? Yes. Okay. So it's about the play that's about to go up next week. What has the transition been like to capture the play on radio during this pandemic? How can we relate and weave our present day narrative and the exacerbation of racial and economic tensions due to coronavirus with the play? This is from Sarah Tang. Dustin, do you want to talk about the play and then I can talk about process? Sure. I think a few students are asking about the inspiration for it. I started the very beginnings of it in around 2013, I believe, when there was a port that came out that said that white Americans would be the minority in this country by like 2042 or something. And I just remember the chat and the anxiety around that report that came out and is also coupled with a couple of conversations I had with some friends. These friends of mine out in Brooklyn, in theater, white liberals loved them to death, but they were freaked out that they were going to send their daughter to a school where she might be the only white kid. And I was like, wow, if they're freaked out about that, then what does that say about this larger conversation and how does it tie into this general anxiety about you could get the sense talking with or listening to other white people about how freaked out they were or the underlying tension that was there. So I just started writing about that, oh, wouldn't be sort of funny. And then I, for some reason, I went to the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, which has all these 19th century framings and how they have like this Hall of Asian People where they have like a very, they have small exhibits for like Koreans. And this is the same museum where you have like whales and like the animals of North America. So it felt very much like, oh, it just snapped into focus about what it would be like to have to turn that sort of lens onto white people if the way that these artifacts were living in this 19th century framework, the way that specifically East Asians in this case were framed and to this day, if you could get into the museum, you could see exhibits like that. So yeah, it was a bunch of different things that just kind of coalesced into the beginnings of first scene and just kind of went from there. And in terms of how all of this relates to this conversation, I think it's incredibly brave that UC Berkeley has chosen to do this play. It feels incredibly subversive in a number of different manners, because it is turning the lens around and does so with comedy. I think, you know, there's, as creative people, there's so many different vehicles and ways into having a conversation and bringing up self-awareness. So I think this work falls within the question of gatekeeping and who feels comfortable producing this piece, and what types of pieces are going to come from our experience now, and how who is going to be making choices about what will be on our stages and what constitutes a play or a production, right? So back to also the question of how do we think differently. And in terms of the process itself, we could very easily have, you know, I mean, in the moment, it was like, it felt pretty herculean to pivot entirely and try to learn an entire and a different medium. So I spent a weekend like many of my theater compatriots trying to learn how to move theater online for education. I read so many things and I was like, okay, there was one article in particular that was important, which is don't become an expert in this. This is a moment when we actually should be acknowledging the fact that all of us are trying to live through a pandemic, and why are we trying to do anything well right now? And so I was like, okay, I'm just gonna just go and like figure it out as we go. So we figured out a process and in a very quick summation, and I'm happy to go offline and answer this in more detail or feel free. I've been sort of trying to encapsulate some of it on crowded fires Facebook page just to let other people know who want to know how to do it. This is how you do it because I could care less about getting all that information out there. I want everybody to have the information. But really, for us to, we worked with a voiceover expert from Hollywood who has a great amount of experience. So I learned, I was learning on the fly. I was like, okay, stuff notes and directions that I would normally give in a rehearsal room is the exact opposite. So like I was like, okay, retrain my mind and my impulses, and then working with the students to do the same. And the biggest thing was like, you can't break anything right now, just go for it and express what this character feels like to you. We rehearsed, we figured out like zoom was this quiet space where everything's muted, unmute, unmute, laugh, react, be human. That's how you know how something lands. That's why we do theater because we're across from another human that has a reaction that's breathing with us. And then the technical elements was just we figured out to get a certain quality that we couldn't just do it over Zoom because we should really also think about access and the fact that everybody's in different spaces. And so we agreed that just everybody has their earbuds on and records on their phone, a file that gets uploaded. And then our incredible sound designer who I cannot, I want to say their name over and over, Elton Bradman, Elton Bradman, who is putting all of these files together with sound design to result in the radio play. And then our designer is Tania Oriana, who is our scenic designer, who has built a giant model taking photos, our costume designers drawing, painting renderings that we're going to, I staged inside the model pictures. Jack or lighting designer Tania, who has like figured out what angles and style we want for each of these slides. All of that will go. And then the dancers are learning their dance. And they're going to do one of those, not exactly exquisite core, but something where it's like a pop in of all of their dance elements. So it's going to be, it's going to be a celebration of the tenacity, the incredible amount of learning that's happened. And I think it's been what's been most interesting to me recently, is that for our cast members, they're in these different pockets around the country, including more conservative ones. And so when there was one instance, for example, where somebody was talking to the family and their neighbors who were having like a social distancing backyard party about, you know, what, what are they working on? And when they explained what the play was, there was dead silence. And so I was like, huh, well, that's kind of interesting, because if we had done this with our audience here, that's very different than what the audience is going to be potentially in the homes of all these folks all over the country. And like what kinds of conversations are going to come from this? So, you know, we're just all learning a lot. I don't know if that answers your question, but I hope there's some German there. Thank you. So the next question is from Allison. What can we as college students do to help promote the theory that institutions don't define our art? I know that it's interesting because there's institutions at different scales, too, right?  Yeah, it's it's it. Thank you for the question too, Allison. It's very interesting because I was thinking about before I worked at Soma Arts, I worked at SF MoMA for three years. And and before that, I launched an art fair, independent art fair that took place at the Phoenix Hotel in the Tenderloin District.  But I think, and I don't know the answer to this, like, you know, I'm trying to I'm trying to speak specifically to your question without going off on it on a on a tangent tangent. But in order to promote this this theory, I think you need to turn the question around, actually, I think the way that the question is phrased is perhaps coming from a perspective that they can. And I think it's almost better to, you know, as a creative person to feel that, you know, there's no one that's defining your art, you're merely trying to find the right place and the right situation for what you're creating, what you're thinking, what you're doing. If you're not finding that receptivity from that institution, you can definitely challenge that institution, or you can try to find other institutions that aren't going to give you that particular battle. Maybe the battle is more a brown budget or scale, but it's not about the kernel of your idea or what you're trying to express. So to answer your question, I'm putting another question back on you, since we're talking theoretically anyway, is that where are you finding this particular struggle with institutions? And I could be you should follow up if I'm not answering the question or if I'm not making any sense at all. I'm always open to that because that's usually my reality anyway. But but I think that the question needs to be inverted. That's kind of like my response. Anyone else have anything to support that? And if you're looking at institutions and you think of institutions as museums, you know, especially museums that kind of like honor cannons and things like that or particular type of art, you definitely are going to find pushback. The other thing for artists and creative people to keep in mind, especially if you're talking about visual art in particular, but it's true of any, you know, cultural institution is that some of the pushback that you may be feeling, it may not even be curatorially. There are some institutions where the board is making decisions, they're involving themselves and what happens with programming. There's a lot of different ways to actually fillet this question.  And I know that that's a very sensitive issue, especially if you happen to be an artist that doesn't identify as a mainstream artist. Yeah, I've been pushing forward this idea that institutions can code switch, that there is a possibility for institutional code switching. One of the ways I'm seeing that is in New York, where artists are acting as curators and they're giving platforms for specific seasons underneath a more umbrella theme where artists are, you know, talking to each other or on the ground and collectively sharing information so that then the community of artists gets to decide what comes, you know, to be presented. And I think there's not a lot of that happening in the Bay Area. There's no, there's not a giving away of that gatekeeping, that artistic aesthetic gatekeeping. I'm talking about dance. And also, for example, the Museum of Modern Art now has dance performances. Like that's a really big shift for them when they were, you know, predominantly known as a visual arts container. But now it's really common to see live dance performances at the MoMA and now other museums are following suit. So, you know, this has taken years and years of advocacy, but I do think that the more artists can challenge institutions that they will eventually budge and that those old Foggy Board of Director members will just give up the reins of control. Man, this might sound super cliche, but just keep on doing what you're doing because institutions take a while to catch up. My experience in theater is that it takes the process of developing new theater and it's like you write a play that might take however long, let's say it takes you a year, and then you submit it around to all these different development opportunities. And then that might take another year and then you go back and rewrite it and then you're part of another organization which has like a public presentation and like through all these steps, like all these conversations are kind of coalescing. That takes forever. So, who knows what that's gonna look like. I think they'll, and I'd have to remind myself this too, I think the thing is just to keep on focusing on what you really, really care about and do it in such a sense that you are, if anything, take control of things you have control over. And then if you're playing in that space, the best I can offer is just try to commit to something that you think that you will work on even though you don't want to work on it. Because I think that everything that's happened to me that sort of clicked for somebody else has been sort of an offshoot of an obsession around a certain theme or conversation that I've been having that just won't leave. And so as kind of amorphous as it sounds, I think that I think institutions should be more worried about catching up to you. Because, I mean, this might be like a facile argument, but 10 years ago, if you went to most of these places and said, how about a musical about the founding fathers of rap music? And nobody would respond to that, right? So, yeah, just focus. Yeah, as far as that question goes, I tend to not worry about how institutions right now would think of me and just get back to my own.  That's helpful at all. Yeah, no more own value as we walk into the room. And also, I'd say one thing that this moment has taught so many of us is that you, the audience, the community is actually without it. There's no performing arts, no museum, no nothing. And so where you choose to go see if your friend is doing something that is super exciting, let us not buy into this kind of shellacked, smooth idea of production of all that it's like, what is meaningful? What moves you?  It's going to be counter cultural in the sense that all of culture is telling us to buy those $100 tickets for the whatever, you know, at the big building down in the middle of the, you know, the city or whatever. But I do think that if there's anything that's embryonic right now that is hopeful is that creation is happening everywhere and that we are participants in supporting that creation in whatever way it comes up. And I worry that as we come out of all this, that there's going to be this mentality of scarcity. So there's less money to do all the things. So we can only do so many things, but actually I think creation can live outside of that. And so we're learning that with the virtual world right now. So like there are ways, there are so many ways. Thank you. So as a time check, we are at 130. I wonder if one last question would be all right with you, five, four, four of you. I feel like the third question kind of ties into what you all just answered. So there's a question about this phrase of what audiences want versus what they need. And wanting to hear more about that, either in the present future or past. I love that question. And again, speaking to the time that we're in, and many of us are switching to the virtual platform as a way of continuing the work and continuing our connection to community, I think, again, this time is kind of like what Mina said just a few minutes ago, there's kind of like no way to get it wrong right now. So it's helpful to think about that as you think about what you want to do, what you want to be creating, and let the audience find you and let people find you based on what they feel that they need. There's no, I would love to do away with the system of thinking that you're going to produce something because you know it's going to have a, it's going to generate an audience as opposed to generating an emotional impact. Because I think now what we're looking at isn't about audience impact, it's about emotional impact, whether that's virtual and how long we have to continue working in the virtual space. And one thing I was thinking about because we are doing some work in a virtual space, we've we've moved through some of the stages of our grieving around this, and we are moving towards the hopeful end of the spectrum. And there's a lot of beauty in the virtual space, just natural visual beauty. And I think that what will add the missing component that we often find with the virtual reality is soul and depth, because the mediums don't often translate that. And so how that gets translated is literally, it comes from the performer, it comes from the dancer, it comes from the writer. And everyone has stories that they're telling right now and narratives that they're sharing that take many artistic forms. And the truth of that form is what's going to impact someone. So we're moving into this virtual space, we have no idea, we have no roadmap, we've never done this stuff before, it's kind of like me now we're like, you know, googling stuff as we're creating it. And something about that is hopeful and also exciting. And we haven't really given too much thought about what anybody really wants or needs is just kind of like, it makes us feel good.  And that's going to be felt by other people. And I feel like that's, that's a natural way to generate audience, if you will, that's a natural way to generate participation.  They're not texting us every minute or hygiene or Insta every minute. It's like this, you know, these feel like quiet movements right now, or they can feel like very quiet, very personal movements that is decided upon by the people who are creating. And that's, that's what I get excited about.  And we've actually turned our focus a little bit away from audience and away from, you know, we think about the community, but, you know, we're not thinking about the need aspect of it, or even a want aspect of it, we're thinking of the doing, because within that, you know, motion of just doing something, you're going to generate the weather that you need to create whatever you want to create. I think that that's the hopeful aspect of doing away with trying to figure out things based on metrics and based on, you know, how many ticket sales and how many clicks, how many views, you know, those are, that's the virtual way of capitalism still kind of following us at this time. And so if you just, you know, literally put on blinders and only think about what do you want to do? What are you trying to create? What are you trying to communicate? And just let it go from there. That's so beautiful, Maria. Anyone else want to respond to this?  And the question above that or underneath that maybe is what drives the trends and who creates the gestalt? And could they be the trends that we see? Could they be the funders? Could they be the curators themselves or box office sales? Or an interest in touring? Like there's so many factors that drive the decision to create a curatorial practice. But I think all of those things have to be considered. Do we want to talk to our audience through surveys? Do we want to, you know, reach out to them in the digital space? And can we at this moment reimagine all of it? Can we not market like, you know, Silicon Valley? And then my final thought was what if we did nothing right now? What if we didn't show anything and just take a pause and then showed it a product of the thing that we were pausing or marinating over later? Could that be valuable at this time? Oh yeah, just a little bit about, I think elaborating a bit on that, it's, I think even if you're even talking about race, there are a lot of plays nowadays where the thinking is, oh, the conversation is sort of framed as a discussion that happens within academia, within the college office hours. And that's where my mind goes through sometimes about what people think they want to have a conversation about race is like on this very intellectualized framing of it. Whereas what they might need is something that is a bit more uncomfortable. And I think that's why an approach of writing as a comedy instead of trying to present it as a lot of plays that talk about race, a lot of productions that I saw in the past year were very, very, for the lack of a better term, very earnest and serious, unquote. And I don't think that's necessarily the best way my mind deals with certain types of difficult subjects. And so that's one way of expressing the want versus need way of approaching things where you offer something where, and this ties back to some of some of the comments about silences when the idea was pitched to certain spaces. If I wrote a play that was more not a comedy that talked about it, would it necessarily be the best way to get people really thinking about that? And I don't know. I just think my own personal philosophy about it is I'm going to offer something and a way to engage in a conversation that is at least my point of view unexpected. So, yeah, I think that question talks about approaches from a dramatic writing sense as well. And yeah, I don't know if Mina has anything else to add about that. Put you on the spot. Sorry about that. Yeah. I don't have anything to add. Yeah, well, we are 10 minutes over the end time. So I really just appreciate the depth that you all brought. I couldn't see any of the students or participants. But I hope that folks got to hear what they came for and that this was really interesting. It was fascinating for me. And Lauren Lee, thank you so much for having this platform, this space, this course to think about these ideas. And I know that the panelists, as Mina said, can bring it offline or not really offline. You can be off Zoom to ask any questions if there are any more. Because these are really wonderful questions that were brought up. So thank you, everyone, for joining us. And we will convene at some later point, perhaps. Thank you. Bye. Thank you. Bye. Thank you so much.


we begin with the thanks and the praises of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, thanking him and praising him. What we must do as we recognize our Obudiyah has laid to him subhanahu wa ta'ala and subhanahu wa ta'ala begins the Quran by saying Alhamdulillah, teaching us the best way to praise him. Alhamdulillah Alhamdulillah means that he is the Lord of the worlds. He gives us an appropriate title to call him, to call upon him. He's teaching us what is the best way to address him subhanahu wa ta'ala and then he chooses subhanahu wa ta'ala out of all of his names and attributes, the ones that he wants to put at the forefront, the ones that you're going to be reminded of every single time you stand up to pray. He says Al Rahman Al Rahim, the most merciful, the one who gives his mercy vastly to everyone and then also the one who very selectively chooses certain people to receive special parts of his mercy. And so when we understand this Rahman, this Allah who is merciful, we recognize that we wouldn't want anyone to judge us when our eternity is on the line except Al Rahman Al Rahim. And so he says, don't worry. The one who owns that day, he is Al Rahman and Al Rahim. And so we completely submit to him. He is the one who told us how to praise him. Then we praised him. We have fear and he consoles us. And then so what can we do other than rely only on him and worship only him and seek help from only him? And when we submit wholeheartedly, completely to him subhanahu wa ta'ala, we are completely his slaves, not doing anything except that he wants us to do it. We only ask that he does with us what he pleases as well. And the path of those who he has chosen, who he has blessed, who he is the one who picks, who he wants to succeed. We learn so many beautiful things, so many beautiful things from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And one of the most blasphemous things that we hear today in Muslim circles is that the Qur'an is not enough. How can you imagine a Muslim say that the Qur'an is not enough? Yet Muslims are saying this on public platforms, on open audiences, to the masses of people, to young individuals who don't know right from wrong. And they are given this alternative lifestyle and they are being told that the Qur'an sometimes is not enough for you. How blasphemous of a saying. Rather the Qur'an is always sufficient. And when people say that go and learn the Qur'an, go and engage with the Qur'an, if someone doesn't come out of this benefiting from the Qur'an it's because the fault is in the person, not in the Book of Allah. How dare someone say that there is a fault in the Book of Allah. How dare someone say that there is a deficiency in the Book of Allah. Rather it is perfect and in it are all the answers to the mysteries of the universe. So much so as we briefly discussed whatever an individual is suffering with, whatever calamity is faced, whatever tragedy someone has to go through, any anguish that comes upon our hearts or fear and we turn and we're not able to say any words. People are sometimes lost for words. They don't know what to say. It's impossible for them to speak. How merciful is Allah that He teaches us in the Qur'an the correct things to say when we are troubled. When someone is struck with despair, Allah gives us lessons in the Qur'an to learn and to ask properly from that despair. When someone is struck with fear or anxiety, when someone is struck with some sort of difficulty, Allah tells this person in the Qur'an how to respond. Exactly what to say. Not only what to say but He gives examples of people who have been in your exact positions going through things much worse than you can imagine. And He tells you how they made it through to the other side. Rather the person who says this does not know the Book of Allah. This person does not know Allah as the most merciful. This person has gone to the Qur'an but they have been led astray. We need the Qur'an because Allah teaches us through the Qur'an. Allah teaches us the best way to live. And for many people, for many people hearing a verse of the Qur'an, it's not going to move your heart. Hearing the hadith of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, it's not going to affect our hearts. But that's okay. That's okay. When you hear the words of Allah and your hearts are not moving, it's okay sometimes. Sometimes you need something else. Sometimes you need a motivational talk. Sometimes you need a word of inspiration. Sometimes you need an event to occur in your life. Allah gave us many avenues through which our hearts can be affected. A sign of this is that some people are guided through sight and that moves their heart. Some people are guided through their ears and that moves their hearts. Some people are guided through taste and that moves their hearts. Some people are guided through the mind and that moves their hearts. No single person here is the exact same. And so no remedy is going to work for every single person. But the beauty of the Qur'an is that it takes all of the things that you can possibly be exposed to. And if you interact with the Qur'an properly, it will give you what you need and the way you need it. It will give you what you need and the way that you specifically need it. That is the miracle of the Book of Allah. The miracle of the sight of the Qur'an. So even for the hafiz, one who knows the heart in his heart, knows the Qur'an in his heart. When he sits to read the Qur'an, he shouldn't just sit and read from memory. He shouldn't just sit and read in his head.  And most importantly, so his heart is engaged. Touching the book, feeling the book, being with the Book of Allah. So in these days when people are going through trying times, do not let people and shaitan deceive us into thinking that the Qur'an is not enough for us. The month of the Qur'an is upon us yet people say the Qur'an is not enough for us. The month of the Qur'an is upon us. We need to ask ourselves, what is my relationship to the Qur'an of Allah? Do I read it? Do I memorize it? Do I study it? Do I understand it? Does the Qur'an speak to me? Because the truth of the matter is, Allah is speaking to us through the Qur'an. When we recite his words, he is speaking to us directly. This month that is coming upon us, and we are not guaranteed to survive till this month. So we should start with the Qur'an today. What is my relationship with the Word of Allah today? What is my relationship every morning and every night with the Word of Allah? And may Allah never include me in the one who turns back towards the Qur'an. May He protect me from ever being amongst the foolish person who dares to say that the Qur'an is not sufficient for me. May we be people of the Qur'an. We ask Allah to be of those people because that is a miracle in and of itself. That is intimate companionship with the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. Because his character was the Qur'an. He was like a walking Qur'an. So your relationship with the Qur'an is your relationship with the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. And both of those are your relationship with Allah. We ask Allah to be amongst those people and to never turn our back to the major signs of this religion, and to the dignity and to the honor of this religion.


I'll do a bit of a little call for anyone who wants to ask any questions. Good morning, Leah, good morning. Right, so continuing on, I think, from actually matter of fact, what I'll do is I'll not in any particular order, but I want to probably answer this one first. As I know, I think Leah did answer this, or did ask this, I should say. And it's to do with GDP cycles and really kind of finding out if there's a preferred range. And there isn't a range when it comes to GDP growth, right? So generally you see the business is what's known as the, I guess, the business cycle, the economic cycle, right? Where this is growth and this is time. And generally in an economic cycle, I would say you start with, but you have boom, contraction, recession, bust, or slump, recovery, expansion, and boom again, right? And that's basically what's supposed to happen. Although there is a caveat to that, is that just because you're in a certain phase or potentially in a certain phase, doesn't mean that you can't go backwards, right? So you can easily go from a recovery phase back to, I guess, bust or slump, or in fact, a recession, for example, right? And then that could be the loop because ultimately two negative quarters of GDP growth, right? Equals of recession, right? It is basically what's known as a recession. So, M-T-E-C-E, right? It's a recession. So you could be recovering and if the central bank don't manage the economy, let's say for example, currently, they start hiking interest rates a bit too aggressively, for example, that could send the economy back into a recession. Now, I guess the question is understanding where we are in an economic cycle and you won't, I mean, you can know by looking at GDP data, right? And what you'll see generally on a chart of GDP growth is you'll tend to see something like this, for example, right? Where if you're in the growth phase, you can, there are quarters where you might get a bit of a pullback but overall over a period of time, generally you're on the up and up and you'll know whether you're in the recovery, expansion phase or even the boom phase just from looking around you, right? Are there jobs, is there low unemployment or high unemployment? Is there high employment or low employment? You know, are people spending money again? People going on holiday again, you know what I mean? Then you'll know whether the economy is really just coming out of the recovery to the expansion phase and obviously a booming phase would be everyone seems to be making money from various different sources, whether it's your property, landlord or stocks and bonds and all that kind of stuff, right? That's where the economy is generally booming. Think about, I don't know how old everyone is but you should know the difference really when things are good or when things aren't good in an economy or even if they're not good for you personally, just maybe generally when things are okay where you don't necessarily have to worry or people in general aren't worrying about employment, there's jobs, vacancies, et cetera. So that from that perspective, you don't necessarily, you can kind of tie it together. So right now, right now, where are we in terms of where are you, Leah, in the world? Where are you? Where do you live? London. London, for Londoner. Hi, I do. For Londoner, you're all right. So all right, so right now, would you say that we are in the recession phase? No. Okay, would you say that we are somewhere maybe between the recovery and expansion phase? Yes. Yeah, and that's exactly it, right? You know, I mean, it's pretty much that and you can see it when GDP is generally growing, right? So as long as we're not in those two negative quarters, quarter on quarter reading, QOQ, yeah, and GDP is generally growing, then fine. There will be periods where GDP might be flatlining, right? But that doesn't necessarily mean where going into a recession, it might just mean that maybe the recovery is taking a bit longer to potentially go into the expansion phase. Or not, right? We could go again back into the recession phase, but the point is we're probably somewhere between here and here, yeah? And so, and again, also with fundamental analysis, what we're trying to do is not always look at where, we keep one eye obviously on where we are currently, but also one eye on where we're potentially going because the market is trying, always wants to price in what future value potentially is, current and future value, right? But you always have to have one eye on where future value is or potentially going to be. So if, for example, in the UK, we start to grow, right? And things start to look really good, employment starts to grow, unemployment starts to go down, then you'd keep an eye on those metrics, right? And then what you would do is look to potentially buy the pounds, right? At the moment, the pound and the UK economy, I guess is what we should be looking at, is struggling a bit, right? It's struggling and the Bank of England are pretty much saying this point that high inflation, which is the cost of living, I guess, and the energy crisis that we're currently going through and I said high inflation may tip everybody, well, everybody, but the economy back into a recession, right?  The last time I looked it was like 167 or something like that near me, 1 pound, 67 per litre, cost of electric has gone up as you know, and the gas and energy and just food in general, right?   Because then you may have to end up cutting staff. And if you're cutting staff, then that adds to unemployment, then that's that. Employment, then you're heading back into a, you know what I mean? This is a scenario that creates the struggling business and I think I couldn't get my head around what is it that creates the struggling, but you're right, we are working our way towards that as well. Exactly, and it's, and we fundamental analysis is understanding that and just keeping your eye on those metrics and what we look at. So unemployment, employment, inflation, and just really just reading up on, and I'm not saying that you gotta sit there every day and read through like hundreds of articles or anything like that. Generally, I don't, right? I just try to just focus on the main topics again, which is GDP, inflation, interest rates, and then from there, I can see what is coming down the line or what is likely to potentially come down the line. Am I gonna be right 100% of the time? No, because things can change. No economist is gonna be in no, trade is gonna be right 100% of the time, but we always have to go with what is likely, yeah? And it looks likely, I mean, this is the smart money talking, right? This is the Bank of England, let's name Andrew Bailey as well as the other voting members is basically saying that there's gonna be potentially tough times ahead, right? So from that perspective, where do we then position ourselves when it comes to trading? So when it comes to trading now, remember that we are trading one against the other, right? So it's always like you're looking at, you're comparing a straight fight between, for example, the pound and for example, the dollar, right? Pound dollar, when you're looking at GDP growth, you're seeing who's the better out of the two, right? And we can see this on the fundamental analysis spreadsheet, but basically the dollar is ranked one and the UK, I guess, the pound is ranked number three. Now, also as well, this ties into currency cycle, right? So we understand also, not from an economic cycle perspective, but a currency cycle perspective. Now, we understand that just because something is ranked number three doesn't mean that it's an automatic buy in the same way that just because something is ranked number one doesn't mean it's an automatic buy. We need to understand why something is likely to remain strong or appreciate in the future or why a currency that is currently, you know, strong may want to take, you know, maybe devalue or depreciate. And again, that just comes with understanding fundamentals. So for me, I think the pound is on its way down, is probably gonna devalue. Now, I'm not saying that this is gonna be set in stone. This is what it looks like. This is what it looks like, right? From just me reading the data, looking at what the analysts are saying, what the Bank of England are saying, you know, what the banks are saying. And so I think it's currently three now. Yes, you could argue that the Bank of England is still hiking rates, which they are. But after that hike, yeah, so after that hike, what happens? And this is where I guess we could talk about timing comes involved, the timing of when you want to get short. So is it prudent to necessarily get short now? Well, that's a judgment call. And if you are, then I would say probably the best thing to do would be to not risk a full position. But I think after the Bank of England do finish hiking rates, because it doesn't look like they're gonna hike rates again after that, because they have to kind of wait and see how a hiking rates is gonna affect the economy, because if they hike rates too much, because remember, we've got inflation problems, which is the cost of living problem. But then on top of that, if you, for example, have a mortgage or any loans, a variable, then it's gonna hurt you because the cost of repaying those loans or the mortgage is gonna go up, right? So then you're gonna have even less money. You know what I mean exactly?  If you think energy bills and food costs or a skyrocketing when you hike interest rates and depending on your mortgage repayments that can add an extra couple of hundred pounds on top of that. So then you're definitely not gonna go out and spend money, which then the economy suffers if it requires you to spend money and it could end up putting you or the economy in a recession sooner. And this is what central banks understand from a very elementary level, right? It's obviously a bit more, lot more complex complexities to that, but ultimately that's what it comes down to. That's the bare bones of it. So that's why the Bank of England are, yeah, hiking interest rates can hurt struggling businesses and create struggling but it's exactly, it's like a feedback loop, right? So the Bank of England are trying to gauge and all central banks are trying to gauge where the sweet spot is with interest rates and raising interest rates as to what level the economy and people can generally still operate without hurting people, you know?  So it's a balancing act with being a central bank as one of the toughest jobs in the world to run an economy, right? So these are the things that they have to think about, right? On a very, like I said, a very kind of basic level. So that's why hiking rates, I guess many of you have seen that situation where, or you've seen headlines where it's like, are we heading into a recession? So what they're saying is, is because of a hiking interest rates and what they're inferring to, I guess, is basically what I've been saying. If you hike interest rates too much, yeah? Yes, inflation may come down but if inflation comes down, then, you know, that's brilliant because central banks have a mandate to get their, you know, the inflation to the 2% target. But in doing that, you may hurt the economy because, you know, whereas before I was paying, you know, maybe 1,000 pound of my mortgage, now I'm paying because interest rates are higher, you know, are higher up, have been hiked. Maybe I'm paying, you know, 1,200, 300 where all my spare cash that I would have used to save and go on holiday and, you know, maybe buy a new car and do other things, right? Now it's being taken up with mortgage costs. You know what I mean? So it's a balancing act, right? It's a balancing act. That's what this all is with the economy. But generally, but in general, that, you know, answering that question as far as does GDP have a target or preferred range? It doesn't have a preferred range as long as, you know, you're just more looking at the trend and which way it's generally going and also as well, you know, two negative quarters of GDP growth would equal a recession. So does anyone have any questions on that?