[Music]
[Applause]
so some of you have against time I mean
me an immigrant and that means that
talking about home is complicated I mean
home is here for me but also we solve
all those places that I have left behind
one of them particularly is special for
me it’s my mother’s town in northern
Spain on the coast its name is Reba this
area it used to be a smaller Fisher’s
village among mountains and the sea of
unparalleled beauty and the port was
filled with wooden boats and it had
ancestral traditions so ancestral we
will have our own cave with prehistoric
paintings and in those folk festivals
there’s food and celebration folk dances
with bagpipes and a special way of
serving cider so you have your bottle
you have your glass and you serve it
this way right well why we can do it
more complicated like this food and
cheese and celebration the good things
of life are the good things of our
culture but things change with
globalization the fishing industry
became depressed and this town went into
a cycle of depression we’ve seen it
everywhere that made the town barely
survived during decades until more
recently there was investment in
infrastructure roads that bring tourism
tourism brings money and that brings
change better houses high-rise
apartments safer sidewalks a nicer town
in general and those wooden boats were
being replaced by fiberglass sports
boats and you can see how a town of
proud sailors became a town of great
tourist guides an amazing cooks I guess
it’s better to serve tables in a
restaurant
then go fish in tuna in the high seas or
facing unemployment or immigration with
that change cultural tensions emerge
between those who want to preserve the
good old things of the past and those
who embrace change and progress and we
see it everywhere drawing line some
borders between us on them between not
only the town people and the city people
but between locals and immigrants and
these divisions are feeding into what
some people call the culture wars and if
you have noticed there’s a deep divide
going through every single aspect of our
society in these ideological tension
that brings us apart further further
into extremes and you can see how these
extremes have made of every aspect of
culture a battlefield a battlefield
where we fight about climate or our
views of our Human Reproduction the big
issues of our time where we can’t really
find any possible agreement and we focus
more on what makes us different our
diversity has become the things that set
us apart and this war is not meant to be
born it’s meant to destroy if we
japanese-american artists
Marco Fujimura says that culture is not
a territory to be won or to be lost but
it’s a resource we are called
to steward with care he says that
culture is a garden that is called to be
cultivated but we think that culture is
this big abstract thing that comes from
a big city and it’s fancy art or has
names like cuisine or Coutu
but in reality culture is made of the
things that are close to us made by
people like us from all over the place
even small towns writer Andy Crouch says
that culture making is always a small
scale project yes changing culture the
culture is hard and complicated but
making cultural goods making culture is
always a small project that starts with
one person who becomes three who then
becomes 250 it’s always a small scale
project that starts with the initiative
of somebody like the inicio de la Huerta
back to my mother’s town this guy in
1929 had a new canoe a new kind of
wooden canoe called piragua and he
decided to set on an excursion with his
friends he called a couple friends and
went down river and after seven hours
and fourteen kilometers of looking at
landscapes training the poor canoe they
basically try to discover a new route to
navigate the river couple years later
they invited friends to have a race
between a river bridge upstream River in
a andhe’s to the river the mouth of the
river outside in the sea in revelry
salient and they without knowing started
and know a new cultural good called the
descent of the river saya fast-forward
1985 the race brings 1200 rowers from
all over the world
it’s an international event and it is
probably if not the most one of the most
important events in the world of its
kind it attracts 300 thousand people
every year who celebrate for three days
and you can just imagine their cultural
impact I don’t think the Unisa had that
in meinem he was just a young guy who
wanted to go in an excursion with his
friends but you can see three guys
became 13 became 400 there now 300
thousand
every year and this also can happen you
can see in small towns not only the big
cities when I was starting my arts
career in Mexico I had my first
exhibition solo and I was excited
because there was these famous artists
who was going to see my show and she
said something like I like your work
you’re talented right but but it’s
painful part your work is too nice too
polite to provincial then she said
continued what you should go is move to
New York City get immersed in the noise
and the chaos and something great is
going to come out of it yes maybe my
work at that time was conventional was
not challenging enough I assumed that as
yeah maybe I realized reality but the
word provincial got stuck with me
because it assumes that anything cool
has to come from the city art has to
come from the sea and suburbia and small
towns we can aspire to have hobby we can
start to craft right well guess what I
live in a small town 60 miles from
Chicago I also work Chicago downtown in
the Field Museum one of the most
important natural history museums in the
world and I commute every day I enjoy
and endure the four hours a day of
coming back and forth between all these
boundaries that I love crossing but I
would never give up either of them I
would never give up the briber and
excitement of the city and the calm and
beautiful creativity of the downtown of
the area where I live
Geneva and Batavia I can see creativity
coming from everywhere I can see how
things are perceived differently where
they come from but it really doesn’t
matter because these cultural views are
made by people like us who are also
coming from small towns and big cities
they have shapes like books or songs or
recipes and if we focus on the impact
well what is harder to have impact in a
big city or have impact in a small town
how about your workplace and how about
your group of friends and how about your
family and how about yourself if you
really start to look inside and see see
the things that are worth doing on their
own don’t worry so much about the impact
the things you create we’ll have a life
of their own
centuries later we’ll see that’s culture
it boards over time it takes centuries
generations but what we can do now is
start to do things that will increase
our positive cultural footprint so my
possible cultural footprint is made of
the small contributions that I have they
range from my father’s recipe for paia
that I have brought down perfected even
though he thought it was perfect and
I’ve been polishing it and improving it
but also I translated it in English so
now it’s an international cultural good
and I shared with friends and family
with names like Simon and Tom and
Matthew and it’s also made of my artwork
that I hope one day in less than 10
years I will be able to put in my local
art gallery in Batavia or my work at the
Field Museum creating helping create
exhibitions are seen by 1.3 million
people a year maybe more and those
exhibitions matter to me because why we
do them and also the way we design them
is my contribution it is our job to
capture all the passion of the people
that care deeply about natural and
cultural diversity our scientists our IR
artists our collaborators who are
passionate about their stories and
my job to understand that passion drink
the kool-aid catch the bug and then once
the capture the passion is captured my
job is to make it visible to make it
beautiful to make it inspiring perhaps
even contagious even if it’s passion for
lichens like us yes there’s people who
are really passionate by lichens and
after learning about them they’re really
fascinating meteorites lichens ancient
cultures I am fascinated by fascination
and in this fascination I try to create
opportunities for people to get engaged
in this passion in my 25 years of
experience working in creativity mostly
collective creativity I have discovered
that is very easy to get stuck the
building drawer drawing borders turf
wars right our expertise the things we
believe the things we are make us
different and at some point you get wall
in and there’s no way to move beyond
that point how do we move forward and
here’s what I want you to use your
imagination imagine that instead of
comparing a territory or defending a
territory what we’re trying to do is
carry around this fussy permeable bubble
that’s our culture each one of us a
different combination of a fuzzy sphere
of interests that range from our
language our ancestry our beliefs the
things we care about and when I carry my
bubble somebody else carries our bubble
and we allow those bubbles to intersect
on the things that we care about there
might not be those big issues like for
instance is it okay to go Cubs or
Cardinals
I will never be able to convince you
that the cops are better like the same
way I cannot be convinced that putting
hotdogs putting ketchup on my hot dog is
wrong but we can find those
intersections in the things that we both
can care about let’s say it’s the beauty
of sunsets we hear today about rivers we
heard today about children I mean who
can disagree on the beauty of some of
those things and maybe we can intersect
those interests and create something
beautiful together
I mean townhall meetings are great
opportunities to vent our differences
and our disagreements but can we get
unstuck
can we get beyond those differences can
we find a way around and intersect in
the things that we care about that we
both can care about and perhaps you can
build something together maybe an
experience maybe you can share an
experience of watching Birds or sharing
a special recipes or sharing a
collection of rocks I actually found a
fossil out there I’m bringing back to
the museum but the reality is we can
find those share experiences like what
we’re having here today what we have
last night then we can probably
rediscover our mutual humanity and we’ll
recover a mutual humanity we may be able
to create a common good at least agree
in which we’re both now acknowledging
each other and maybe we can become
friends or maybe maybe even discover
love thank you
[Applause]
[Music] you
[Applause]
so some of you have against time I mean
me an immigrant and that means that
talking about home is complicated I mean
home is here for me but also we solve
all those places that I have left behind
one of them particularly is special for
me it’s my mother’s town in northern
Spain on the coast its name is Reba this
area it used to be a smaller Fisher’s
village among mountains and the sea of
unparalleled beauty and the port was
filled with wooden boats and it had
ancestral traditions so ancestral we
will have our own cave with prehistoric
paintings and in those folk festivals
there’s food and celebration folk dances
with bagpipes and a special way of
serving cider so you have your bottle
you have your glass and you serve it
this way right well why we can do it
more complicated like this food and
cheese and celebration the good things
of life are the good things of our
culture but things change with
globalization the fishing industry
became depressed and this town went into
a cycle of depression we’ve seen it
everywhere that made the town barely
survived during decades until more
recently there was investment in
infrastructure roads that bring tourism
tourism brings money and that brings
change better houses high-rise
apartments safer sidewalks a nicer town
in general and those wooden boats were
being replaced by fiberglass sports
boats and you can see how a town of
proud sailors became a town of great
tourist guides an amazing cooks I guess
it’s better to serve tables in a
restaurant
then go fish in tuna in the high seas or
facing unemployment or immigration with
that change cultural tensions emerge
between those who want to preserve the
good old things of the past and those
who embrace change and progress and we
see it everywhere drawing line some
borders between us on them between not
only the town people and the city people
but between locals and immigrants and
these divisions are feeding into what
some people call the culture wars and if
you have noticed there’s a deep divide
going through every single aspect of our
society in these ideological tension
that brings us apart further further
into extremes and you can see how these
extremes have made of every aspect of
culture a battlefield a battlefield
where we fight about climate or our
views of our Human Reproduction the big
issues of our time where we can’t really
find any possible agreement and we focus
more on what makes us different our
diversity has become the things that set
us apart and this war is not meant to be
born it’s meant to destroy if we
japanese-american artists
Marco Fujimura says that culture is not
a territory to be won or to be lost but
it’s a resource we are called
to steward with care he says that
culture is a garden that is called to be
cultivated but we think that culture is
this big abstract thing that comes from
a big city and it’s fancy art or has
names like cuisine or Coutu
but in reality culture is made of the
things that are close to us made by
people like us from all over the place
even small towns writer Andy Crouch says
that culture making is always a small
scale project yes changing culture the
culture is hard and complicated but
making cultural goods making culture is
always a small project that starts with
one person who becomes three who then
becomes 250 it’s always a small scale
project that starts with the initiative
of somebody like the inicio de la Huerta
back to my mother’s town this guy in
1929 had a new canoe a new kind of
wooden canoe called piragua and he
decided to set on an excursion with his
friends he called a couple friends and
went down river and after seven hours
and fourteen kilometers of looking at
landscapes training the poor canoe they
basically try to discover a new route to
navigate the river couple years later
they invited friends to have a race
between a river bridge upstream River in
a andhe’s to the river the mouth of the
river outside in the sea in revelry
salient and they without knowing started
and know a new cultural good called the
descent of the river saya fast-forward
1985 the race brings 1200 rowers from
all over the world
it’s an international event and it is
probably if not the most one of the most
important events in the world of its
kind it attracts 300 thousand people
every year who celebrate for three days
and you can just imagine their cultural
impact I don’t think the Unisa had that
in meinem he was just a young guy who
wanted to go in an excursion with his
friends but you can see three guys
became 13 became 400 there now 300
thousand
every year and this also can happen you
can see in small towns not only the big
cities when I was starting my arts
career in Mexico I had my first
exhibition solo and I was excited
because there was these famous artists
who was going to see my show and she
said something like I like your work
you’re talented right but but it’s
painful part your work is too nice too
polite to provincial then she said
continued what you should go is move to
New York City get immersed in the noise
and the chaos and something great is
going to come out of it yes maybe my
work at that time was conventional was
not challenging enough I assumed that as
yeah maybe I realized reality but the
word provincial got stuck with me
because it assumes that anything cool
has to come from the city art has to
come from the sea and suburbia and small
towns we can aspire to have hobby we can
start to craft right well guess what I
live in a small town 60 miles from
Chicago I also work Chicago downtown in
the Field Museum one of the most
important natural history museums in the
world and I commute every day I enjoy
and endure the four hours a day of
coming back and forth between all these
boundaries that I love crossing but I
would never give up either of them I
would never give up the briber and
excitement of the city and the calm and
beautiful creativity of the downtown of
the area where I live
Geneva and Batavia I can see creativity
coming from everywhere I can see how
things are perceived differently where
they come from but it really doesn’t
matter because these cultural views are
made by people like us who are also
coming from small towns and big cities
they have shapes like books or songs or
recipes and if we focus on the impact
well what is harder to have impact in a
big city or have impact in a small town
how about your workplace and how about
your group of friends and how about your
family and how about yourself if you
really start to look inside and see see
the things that are worth doing on their
own don’t worry so much about the impact
the things you create we’ll have a life
of their own
centuries later we’ll see that’s culture
it boards over time it takes centuries
generations but what we can do now is
start to do things that will increase
our positive cultural footprint so my
possible cultural footprint is made of
the small contributions that I have they
range from my father’s recipe for paia
that I have brought down perfected even
though he thought it was perfect and
I’ve been polishing it and improving it
but also I translated it in English so
now it’s an international cultural good
and I shared with friends and family
with names like Simon and Tom and
Matthew and it’s also made of my artwork
that I hope one day in less than 10
years I will be able to put in my local
art gallery in Batavia or my work at the
Field Museum creating helping create
exhibitions are seen by 1.3 million
people a year maybe more and those
exhibitions matter to me because why we
do them and also the way we design them
is my contribution it is our job to
capture all the passion of the people
that care deeply about natural and
cultural diversity our scientists our IR
artists our collaborators who are
passionate about their stories and
my job to understand that passion drink
the kool-aid catch the bug and then once
the capture the passion is captured my
job is to make it visible to make it
beautiful to make it inspiring perhaps
even contagious even if it’s passion for
lichens like us yes there’s people who
are really passionate by lichens and
after learning about them they’re really
fascinating meteorites lichens ancient
cultures I am fascinated by fascination
and in this fascination I try to create
opportunities for people to get engaged
in this passion in my 25 years of
experience working in creativity mostly
collective creativity I have discovered
that is very easy to get stuck the
building drawer drawing borders turf
wars right our expertise the things we
believe the things we are make us
different and at some point you get wall
in and there’s no way to move beyond
that point how do we move forward and
here’s what I want you to use your
imagination imagine that instead of
comparing a territory or defending a
territory what we’re trying to do is
carry around this fussy permeable bubble
that’s our culture each one of us a
different combination of a fuzzy sphere
of interests that range from our
language our ancestry our beliefs the
things we care about and when I carry my
bubble somebody else carries our bubble
and we allow those bubbles to intersect
on the things that we care about there
might not be those big issues like for
instance is it okay to go Cubs or
Cardinals
I will never be able to convince you
that the cops are better like the same
way I cannot be convinced that putting
hotdogs putting ketchup on my hot dog is
wrong but we can find those
intersections in the things that we both
can care about let’s say it’s the beauty
of sunsets we hear today about rivers we
heard today about children I mean who
can disagree on the beauty of some of
those things and maybe we can intersect
those interests and create something
beautiful together
I mean townhall meetings are great
opportunities to vent our differences
and our disagreements but can we get
unstuck
can we get beyond those differences can
we find a way around and intersect in
the things that we care about that we
both can care about and perhaps you can
build something together maybe an
experience maybe you can share an
experience of watching Birds or sharing
a special recipes or sharing a
collection of rocks I actually found a
fossil out there I’m bringing back to
the museum but the reality is we can
find those share experiences like what
we’re having here today what we have
last night then we can probably
rediscover our mutual humanity and we’ll
recover a mutual humanity we may be able
to create a common good at least agree
in which we’re both now acknowledging
each other and maybe we can become
friends or maybe maybe even discover
love thank you
[Applause]
[Music] you
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