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INTERVIEW BY HAYDEN BERGMAN
#CreativityWillSaveUs is the latest project from the New York-based storytelling platform Creative Pois-On, bringing together artists from around the world to reflect on art and creative practice during the global COVID-19 pandemic. Among the contributors are actors, musicians, visual artists, songwriters, dancers, digital artists, and more. The project is manifested in social media, podcasts, and video form, the last of which is a particularly affecting anthology series in which artists reflect, encourage, and offer performances in their various disciplines.
Hayden Bergman (HB): Marco Calvani made an interesting point in Episode 2 about how the pandemic seemed to force us all to be more aware of our (the) present, and unable or unwilling to imagine the future or our future selves. To what extent did your experience of pandemic-time figure into this project?
Tommaso Cartia (TC): When the pandemic hit, we at Creative Pois-On, were working on a series of our Podcast Show entitled “On Stage,” exploring the performing arts through interviews with actors, writers, directors, and producers, like for example, actress and singer Kayla Davion who plays Tina Turner in “Tina: The Musical” on Broadway. During that month the theaters shut down completely because the COVID-19 started becoming a realistic threat. So we thought that we should have done something concrete for the global community of artists who all of a sudden saw their shows cancelled and their livelihoods in danger. Instead of closing venues, we wanted to open up new windows, even though just virtual ones, to these artists and human beings, thinking that these people truly are always significant thermometers of the times we are living in. Our mission as a storytelling platform and multimedia productions boutique is to make the powers of creativity and imagination available to all of us once again, through the enchanting channel of storytelling. And so we thought to explore how creativity can actually help us navigate these very challenging times by asking prominent figures from the world of art, culture, and entertainment to join their voice in support of our global community of artists who are seeing all of their venues temporarily shutting down to face the pandemic emergency. All together they raise a voice that could break through these walls of isolation sending everybody a positive message that #CreativityWillSaveUs and #TheShowWillGoOn, and that we can spend this time making the most out of our creative powers.
Daniela Pavan (DP): The pandemic emergency generated an unprecedented scenario that forced all of us to stop for a while and reflect. This stop generated many changes in our lives that were completely unexpected and that left many of us disoriented about the future. #CreativityWillSaveUs at the beginning was thought and designed to give voice to artists who work in the theater industry, to share their talent as well as vision in a time where they had to stop working and had no ideas about how their future would have looked like. We received so many contributions that we decided to open up to artists from different disciplines. Listening to their contributions, I believe that I personally was inspired by all the artists who have been part of the project, mainly by two traits that I believe we should all think about: resilience and adaptability. These two traits appear to be very natural to many creative minds, and I believe are also the main traits that will help us all go through the post-pandemic time.
HB: COVID-19 caused much unrest and debate in the U.S. and abroad, and the murder of George Floyd even more so. I’m curious, what role does the idea of the nation play in this project? I’m thinking specifically of the phrase “imagine nations” that appears at the beginning of each episode, followed by, “imagine nations coming together.”
TC: We start from the central concept that art and creativity unify all people, genders, and nations. Also, we are both from Italian origins, living in a country, the U.S., a dream which we chased, believed in, and are still believing in. The states in America should be “united” by definition, and I know that in a way they still are despite any divisions. In our project #CreativityWillSaveUs as well as in all of our productions, we promote unity and togetherness always and we give voice to these feelings. We had the chance to unite in one format creatives from all over the world, Americans, Europeans, Italians, and their sentiment is a global one. When something as profoundly disruptive as a pandemic hits, we can’t help but think, even more strongly, that we are one single organism and we should work and live in unison to really navigate this situation as we should do in every circumstance in our life. #CreativityWillSaveUs brings imaginations and nations together. I want also to say thank you to our Editor, Author, Playwright, and contributor at Creative Pois-On, David James Parr, who came up with the clever tagline “Imagine nations, Imaginations.”
DP: In a moment where the whole world had to stop and where travel has been forbidden for a while, where governments asked people to stay home and to keep social distancing, #CreativityWillSaveUs shows how important the role of Creativity is in our lives, as a bridge-builder among nations and cultures. It doesn’t matter where you come from or what background you have, creativity connects people and opens up minds to explore ideas together. This to say that in a moment that is politically very complicated worldwide, in the U.S. in particular, considering also the elections next November, creativity can be a driver to connect people and to help our society evolve, following the examples of artists and their ability to adapt also to difficult times and unprecedented scenarios…this is also the meaning of the theory of evolution by Darwin, after all…it’s not the strongest or the quickest one who survives. It is the one who can adapt to change.
HB: The anthology came to mind when watching each episode — how did you come to choose these pieces from each contributor, and what factors did you consider when putting them together?
TC + DP: When we were brainstorming about the artists that we wanted to include in the project, we started from the ones that we’ve already had the chance to interview both on our Podcast Show and Storytelier – our editorial project. Our first reach contemplated NYC’s performing artists but then we soon felt that we wanted to enlarge our reach and circle the world with our episodes and explore all different types of creative disciplines. We wanted each episode to represent this diversity as much as possible, from the different nations or states where the artists were sheltering to the different disciplines, including visual arts, digital and media arts, dancers, singers, musicians, even make-up artists. This diversity was also one of the factors that grabbed the attention of the United Nations that contacted us to be part of their SDG Impact Awards – The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), are a call to action to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that all people live in a culture of peace and economic prosperity. Our artists as mentors are natural drivers who can help us redesign the world of tomorrow by letting us discover how powerful our creativity and imaginations are. To vote for us this is the link: https://www.sdgimpactawards.org/projects/creativitywillsaveus/?fbclid=IwAR0ccwBCVlI4ZDt5miRGpaeKIq-es2BkLGUIeNGz7rGmTwPZcxEJkrugiOs
HB: As Daniela mentioned, the artists in each episode exhibit incredible adaptability. In what ways have you seen their creative processes change, and what impact do you think those changes have on the creative product?
DP: Even though the quarantine has had a very strong impact on many of us, the majority of the artists who contributed to our project let their creative juices flow no matter what. All of them were worried about the future of live performances, but no matter what, they shared their talents and thoughts with us. Quarantine gave them time to think and to create, a great opportunity to find new ways to express themselves and new stories and perspectives. A big lesson for all of us. A lot of people found themselves suddenly unemployed during the past months or saw their income drop because of the COVID-19, and many of them reacted by watching TV all day and just feeling depressed. The difference is in the attitude you have while facing difficulties. Artists didn’t give up their creativity, they kept believing in it and in their creative sparks and gave it the chance to flow through their artworks. This has been the same for painters and actors, for musicians and dancers, for writers and illustrators. This is a huge lesson about resilience and I believe that we will have a lot of artistic output to explore soon.
HB: What’s your plan for the project as we all come out of quarantine?
TC: We just published Episode 10 of #CreativityWillSaveUS. That’s amazing thinking that at the beginning of this journey we thought we had material for just a couple of episodes. We really want to thank all of the artists who believed in this project and trusted us to be the recipient of their emotions during this harsh lockdown. That’s why we decided to pay tribute to all of them in the coda of Episode 10 with a special slideshow dedicated to their contribution. Also, being that June is Pride Month, we are preparing a special episode featuring all LGBTQ+ artists.
Now we wish to take our series to the next level proposing it to big networks and possibly TVs on-demand in the docuseries format. We really want this material to be a testimony to this epochal historical moment, looking at the COVID-19 emergency through the eyes of the creatives of our time. These 10 episodes are what we symbolically call the “Phase 1” of this project, and we are developing now the so-called “Phase 2”. During Phase 2 we will continue to explore how people are utilizing the power of their creativity to rebuild new cultural, social, and business models, and so we want to dive in also to understanding how professionals who are not necessarily artists are envisioning the world of tomorrow. And we will touch base again with our artists, through some Instagram/Facebook live interviews to see how are they doing as we slowly reemerge out of the pandemic.
HB: What else would you like to share with [PANK] readers?
DP: I would love to add a
couple of words about Creative Pois-On and the team behind
#CreativityWillSaveUs. We are a storytelling platform and multimedia
productions boutique with the mission to connect people (individual pois (polka
dots in French) in this big world, on an emotional level, through stories. We
do this through podcasting: we also have our own podcast show, the Creative
Pois-On podcast, available on Spotify, Apple Podcast, i-Heart Radio, Spreaker,
and Stitcher, among other platforms, and we do podcasting consulting, production
and postproduction for brands as well as for cultural institutions. And we have
our editorial project, Storytelier, that has the goal to share stories
(fictional and non) to explore powerful narratives to emotionalize
information.
TC: First of all I would love to thank [PANK] magazine and the editor
Chris Campanioni for their interest in our project, and the journalist Hayden
Bergman for his very thoughtful questions! Thank you for helping us share our
mission to inspire the people out there to feel empowered by the thought that
we are all co-creators of this world and of our collective future. And please
follow our journey through creativity on our official channels. And, as we love
to say, Ready,
Set, Imagine!
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Website www.creativepoisn.com
Official Youtube (#CreativityWillSaveUs series ): https://bit.ly/CreativityWillSaveUsSeries-Playlist
Facebook: @CreativePoison
Instagram: @Creativepois_on
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Hayden Bergman is a poet and translator. His work has appeared in Gravel, the story collection What Doesn’t Kill You and is forthcoming in Heavy Feather Review. He serves as the Books Editor at The Literary Review. You can reach him at hayden@theliteraryreview.org.