This is Part 2 of Episode 8. In this episode, we interview Ann Gagliardi. Ann is a writer, a career adviser, a parent and a maker of connections. Our conversation is woven through the topics of Tarot, creative writing, friendship and the way we carve a path for a life in which all of ourselves is welcome. Make sure to read the zine we reference here, and listen to Part 1 of this interview.

In this episode, we interview Ann Gagliardi. Ann is a writer, a career adviser, a parent and a maker of connections. Our conversation is woven through the topics of Tarot, creative writing, friendship and the way we carve a path for a life in which all of ourselves is welcome. Make sure to read the zine we reference here, and listen to Part 2 of this interview.

In this episode, we chat with Ways Residency founder and all around maker extraordinaire, Jess Miley. Jess joins us from Berlin, where she recently resettled after many years of living and creating in Hungary. We talk about Jess' practice as an artist of bringing people together, demystifying various art forms, and how we can build spaces that foster both belonging and responsibility. Jess tells us about durational art project with Derek Sergeant which brings visibility to queer artists, thinkers, and makers in history, and the stories of how and why she first started her projects Lovefest and Ways Residency. We talk about our own experiences of the spaces she's built for queer community together and her dreams for the future. 

In this episode, we interview the amazing Laura Szári. She is a special education professional, a choir leader, an Aries, a starter of projects and a community-maker. At the time of the interview, Laura was busy with The Missa Echologica project (you can find the trailer here) and the News Medley project. Do follow the Varsányi Szirének choir, and check out this interview with Eszter Kállay (in Hungarian). Here's an article (in English) about the choir, and another one (in Hungarian) about the projects we talked about in the episode. 

On this episode, we have a conversation with our dear friend Luca Borsos about the use of ritual and ritualized exercises to expand and ground into creative connections with each other and with ourselves. 

Luca is a theater and movement performing artist who lives and works in her hometown of Budapest, Hungary. She is also a double Aquarius and a third generation farm and soil tender, currently knee deep in an apprenticeship with permaculture. In her artistic practice, Luca explores participatory means of engaging with movement and sensorial awareness to cultivate creative community and belonging. She also teaches drama workshops for kids and is the artist behind the portraits of Lu and I featured in the cover art of this podcast.

Referenced in this episode: Queendom and Tara Brach's episode on Cultivating a Courageous Heart

This is where we get to the topic of where we are geographically, how we met, and what is the web of relationships that both connect and support us. We mention some of the friends and collaborators that you'll hear from in the coming episodes, and how the idea of the podcast was born. 

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On our fourth episode, recorded in two sessions, we regroup after interviewing each other to talk about where we are. We talk about community, autobiography, archiving, grief, building a life creatively and start to refine a bit how we see this project. We introduce questions that we'll only get to answer in Part 2, so make sure you listen to that too. 

We mention The Herbcrafter's Tarot, A Transatlantic Love Affair (by Simone de Beauvoir), Living my Life (by Emma Goldman), Kate's documentary about ways

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In this interview, recorded in January 2021, Kate shares a bit of her journey and the practices present for her at this point of her relationship with creativity, academia, self-employment, spirituality and more. She talks about coming to know the role of innovation and play in how she does what she does, and the realization of a creative consciousness as a guiding force in her path. In the first segment, we mention a few books that are working through us: The Moon Book by Sarah Faith Gottesdiener, How to not Always be Working by Marlee Grace and Making your Life as an Artist by Andrew Simonet. 

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Kate Burns (she/her) is a feminist community builder and researcher from Santa Cruz, California. Her academic and creative work is rooted in politics of emotionality and care and the use of narrative and storytelling as methods for individual empowerment and social change. She holds a BA in Religious Studies and an MA in Critical Gender Studies. Kate is currently based in Budapest, Hungary, where she coruns Ways House, a queer feminist art residency & rest space. Go find kate on ig @laurel.yaak

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Our second episode, recorded in early January 2021, is an interview with Luiza about her journey as a teacher and an artist as she's moved outside institutional frameworks and developed her DIY approach to teaching (from contemporary dance, to tarot, to language). We talk about how she has come to see teaching as a radical, creative practice as she's grown into her methods, the way she understands herself to be in process alongside her students, and the commitment and risk of teaching being a conversation.  

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Luiza is an interdisciplinary and intuitively-led performance artist, teacher, and feldenkrais practitioner, originally from Porto Alegre, Brazil but based in Europe for the past ten years. Her artistic practice encompasses a range of mediums including contemporary dance, somatic practices, performance art, tarot, History, ancestral healing, and traditional crafts. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in History and a Master's degree in dance and performance.

You can connect with Luiza by checking out her website or by following her work on instagram and patreon.

In this first episode, we take you along for the ride as we start to develop our podcast in November 2020. We talk about jumping in to the creative process without a plan, figuring things out as we go, and the (perceived) risks that can entail (not being relevant, understood, coherent). We also discuss the creative possibility of "process" as good for the sake of itself -- allowing for things to become something we don't expect and moving away from "rehearsed authenticity."  

Referenced in this episode:

Ways House, Queer Feminist Residency and Rest Space

The Feldenkrais Method

Rebecca Solnit's autobiography