From RoboCop to the Renaissance

From RoboCop to the Renaissance

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with Actor, Art Historian, Director, Musician, Author PETER WELLER

Art transcends time and culture—the beauty of it. People worry about the world now. I remind them to go live in 1968, a time of preparing to go to the moon while people died for their beliefs. This is a difficult time in a republic that’s supposed to be free, but music was leading the way. Whether it was Miles, Coltrane, Aretha, Leonard Cohen, Dylan, the music was extraordinarily influential and cutting-edge… Leon Battista Alberti is an interesting figure because he was a poet, painter, architect, and particularly an architect, writer, and humanist. He wrote this amazing book on painting that everyone has to read.

The French Spider-Man

The French Spider-Man

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Famous Rock & Urban Climber ALAIN ROBERT
Known for Free Solo Climbing 200+ of the World’s Tallest Skyscrapers using no Climbing Equipment

You are fighting to stay alive. You are fully in the present moment; you don't have time to think about being afraid. You are focused on what you are doing. You struggle to pass another window, then another, and you don't have time to think about your problems. The only thing you are concerned about deep down in the back of your mind is that you need to stay alive, and for that, you need to remain calm and focused.

NICHOLAS KRISTOF

NICHOLAS KRISTOF

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Pulitzer Prize-winning Journalist · NYTimes Op-Ed Columnist
Author of Chasing Hope, A Reporter's Life · Coauthor of Half the Sky · Tightrope · A Path Appears

I'm trying to get people to care about a crisis in ways that may bring solutions to it. And that's also how I deal with the terror and the fear to find a sense of purpose in what I do. It's incredibly heartbreaking to see some of the things and hear some of the stories, but at the end of the day, it feels like–inconsistently here and there–you can shine a light on problems, and by shining that light, you actually make a difference.

GUILLAUME LAFORTUNE

GUILLAUME LAFORTUNE

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Vice President · Head of the Paris Office
UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network

The SDSN was set up to mobilize research and science for the Sustainable Development Goals. The development goals were adopted in 2015 by all UN member states, marking the first time in human history that we have a common goal for the entire world. Out of all the targets that we track, only 16 percent are estimated to be on track. Currently, none of the SDGs are on track to be achieved at the global level.

BERTRAND PICCARD

BERTRAND PICCARD

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Explorer & Aviator of the First Round-the-World Solar-powered Flight
Founder of Solar Impulse Foundation & Climate Impulse

The goal with Climate Impulse is to revolutionize aviation and show that we can decarbonize aviation. Of course, it's not yet a jumbo jet with hydrogen. It's a two-seater airplane. If we go around the world nonstop with two people on board, this project can become like a flagship of climate action.

TIOKASIN GHOSTHORSE

TIOKASIN GHOSTHORSE

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Founder · Host · Exec. Director of First Voices Radio
Founder of Akantu Intelligence · Master Musician of the Ancient Lakota Flute

We have not adapted to Earth. She needs us to do that. Instead, we've tried to adapt Earth to our needs. Which is always an extraction, take away. Earth doesn't exist because of technology. Earth will always be here. So when it comes to animacy, I think it's a Western term also, and so we get away from the Western terms. We start seeing that, oh, we are becoming Earth as we're born into this physical dimension. We are becoming Earth. And then as we are living during this time, we're alive. We are becoming Earth. And when we are finished with this body, we are becoming Earth. 

MANUELA LUCÁ-DAZIO

MANUELA LUCÁ-DAZIO

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Executive Director of the Pritzker Architecture Prize
Fmr. Executive Director of Venice Biennale (Dept. of Visual Arts & Architecture)

When I started and I had to decide what to do in life - because I was working with museums, in exhibition design, and on the restoration of buildings - and then at some point, I had the chance to arrive at the Venice Biennale and my whole perspective changed. And it changed because I was working with living artists and architects. Until that moment, I was working around Old Masters, works in museums, and things that were there with the aura of history. And all of a sudden I was dealing with living architects and artists, and this was, for me, the most incredible experience. So I decided to leave all the rest, because I was doing quite a lot at the same time, and to concentrate on the Biennale.

ADA LIMÓN

ADA LIMÓN

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24th U.S. Poet Laureate · National Book Critics Circle Award-winning Poet

This poem was written when I was having a real moment of reckoning, not that I hadn't had it earlier, but where I was doing some deep reading about the climate crisis and really reckoning with myself, with where we were and what was happening, what the truth was. And I felt like it was so easy to slip down into a darkness, into a sort of numbness, and I didn't think that that numbness and darkness could be useful.

CHAYSE IRVIN

CHAYSE IRVIN

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Award-winning Cinematographer
Blonde starring Ana de Armas · Beyonce: Lemonade · Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman

That's all I can do on a movie. I can't really make a movie good or not because that's decided by the spectator. That's not in my control. All I can do is give it everything that I have. Like that's just the love I have to give. So why bring in all these other things? Just set it up so you can give it everything that you've got each time. In those theoretical considerations about how a scene can function or be rendered or shot or executed or all these things, just think of it as, "Oh, this is the challenge." I want authenticity. How do we create an environment where that's more likely to happen? Because it's never going to be something that I can enforce, and the more I try to enforce it, the less likely it'll happen. For me, the more risky things, the more things that defied expectations are really important to me. I guess it even goes down to just novelty. How do you create a need or a yearning? And the spectator, you create a particular rhythm and then you change that rhythm, and then it's almost like you try to sensitize your spectator to these ideas by defining a particular rhythm that you've set for them.

JULIAN LENNON

JULIAN LENNON

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Singer-songwriter · Photographer · Documentary Filmmaker
Founder of The White Feather Foundation
Executive Producer of Common Ground

I thought, wow, how are they going to bring this across in a way that isn't shoving things down people's throats? It's presenting information in a way that is creative, but also in a way that drives your curiosity into understanding, number one, why are we in the position that we're in? And number two, how can we fix this? What can we do to change all of this? And so, I initially got involved as an executive producer on Kiss the Ground, and I was blown away by how that film came out at the end. How well rounded it was, the flow of the film, the storytelling, and really feeding me information that I didn't even know previously. And so also watching that become a platform around the world was jaw-dropping. I mean, the fact that the belief and the understanding and the wisdom that came out of that project has touched so many hearts, minds, and souls around the world, that people are really single-handedly almost making change for the better around the world. Now, when Common Ground was presented, I did love that concept because Kiss the Ground had been very much a broad approach and about America, for the majority, really, and Common Ground was a much more...I mean, we're still dealing with the same subject matter obviously, but I think it felt great to come from a more personal aspect." 

ALAIN ROBERT

ALAIN ROBERT

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Famous Rock & Urban Climber
"The French Spider-Man”
Known for Free Solo Climbing 200+ of the World’s Tallest Skyscrapers using no Climbing Equipment

First of all, yes, I need to know what I will be climbing, whether it's on rocks or whether it's on buildings. And then there is physical preparation. And regarding the mindset, it's more something that became a bit automatic over the years because I have been free soloing for almost 50 years. So it is pretty much my whole life. So that means that for me, being mentally ready, it's kind of simple. It's almost always the same mental process, meaning, I can be afraid before an ascent, but I know myself actually very well. And I know that once I am starting to climb, I feel fine. I put my fear aside, and I'm just climbing.

BERTRAND PICCARD

BERTRAND PICCARD

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Psychiatrist, Explorer, Aviator of the First Round-the-World Solar-powered Flight
Founder and Chairman of Solar Impulse Foundation: 1000+ Profitable Climate Solutions
United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for the Environment

So this is why I prefer to speak with a really down to earth language. So maybe the people who love nature are going to say, “Oh, Bertrand Piccard, now he is too down to earth. He's speaking about profitable solutions. He's speaking to the industries that are polluting,” but we have to speak to the industries that are polluting and bring them profitable solutions, otherwise the world will never change, or humankind will never change. And don't forget one thing, what we are damaging is not the beauty of nature. What is being damaged is the quality of life of human beings on Earth because we can still have beautiful things to see, but if we have climate change, if we have tropical disease in Europe, if we have heat waves, floods, droughts, millions of climate refugees, life will be miserable, even if nature is still beautiful.

MICHAEL STICKA

MICHAEL STICKA

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President/CEO of the GRAMMY Museum

It's actually right in our mission statement that “we celebrate the music of yesterday and today to inspire the music of tomorrow.” And we do it through our exhibits. We have 35,000 square feet of galleries. We travel exhibits, really, all over the world over the world for the past 15 years. And through our education programs, we really focus on the next generation of music's creators and leaders. We do that through really specific curricula that is designed to educate particularly young people, K-12, about the business of music, especially for those who want to go into the industry.

YOLANDA KAKABADSE

YOLANDA KAKABADSE

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Fmr. Minister of Environment, Ecuador
Fmr. President: WWF Int’l, World Conservation Union, Founder Fundacion Futuro Latinoamericano

One of the reasons why we haven't been able to overcome many of the climate crisis factors is because people don't understand what it means. What is it about? What can I do? Usually, when we hear these experts speak about the climate crisis, at least me, I don't understand 9/10ths of the speech or the document. Simplifying the message, allowing that difficult scientific knowledge to become popular language that I can use when explaining to a child, to a rural person, to someone who has a different type of education, that knows much more about the planet but not necessarily about university, explaining those difficult issues will make a difference. And we have to invest much more in that. Speaking difficult scientific language is not helpful to the majority of society.

JOËLLE GERGIS

JOËLLE GERGIS

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Lead Author  of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report · Author of Humanity’s Moment: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope · Sunburnt Country · Contributor to The Climate Book, ed. Greta Thunberg · Not Too Late, eds. Rebecca Solnit, Thelma Young Lutunatabua

We're really starting to witness serious climate extremes that can no longer be ignored. And the IPCC, one of our key conclusions to that report was that effectively the human fingerprint on the climate system is now undeniable. It is now an established fact that we have warmed every single continent, every ocean basin on the planet. And again, that's a pretty serious thing to contemplate that human activity from the burning of fossil fuels and the clearing of land has led to this energy imbalance in the earth system, which is leading to a rapidly shifting climate.

BRUCE MAU

BRUCE MAU

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Award-winning Designer, Artist & Educator
Co-founder & CEO of Massive Change Network
Author/Co-author of Mau MC24 · The Nexus · S, M, L, XL

I would like them to know just how powerful they are, that they have the power to shape the world. At some point, I realized that the world is produced. The world is designed and produced, and since we designed and produced it, we can redesign it. And you can play a part in designing it. You can play a part in that production. It doesn't have to happen to you. And I think, for too many people, too much power and too much control is concentrated in too few hands. People need to have the power to control and design their own life.

MARIAN MACGOWAN

MARIAN MACGOWAN

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Executive Producer of Television, Feature Films & Documentaries
Hulu’s The Great starring Elle Fanning & Nicholas Hoult

As a filmmaker, what you are selling and your primary asset is yourself, so the clearer you are about yourself, the clearer you can “play yourself”, the more effective you’re going to be in expressing the ideas that you are particularly gifted to do. So that clarity of voice is as important for a writer or a director or producer as it is for a performer or a musician or anybody else. You want to find the best version of yourself and that is about recognizing when those moments of clarity are there and when they are not.

RICHARD D. WOLFF

RICHARD D. WOLFF

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Founder of Democracy at Work · Host of Economic Update
Author of The Sickness is the System: When Capitalism Fails to Save Us from Pandemics or Itself

You can criticize many things in the United States, but there are taboos and the number one taboo is that you cannot criticize Capitalism. That is equated with disloyalty…This story about Capitalism being wonderful. This story is fading. You can’t do that anymore. The Right Wing cannot rally its troops around Capitalism. That’s why it doesn’t do it anymore. It rallies the troops around being hateful towards immigrants. It rallies the troops around “fake elections”, around the right to buy a gun, around White Supremacists. Those issues can get some support, but “Let’s get together for Capitalism!” That is bad. They can’t do anything with that. They have to sneak the Capitalism in behind those other issues because otherwise, they have no mass political support.

ROB NIXON

ROB NIXON

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Author of Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor
Professor Environmental Humanities at Princeton

There are some recurrent threads in indigenous cultures across the world. One of those is–We don’t own the land. The land owns us. It’s not seen as property first. It’s seen as inalienable in that sense because you don’t own it in the first place. What we’re seeing now is a kind of movement where more and more indigenous people are living kind of amphibious lives. On the one hand, they have their indigenous cosmologies. And the other hand, in order to increase the likelihood that they can keep out big corporations, mining, logging, and so forth, their presence on the land needs to be bureaucratically recognized is to have recognition that “this is your property.” So in one sense many of these communities I find are both inside and outside private property regimes.

ASHLEY DAWSON

ASHLEY DAWSON

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Author of People’s Power, Extreme Cities, Extinction
Professor of Postcolonial Studies at City University of New York

The political struggle is really hard today and I feel like we haven't been winning, but I think it's important not to think of this as either we win it, or there's catastrophe and that's the end. We win or lose, and there’s this big tidal wave that kills us all. That's not the way the climate crisis is going to play out. It’s going to be a long, slow, attritional crisis punctuated by forms of natural disaster that will decimate populations, but it's also going to be something that people will be impacted by for generations and that people will continue to mobilize around, so I think it's important to keep that in mind.