On finding your own path to an audience

You began your career as a conflict zone documentarian and now you work in contemporary art, installations, and films, that is a significant change. What sparked that career transition?

You could say, I’m a child of family separation, I’m a child of war. I left my core family and came here at the age of 13. I started working at 14. And what I didn’t know was how growing up in instability and conflict made me uniquely positioned to be in that kind of environment, because I understood what it meant to be a kid in that kind of environment. We always talk about how many people have died. And for me, that was an oversimplified and unsophisticated way of looking at the cost of conflict. I always felt like the true cost of conflict was in how many people lived through the conflict, those people who lost family members, kids, parents, uncles. Whose communities and homes and lives were impacted. That’s the true cost of conflict. And I always felt like if you measure conflict through that lens, the cost of war and the cost of conflict would no longer be justifiable. I think one of the biggest sorts of mistakes is looking at the cost of conflict through the number of people who die, because it underplays the cost.

It wasn’t until I was in my mid-20s that I was like,”I want to tell stories, and I want to do this kind of work.” So 9/11 coincided with me being focused on my career as an artist, allowing myself even the possibility of thinking, “Can I be an artist?” When you’re a kid, surviving and trying to swim, you don’t think, “Oh, let me just go into the arts.” I’d never had that privilege. So it wasn’t until I was in my mid-20s that I was like, “You know what? That’s what I always wanted to be as a kid. I’m going to give it a go.” I started working in installation work and video art in 2008. While I was at the same time trying to make indie films and sell Hollywood projects and TV shows. And that’s sort of how it all happened. It was very organic. It was still all driven by two things. One, the need to survive as an artist, but also it needed to be broadly creative, and not limited. To not be pigeonholed.

Your feature directorial debut, Remote, premiered at the New York Film Festival. How did that experience impact your work moving forward?

I’ve been making stuff in one capacity or another for years. And I had directed shorts, documentaries, made indie films, produced and written for tv, etc, but I’ve never taken the time to say, “Okay, let’s do my piece.” Then COVID happened, and everything shut down. And in that period in 2020, while we were waiting to see if the studios would open up, Mika Rottenberg, the co-director, and I started talking about something that we’d wanted to do since the first day we met, which was to make a film together.

At least for me, I never thought, “Oh, we’re going to do this thing, and it’s going to be at the New York Film Festival, and it’s going to premiere at the Tate Modern, and you name it.” We just wanted to have an outlet to do art. And 2020 was a bad year for many reasons. We had COVID, everything that was happening with George Floyd, and what was happening on the streets. There was an election that was coming up, which seemed quite consequential at the time. And this conversation that led to Remote was very much the way we were coping with that year.

Of course, it was wonderful to be at the New York Film Festival; it was a dream come true, as a New Yorker. It’s the festival that I always loved, it was where I would go every year to watch the latest Almodovar film. And that was my thing, you know, was, “Okay, what’s he got? It’s going to be at the New York Film Festival. I can’t wait to go see it.” And so that was beautiful. It was a very beautiful, meaningful experience.

You are working now on your project CURA, and one thing that struck me from this project is that it doesn’t rely on a specific narrative format for documentaries, like voice-over, verité, and archival. What is your intention in what you want to communicate with this project? Is there a specific point of view that you want to show, or is it more open to interpretation?

I think it was not an easy choice to take on this challenge. I had to really find both the approach, but also answer the question of why, and why me? Or why us? And that came out of many conversations with the indigenous healers and tribal elders across Colombia, Peru, and Brazil, over the first seven months that we were really thinking about doing this. One of the things I learned is that, for many of the Indigenous people I spoke with, words were a problem. Words were a mechanism of lies, of deception. And some things cannot be expressed through words. So the challenge became, “All right, how do you tell a non-verbal story? How do you tell a story that doesn’t rely on words?” So that’s the initial impetus. And then, from my own experience of being there, I realized that so much of the relationship between these indigenous communities, these guardian communities, and the forest was not expressed through words, or not understood through words. It was very much about frequency and vibration, and this non-verbal relationship that they had with the spirits. And this thing, where they truly believe is a living entity. They believe the forest is alive, the rivers are alive, that the trees are alive, they believe that they are a sentient being and they’re in communication with, and they have a relationship too.

And I think that inherently is this sense of connection that they have to the natural world is what I realized was something that, as a cost of modernity or living in modernity, we have lost. And we get glimpses of it when we go hang out in the wilderness, we’re like, “Oh, my god. I feel so much at peace, and this is so good.” And we return and we forget again. And the reason we feel at home in the wilderness, in nature, it’s because that is who we are, that’s where we come from. Despite where we have arrived and how far we’ve come, we are inherently, as a being, creatures of the forest, creatures of the mountains, of this earth.

One of the big things that came out of this process for me was realizing why I stepped away from conventional documentaries, especially those rooted in conflict zones. It was that obsession with facts, with data, with information overload. And look—I get it. We need facts. But I started to feel like it was all just feeding the mind, not the body. Not the heart. And what we’re dealing with now—this eco-anxiety pandemic? That’s not just a response to the climate crisis itself, it’s also a byproduct of the way we’ve been telling the story. Endless headlines. Doom graphs. A barrage of statistics. And people are shutting down. Not because they don’t care—but because they’re overwhelmed. We’ve been trying to fix a spiritual and emotional disconnection with intellectual tools. And it’s not working. And when you looked at these tribes and the way they existed, even though their conditions are extremely hard, they are still living in joy and hope. And I knew I couldn’t make conventional work. It had to find its own language. That it had to really rely on the modality that I was in the forest itself. And I knew that ultimately the character that had to emerge from this work had to be the forest itself. And I knew I couldn’t do that through conventional narrative means. And that’s why we took a non-verbal approach. And that’s sort of how I ended up where I am. What I am calling a work of Cinematic Ritual: blending place, sound, ethnographic film, installation as a work of healing: CURA.

Since this project is so different from what you have done in the past, what are your hopes when it goes out into the world?

I think we’re living in a period of time where traditional institutions and legacy companies are no longer viable routes. Yes, it’s art, but it’s art that’s created within an economic framework, right? The reason these conventions are built has a lot to do with the economics of storytelling and media and film, and documentary. And they have nothing to do with actual artistic creativity.

And I felt, especially with this work, that I was going to go back to a documentary form that I didn’t want to rely on those things. So I had to take a very entrepreneurial approach to the work. And so that’s the approach that we’re taking. CURA is being made within what I find very valuable in the art world, which is these editions; you’re creating a work of art. There’s a certificate of authenticity; you’re selling editions to collectors and commissioners, etc., in advance. At the time, we’ve sold a couple of those already, and hopefully we’ll sell the rest of them, so that we can keep filming and do all that work.

I think partially what’s exciting about our Kickstarter campaign that we’re doing is that it incorporates some of these ideas. But one of the things that I did that I think is quite novel is that I said, “Okay, normally you have editions of the work. I’m going to take one of these editions and break it into digital editions.” So, several digital editions that I can sell directly to collectors. Now, those collectors are oftentimes inaccessible to so many people. But what if those editions were $500 or $1,000? Then suddenly people can collect a work of art that they own, that it’s always with them, like buying a vinyl, that you can play for your friends and family members, and your community. And your work, and you’re supporting a work, but you’re also getting something that you own in return.

I think this is about being aware of the moment we are in, and saying, “You know what? I can’t rely on these traditional institutions. If they want to come to me, great. But I can’t sit there and wait for gatekeepers to say, ‘Yes, no.” It doesn’t make sense anymore. If artists don’t find their own path to their audiences, then we’re facing what is a cultural extinction of sorts.

I want this to be a work of public art, so hopefully we can be available as installations in various places. In museums and art festivals as well. It’s something that we can take on the road and bring to people who don’t necessarily have access to the work. But also be able to digitally distribute in this way, around ownership and sovereignty, artists’ sovereignty, and impact. That’s going to be quite meaningful. And so we have our own life cycle in that way. And then if the conventional space, if the traditional institutions want to also play along, then we can find within this model a way to interact and also work with that space. But this allows us to maintain ownership and control, as opposed to giving everything away.

Following up on what you mentioned about how traditional institutions and legacy companies might not be the best path for artists, what role do audiences play in the equation?

Right now, artists often assume their audience is a buyer, a commissioner, or an executive, and that’s a problem. Making a film that must pass through conventional channels means assuming the audience lacks a deep or immersive understanding of the story, the issues at hand, or the artistic context, let alone the people behind the work. That assumption leads to self-censorship and manipulation. Even those of us who say, “You say what you need to say to sell it, and then you make what you really want,” eventually realize: if you’ve been through this process, as I have, that’s not how it works in reality.

Once you enter into that mindset of, “I’ll do the song and dance just to get the project commissioned,” you’ve already started down a path that alters the core of the original idea. Now, I’m not saying that this process is always negative, there are great executives out there who truly know how to support and shape an idea. But the reality of the marketplace is harsh: artists are often underpaid, overworked, and desperate. This is not a level playing field. It’s not a space where most artists hold real power. A few might, but most don’t.

Even the best advice comes at a price. Sometimes the baby goes out with the bathwater. Sure, it’s necessary to drain the bathwater, that’s part of the creative process. You shape, chisel, revise. Friction is necessary. We want friction; the best work often comes out of it. But the problem is, that friction has become distorted. Even well-meaning executives are worried about keeping their jobs. Data has become supreme, it’s driving all the decisions. Do you think documentary executives really believe everything should be true crime, cults, controversy, or celebrity-driven stories? No. They’re being told that’s what works, and they’re just collecting their paycheck while prescribing that reality to others.

That’s why, for me, choosing to say, “My audience is my audience,” and proving the value of a project by engaging that audience early on, that’s a form of liberation. I prefer that space of autonomy, of artistic sovereignty. It allows me to be true. I can sleep at night knowing that the conversations I’ve had—even the ones across the metaphorical forest, have been delivered honestly. I might not always arrive at the final destination, but what I make will reflect what was truly said and intended. And I believe that if you stick to that path, you have a real shot, a far greater one than in the system we’re currently trapped in.

What is one piece of advice that you received that helped you in your career?

Having no other choice. If you’re an artist, it’s just because that’s what you have to do, right? And turning that into a creative source as opposed to a source of desperation was the best advice. You don’t have a choice, and the people in this economy, which is called the arts, are well aware of your lack of choice. But if you liberate yourself from that lack of choice and make it a creative force, as opposed to a desperate need to just get forward, then you’re much more likely to actually get to where you wanted to go. So that was great advice. And the best advice I can give artists like myself, who don’t come from a conventional privileged background, whose stories that they care about or grew up around, isn’t what is dominant… It’s don’t shy away from your otherness. Your otherness is your superpower. Embrace it.

I truly believe that artists will survive, not based on this abstract idea of a global audience, but through small communities and small audiences, and local community power, that you build from the ground up. And that’s where artists always belong, and that is sort of the field, the farm that we have to cultivate, to be able to grow our work. And in that environment, your otherness is what helps you grow, not this sort of trying to fit a mold of mainstream conventions.