Contributors: Makoto Fujimura & Nicholas Ma
Heading image: Robert Havell after John James Audubon, Fork-tailed Petrel, from “Birds of America” plate CCLX, 1835. Public domain, courtesy of the National Gallery of Art.
A Note from IAMCultureCare
This month’s newsletter comes in the wake of Hurricane Helene’s devastation to much of the southeastern US this past week. Even from early reports it’s clear it will be one of the deadliest storms in recent history for the area, and along with loss of individual lives and livelihoods there is also a deep impact to community and culture. One harrowing example is the submerged arts district in Asheville, NC; other stories and videos like this will surface in the coming weeks from Asheville and elsewhere.
What does art — what do artists — have to say in response to disasters like this, especially as we consider something like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, where “transcendence” (the typical purview of the arts) is so far removed from the seemingly more fundamental needs of shelter and safety?
Perhaps we can learn the beginning of one lesson taught by the hurricane itself. As the storm made landfall and continued inland, radar captured a mysterious phenomenon: thousands of seabirds traveling safe in the eye of the storm far from their native environment. Uncomfortable, confused, their routine migratory cycles interrupted, yes — but these birds not only survive the deluge but find respite amid the chaos. Floods at the scale of Helene are devastating; they can also be purifying. As the days turn into weeks into months, we have a shared opportunity to enter and create into a new reality that wasn’t possible in our cultural environment prior to this destruction. How do we care for culture in the aftermath of [the natural disaster, political upheaval, or traumatic event of choice]? Artists, like the seabirds, can see beyond, navigating the eye of the storm with a unique power to envision and shape a new world, turning a cataclysm into a catalyst for renewal.
Read on for Makoto Fujimura’s reflection on the storm’s destruction, an opportunity to donate fine art supplies to Asheville artists affected by the flooding, and my interview with filmmaker Nicholas Ma.
Jacob Beaird, Editor
A Note from Makoto Fujimura, Founder of IAMCultureCare
As the images of Hurricane Helene rolled into our social media and news feeds, the more devastating the news became. To have the Blue Ridge mountains and her multiple streams inundating the Asheville art zone seemed surreal — even in light of the effects of climate change — and certainly unexpected for the residents. Since my major exhibit at Greenville, South Carolina in a museum-level space located inside a church building, I have been thinking much about the communities of Rock Hill to Charlotte. We hope to hear from some of our network in the affected areas to update and share. We asked our friend Pete Candler (a writer living in the mountains near Asheville) to update us, so look for that report in the near future.
In our recent Culture Care “Belonging Conversation” series on YouTube with artist Julia Hendrickson, I said, “Art has this capacity to look at our ‘ground zero’ realities and to see beyond them. And that is what I have tried to do. You can run away from that reality, or you can move into them. And I have determined that my call at least was to look at the devastation, the realities of this wasteland in front of me, the tragic realities and trauma, and to see through that in some way, to create something new that doesn’t erase what is in front of you, but actually creates through it.”
My daily discipline after 9⁄11 was to “return home” to my ground zero home from the studio. That practice led, or forced, me to see my home, a place of devastation, as a Genesis moment. In the expanding “ground zero” conditions of the world today (knowing that the distribution of resources make these devastated cities far more challenging to recover from catastrophic losses), we must ponder what Culture Care can do long-term, even in generational terms. An artist’s role is still to create, to dare to push back the darkness, as well as to describe despair in ways that can be felt by the rest of us. An artist’s role is to take note, pray, and return the gift given to us, even when faced with disasters and the wasteland before us.
In such conditions of loss, we need to nurture a language of hope beyond the divisions and fissures of cultures. Every once in a while we are astonished by works of artists we meet in places like the Sundance Film Festival who seek the same language of hope and connection through sufferings and challenges. This newsletter issue highlights the work of Nicholas Ma (the son of cellist Yo-Yo Ma) whose film “Leap of Faith“ encapsulates Culture Care values. We wanted to release this newsletter in time for the film’s upcoming release on Oct 4 and 12 to let you know how important this work is, and to do what we can to support the film. We rarely spotlight a film this way, but we felt that this effort warrants our attention because of its quality and the potential impact. This effort is literally creating a path toward Culture Care.
So from one devastation to another, we labor on. We need to remember that every curse and setback is an opportunity for us to connect and re-connect. When we share in our sufferings, we can also persevere to be a community of character and hope. May our sojourn ahead be one of mutual support and new creation, both locally and globally.
Yours for Culture Care,
Mako Fujimura
Culture Care Film: "Leap of Faith"
IAMCultureCare interviewed award-winning filmmaker Nicholas Ma to highlight his film LEAP OF FAITH, only in theaters beginning October 4th:
TROUBLED BY OUR FRACTURED SOCIETY, 12 MIDWESTERN CHRISTIAN LEADERS STRUGGLE WITH SOME OF TODAY’S MOST CONTENTIOUS QUESTIONS IN A PROVOCATIVE AND INSPIRING EXPLORATION OF WHETHER WE CAN DISAGREE AND STILL BELONG TO EACH OTHER IN A DIVIDED WORLD.
Jacob Beaird: I’m interested in the filmmaking process and how this all came about, especially on the heels of your other projects, including WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR?. What initially drew you to this topic generally, and this collaboration specifically?
Nicholas Ma: This is really a companion piece to WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR?. At the end of every screening of that film, I would get asked: “Who are the Fred Rogers of today?” And I didn’t have an answer. Even worse, we were afraid the answer was that there weren’t any! But that didn’t seem right.
When I read about Michael’s work in the Wall Street Journal, it activated something in me. Just like Fred, his work felt counter-cultural: he was engaging and crossing difference without eliminating it. Moreover, he was doing it in Christian congregations, sadly known right now in our culture more for dividing than unifying.
I reached out, and he told me he wanted to do something bigger. After watching Christianity fracture and contribute to the fracturing of the country, he wanted to bring twelve pastors together across the Christian spectrum, across deep, deep differences, to test together Colossians 1:17: do all things hold together in Christ?
After learning how faith for Fred Rogers, a midwestern minister, was a guide in his work, I was curious how their faiths would guide these pastors in these treacherous waters. That was Michael’s and my first leap of faith together, and the beginning of this film.
On one level, this film is about a small group of pastors in Grand Rapids, MI. On another, this is about our polarized culture, and the film’s release timeline in advance of a contentious election in the US is no accident. Could you talk about how and why you see this film speaking into this moment uniquely? How do we facilitate this type of Culture Care journey in our communities in the next few months?
No electoral decision is going to solve our problems. Our divisions will continue to exist. So this film is about making a statement today, before November’s election, about who we can be to each other in December (and January and February).
The decisions we make in November are consequential. But sometimes that obscures the fact that we have consequential decisions we make every day: how do we contend with the vast differences that seem to separate us, how do we encounter others without losing ourselves, where can we love better, and how? This film casts a vision for what that might look like. The work is hard, but it’s also beautiful and deeply nourishing.
Here’s what I think we can do: right now we all seem to have a very clear image of who is unlovable in our lives. Let’s ask a different question: what three relationships in our lives do we yearn to love across better, and can we try to do that? To love better in those three relationships? Let’s start there. And let’s see what possibility emerges.
The essence of the film is perhaps best encapsulated in the idea of “Beholding”, which Makoto Fujimura has spoken about extensively in the art of Kintsugi. None of the deeply-held divisions were “fixed” by the end of the film. And yet, the pastors were willing to sit in that tension, close their intentional time with benediction, commit to remain in relationship – precisely because of those differences. Why is this Beholding so necessary, and how do we do it well, without minimizing or ignoring the very real fractures?
For me, inherent in Beholding is duration. A sustained attention. Rather than minimizing our fractures, beholding demands we spend time with them. And in doing so, we create space for the spirit to work. These pastors chose to do that with each other. And it was painful. But it also created new possibility. As a filmmaker, it’s my job too to behold. And for a viewer, I hope to offer the same opportunity. Behold these people. Take time with them. And in that vicarious experience perhaps find ballast for the hard, slow, exquisite work of living.
What surprised you personally about this journey? Is there anything that challenged or changed in you as a filmmaker as you walked alongside this community?
It was a surprise at every turn. That’s the beauty of verité filmmaking. You cannot know what’s going to happen next. It’s what’s arresting as a viewer: there is no hidden hand controlling the outcome. This is simply what happened, condensed and distilled.
For me it expanded deeply my sense of faith. I think faith is a part of the human condition: faith in our free will, faith in others, faith in art… we can’t escape it. But we can make choices of where we place it and how it guides us. It’s those questions that animate me.
In the filmmaking, it was redefining what a group narrative looks like. What is the rhythm of a group journey vs. an individual journey? How do we feel what a group becomes when we can’t see it?
Your team is very intentional with your choice of the initial cities to release the film in. Can you talk about that briefly?
The pastors speak constantly of the command that we love our neighbors. The more I think about it, the more I realize that today, too often we fulfill that by changing our neighbors, not by loving better. Not only does it deprive of us of the deep joy of loving — and being loved — across difference, but it stokes our fears of what those differences might be or mean.
We’re launching in a set of cities no film has ever chosen before — to send a message that this story is universal. We may live within ever more homogeneous circles, move between cities less than ever, and actively avoid encounters with the other. But our shared human condition remains. No matter our differences, we all long to love and to be loved. And that longing for connection in Phoenix is as powerful as it is in Grand Rapids or DC.
What’s next for you?
I always think I’m going to do something wildly different. And then I discover that I’ve returned to the same theme — the unending journey, the in-between as a place not a waystation, a fascination with and generosity towards the human condition. We’ll see!
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LEAP OF FAITH is released only in theaters on Friday, October 4, in Phoenix, Houston, Grand Rapids, Nashville, Saint Louis, Washington, D.C., and Boston, with additional locations in the weeks following. Check out the film’s website to find a viewing near you.
Nicholas Ma is an award-winning director, writer and producer based in Brooklyn. He produced the documentary WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR?, about the life of Fred Rogers, which premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, and most recently the WNBA documentary Unfinished Business, which premiered at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival.
Culture Care Events
- Beauty & Justice Lecture Series and Exhibit — Philadelphia, PA, 2024 – 2025. Makoto and Haejin Shim Fujimura selected as University of Pennsylvania’s Office of Social Equity & Community’s Equity in Action Visiting Scholars for the 2024 – 25 academic year, presenting four lectures on the topic of“Beauty+Justice”. The Fall 2024 lectures to occur on October 21 (@ the Arthur Ross Gallery) and November 18 (location TBA). Additional details forthcoming here, on Mako’s social media, and the EAVS program website linked above.
- Creative Conference—Church of the City, NYC, Oct 12. Creative.NYC presents a one-day conference on the arts in the city. Makoto Fujimura to give a keynote address.
- Refractions Author Talk—Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA, Oct 25. Makoto Fujimura to give a talk on the 15th Anniversary edition of his book Refractions: A Journey of Faith, Art, and Culture.
- Fine Art Supplies Drive for the Asheville arts community — First Presbyterian Church, Greenville, SC. FPC Arts (the host of Makoto Fujimura’s recent “Mysterion” exhibit) is collecting art supplies to donate to artists in Asheville, NC affected by Hurricane Helene. Supplies (oil, acrylic, watercolor paints, new brushes and palate knives, canvases, gesso, palates, cameras, tripods, watercolor paper, sketchbooks, etc.) can be dropped off at the church M‑F 9am-3pm. More details TBA.
Do you have a news item or upcoming culture care event? Consider sharing it with us for a possible feature here in the newsletter! Email jacob@internationalartsmovement.org.
Web Links
- On the accidental nature of creativity, by Betsy K. Brown.
- A differing view, also valid: creativity and the helpful limits of form, from Hannah Rose Thomas, C.M. Howell, and Malcolm Guite.
- New music recs: James Joyce’s “Chamber Music” poems set to music sung by the Choral Scholars of University College Dublin, and an Arabic-jazz-funk fusion album from French-Lebanese musician Ibrahim Maalouf.
- Matthew Milliner’s confession as a former hater of contemporary art.
- A graphic novel telling the story of Arvo Pärt’s life and music.
- Another graphic novel: Gina Dalfonzo’s review of John Hendrix’s The Mythmakers.
- September Belonging Conversation with Julia Hendrickson and Makoto Fujimura.
- Drawing to Experience of Gospel of John, online class from Free Columbia arts community.
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