“Everybody Arts,” or How We’re Scaling Arts Practice to Community

MicroCosmos is an inquiry into our ability to affect meaningful change on a small scale through the inner dimensions of artistic practice. How are artists tapping into those inner dimensions to be in dialogue and right relation with the outer context in which we live? When things feel out of control on a macro scale, how do our artistic gifts meet the needs of the world?

In response to these questions, MicroCosmos co-curators Javiera Benavente, Matthew Glassman, and Nick Slie created a framework of creative prompts and then convened artists who are knee deep in this inquiry to reflect, study, and then encounter a fellow practitioner they’ve never met. In this conversation, kara lynch and Seema Sueko come together to discuss their responses to the MicroCosmos framework in a conversation facilitated by Javiera Benavente. kara lynch is a time-based artist living in the Bronx, New York. kara is the anchor artist for INVISIBLE, an episodic, multi-site installation excavating the terror and resilient beauty of Black Indigenous experiences, and co-editor of We Travel the Space Ways: Black Imagination, Fragments and Diffractions, an edited volume of Black speculation. Seema Sueko grew up in Honolulu with a Pakistani father and a third generation Kona Japanese American mother. She is a co-curator with DNAWORKS and is adapting the novel Song of the Exile by Hawaiian writer Kiana Davenport into a play with jazz music.

This encounter represents the culmination of a three-part process of individual work. The process began by convening pairs of artists who are knee deep in this inquiry. We invited each to reflect, study, and then encounter a fellow practitioner they’ve never met. Each participant in the MicroCosmos project undertook a three-part process of individual work. They were asked to meditate on five questions:

What questions and callings are you living?

What are the places, spaces, and relationships that are undergirding you and your work?

What seeds are you planting and tending?

What are the practices that would help you?

What are the experiments you yearn to conduct?

Then, participants engaged in shared study of excerpts from Symbiotic Planet: A New Look at Evolution by Lynn Margulis, “When You Meet the Monster, Anoint its Feet” by Bayo Akomolafe, and "Communication is Sacred” by Nora Bateson. Finally, participants created a short expressive response in any creative medium as a way of sharing what the prompts and shared study activated in them. Those creative responses appear interspersed throughout the following conversation.

kara lynch: I have all these multiple practices. Some of them are very quiet and solo, like making a drawing a day. Then some of my practice is working with communities as a cultural organizer, and some of that looks like trying to make a flag with Black people in small rural towns in Oklahoma that have self-governance. Some of that looks like reading elegies for folks who've been murdered in lynchings or extralegal ways. And recently some of that looks like going back to a practice that I had as a young person, which is playing violin and saying “yes” to being a musician in other people's projects.

I come from a video background, video and performance, and the thing about video that I still hold on to, even though I barely ever make video anymore, is the immediacy and intimacy of that medium for me. So that is what happened for me with the violin. The violin is really immediate. You pick it up, you hit the string, you make a move, you make something, whatever it is. So that is what I am going to share with you today.

Recently I was invited by Alicia Grullón, who's a performance artist and cultural organizer in the Bronx who I've known over time, and she put together this project called Cabaret Chispas, which was related to an encuentro that she hosted at her house with water protectors whose background is in Latin America, but they were in the United States. That was eighteen months ago. She had the transcripts, and she felt very strongly that there had to be a way of sharing this with people and also doing something to acknowledge that there is a genocide going on in Palestine and that there are people trying to speak up and that that's very difficult. So, she was looking for musicians, and she had invited me to a new moon fire keeping session and found out from my friend Sujani that I played violin. All of a sudden, I became the bandmaster of an orchestra of no one but me. So I found somebody to join me. From that we made some music, and I learned a bunch of songs, and one of them I made into a loop.

Today I made a new loop to share with you all. I'll show you the invitation for Cabaret Chispas, and then I'll play that piece. Oh, here it is. This is the invitation.

The event happened in this very odd autonomous space that's underneath a major highway. It's underneath the Long Island Expressway, and it's on a creek that's connected to another creek that leads into the East River, or really the Long Island Sound. So it's part of the ocean. You're in this little crevice. It's in an industrial space. But the piece itself was all these testimonials, and it was very beautiful. There are all these different characters and people who showed up and read testimonies from these organizers.

Seema Sueko: That was rich and deep, and it had a big impact on me. Thank you. What came up for me is a long time ago, back when I was in college… both my undergrad and my graduate degrees are in international relations with a particular focus on Middle East politics and with an even deeper focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 1993, when I was twenty or twenty-one, I went to Palestine. Listening to your violin, it brought back a very specific incident that happened.

I went on a study abroad program that was hosted by Tel Aviv University. I wanted to go because I'm like, "I'm studying this. Go and see for yourself so it's not just in a book." We had four-day study weeks. On those three-day weekends, I'd go into the West Bank most of the time.

The incident that came up as I was listening to your piece of music is a trip to Nablus, to the An-Najah University. The Israeli government was allowing thirty Palestinian refugees to return from exile. We were going to the university for a celebration to welcome them back. So we took this very long shared taxi, and as your music was playing, I was feeling myself back in that taxi where we're kind of squished together and seeing the countryside.

We finally got to An-Najah University, and the place was surrounded by the Israeli Defense Force soldiers, and they have their M16s, and they're saying, Kulam lech-lecha!—which means “everybody leave!” So we walk all around. We're about fifty yards away from the front gates of the university. My friends start running, and I'm like, "Oh, oh, we're running. Okay, let's run." I'm so naive. Then I hear this yelling in Hebrew, which I perceive as, "Stop!"

I'm very obedient. I turn, stop and see an Israeli soldier pointing his M16 at me. This is the first time I've ever had an experience like this. And I really stopped and stared at him. I thought, "This is how it happens.” I feel my whole body just drop. He starts to laugh at me, and he raises his gun. It's so clear I'm not Palestinian, and I think that's part of why he laughed and raised his gun. What I realized is they were really just wanting to intimidate us. Then I hear my friends. They've made it into the school gates, and they yell, "Seema, run!" So I run and I make it in, and I'm feeling all this numbness.

We go watch the drumline play. The upside down Palestinian flag is up against the wall. Yasser Arafat phones in. My friends tap me on the shoulder and say, "Seema come with us." They take me to the bathroom because what I don't know has happened is I've completely shit myself. When that guy aimed the gun at me and I felt my stomach drop, I shit myself. And with such love and care, these Palestinian women take me into the bathroom, and they say, "Seema, you need to clean yourself up."

They spend the rest of the day with me. We go and we walk around Nablus. At one point, my friend runs across the street and goes into this little store, and she comes back with this little pendant of Handala on a chain. Handala is this cartoon drawing by Naji al-Ali: a little boy with his hands behind his back. It's this Palestinian symbol. She puts it around my neck and she says, "I see you young American woman traveling by yourself. I want to do this." And she says, "Here, we have dual oppression, not just from the Israelis but from our own men, and I give you this Handala so you'll always remember us.” And then she sent me on my way.

So your piece of music brought this memory very much back into focus for me.

kara lynch: Thank you, Seema for taking us with you along the way.

Everybody arts, but nobody really lives on their art.

Seema Sueko: I think you took me with you and joined me back in 1993.

After that trip, I finished my undergrad, and then I went to University of Chicago to study international relations. It was a one-year master's program. It was very theory oriented. I felt so separate from people. I finished my master's degree and started working in the theatre first as an actor.

I ended up in San Diego and started a theatre company. First and foremost, we were going to pay local artists union wages. We would do work that offered significant roles for artists of color and work that allowed us to bring in young people. Then, we borrowed consensus organizing from social work, created this methodology that enabled us to organize with communities around each production. The theatre company was called Mo'olelo Performing Arts Company. Mo'olelo is a Hawaiian word that means “story” or “narrative” or “tale.” We had robustly diverse audiences. Almost every night was sold out, or I should say organized out. It was intentional in the way we organized. The very first play that we did was a play I wrote called Remains in 2004. It was me finally processing my time in Palestine. It took ten years. 

So, I ran a theatre company. I went on to work for large theatre companies including Arena Stage and Pasadena Playhouse. When the pandemic hit, I had this big awakening and resigned from Arena and started freelancing as a theatre director and consultant. I moved to Hawaii in 2022 to help my parents who are in their eighties. Initially I went back and forth to the continent for work, but this year I realized I didn't want to be gone for weeks on end. I also got married, and I wanted to nurture that relationship. So, I didn't take any gigs on the continent this year, but I needed to make money, so for eight months this year I worked as a mail carrier for the post office.

kara lynch: That's my dream. I want to know all about it.

Is there a way that I can bring this project to life using elements of alternative economies and worker cooperative methodologies and somehow bring it to life with other artists?

Seema Sueko: It was my fantasy too, because you're just so in community in a real way. It quite honestly was my first time doing an honest-to-god blue collar job. There's so much I loved about it, but it was also tough. You work twelve-hour shifts. You work every weekend too. You never know when your day off will be until the day before. So, I did that for eight months.

Anyway, I am about to start a new job working for the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, our state’s arts agency here. One of the questions I am living with is, what's the purpose of arts organizations? What's the art ecology and economy here in Hawaii? Because it's different from the continent.

As I look around the islands, everybody here arts. Everybody arts. I like saying it because it sounds like everybody farts: everybody arts and everybody farts. People are involved with music, or they are crafters and makers, or they love pop arts. Everybody arts: the art of lowriders, the art of tattoo. I see it everywhere. So then, what role does a state arts agency play in a place where everybody arts and where professional artists are not well compensated? Everybody arts, but nobody really lives on their art.

A lot of people leave here. We have a lot of Hawaii artists who have been on Broadway and won Tony awards. They don't return if they want to be able to sustain that career. There's one director who returned a couple of decades ago, and now she leads people on forest bathing tours. So if they return, they transform.

There's a project I'm working on, this passion project. There's a Hawaiian novelist named Kiana Davenport, and she wrote this book called Song of the Exile in 1999. It starts and ends here in Hawaii. It's set from the 1930s to the 1960s. I got permission from Kiana to adapt it into a play with jazz music. I've had a couple of workshops of the script. Now I'm working with a sound designer, André Pluess, to add some jazz music to it. What I really want to do is bring it to life here in Hawaii, but I probably won't get it produced by an arts org here. I think it will require different kinds of collaborations.

I've been doing a lot of studying of solidarity economics and learning a little bit about worker cooperatives, but I'm just a baby student right now in these practices. So, what's swirling in my mind is that I don't want to form an institution, an organization. So I'm wondering… Is there a way that I can bring this project to life using elements of alternative economies and worker cooperative methodologies and somehow bring it to life with other artists? 

This is me trying to write out and draw what this could look like.

I'm thinking about: What are the basic needs? Can we meet artist needs while doing this project? Not just the artists, but also whoever else is involved. Can I use some of the elements of consensus organizing as I build a community of folks to be involved with this project, Song of the Exile?

There's this quote, which I actually got a little bit wrong in this drawing. It's by Rob Hopkins, who is often quoted in solidarity economy circles. "If we wait for government, it'll be too late," is what that's supposed to be. "If we work alone, it'll be too little. And if we work together, it just might be enough just in time."

kara lynch: I really appreciate this drawing… Really getting to see all the things and how things are overlapping and intermingling and all the things that are on the edges and the borders. It really brings me into your brain.

It makes me think about being a part of Cabaret Chispas. What I most appreciate actually is that I had a very specific job. Then, I could observe the rest of how Alicia was doing this. She really approached this thing as an organizer. I just saw whatever legacies of her having been an activist in a leftist, communist tradition, trying to figure out how you change the scale of your practice to community. She just really leaned into how she knows how to organize.

One of the things that I'm still grappling with about how she pulled together Cabaret Chispas was how she ran rehearsals. She did one-on-ones with everybody. They had their testimony they were supposed to read, and she walked them through, had them rehearse a few times with a mic. So people only had to be there for whatever, the hour they had to be there, and then they left. For me, it was very complex because I felt it was hard to then connect with the other folks who were there, who were all brilliant organizers and artists who were then playing the roles of other organizers and artists. Some were playing themselves, but some were not. And very few people, except for those behind the scenes, could see the whole thing. It was a very successful approach given the resources that she had, enabling her to move from doing solo performance to collective performance. Afterwards, she did small group dinners for feedback.

So, in thinking about your process too, of how you're thinking about things you're interested in learning, what scale and scope looks like for this new practice, but also drawing from the things you do know how to do already, the consensus organizing and theatre itself…

Seema Sueko: You're reminding me of a newer practice I started doing as a theatre director, starting with one-on-ones with each actor and peppering one-on-ones throughout. There's stuff you can achieve in the room together, but there's also stuff that's sometimes not said in the room together. And sometimes something an artist is grappling with that can come out in a one-on-one that can really be useful. Thanks for that reminder and shifting that thinking about that tool and different ways to use it.