Aug 25, 2026 · 20 min · 9 segments
In this episode, we are joined by artists and cultural workers Sundus Abdul Hadi and Yassin Alsalman. We talk about what it means to make art in a time of collapse—when systems are crumbling, funding…
Sundus Abdul HadiGuest
Yassin AlsalmanGuest
Arianne ShafferHost
Sadaf Rassoul CameronHostI see this homogenization of culture, right? Like, everything's kind of becoming like a McDonald's.
There's like a mono, m- a monocrop of, of creativity, and I think that what that is doing strategically is really diminishing imagination.
And so what I see is that there's people that cannot even imagine something that's not there because what they're being fed through the social media, through, um, mass production is not allowing people to actually stretch their imagination, and that is coming down to this kind of, like, pressurized monoculture, um, that I find to be one of the more dangerous things that's happening right now that's not actually spoken about.
So when I talk to donors, that is one of the things that I talk about.
But we're not talking about the diversity of creativity and the various approaches for it.
We're definitely in a moment of systemic change, and I think that's, like, across industries and across so many spaces that people are now starting to realize that the systems that, that for a very long time felt completely unchangeable and unmovable are kinda crumbling, [laughs] to be honest.
And the pandemic was, like, the first sign of the system's ability to crumble.
Like, systems that, like, felt so massive and impossible to move, right? I kinda like that.
[laughs] I like the, the fact that this started to rumble at the bottom, at the foundation, because a lot of the systems that the, that, like, our current civilization is based on are so extractive and have been terrible.
Everything from, like, the climate crisis to the fact that a genocide in Palestine has taken place in a, in front of our very eyes.
It's because all of these systems in place have been shaken that they're working so hard to, like, maintain their position of power and privilege.
So what do, what can we build in its place, at least in the interim, to sustain ourselves and our livelihoods and our communities and the people who depend on us? And my-- As an artist, for me, it's about, uh, knowledge.
I see this homogenization of culture, right? Like, everything's kind of becoming like a McDonald's.
There's like a mono, m- a monocrop of, of creativity, and I think that what that is doing strategically is really diminishing imagination.
And so what I see is that there's people that cannot even imagine something that's not there because what they're being fed through the social media, through, um, mass production is not allowing people to actually stretch their imagination, and that is coming down to this kind of, like, pressurized monoculture, um, that I find to be one of the more dangerous things that's happening right now that's not actually spoken about.
So when I talk to donors, that is one of the things that I talk about.
But we're not talking about the diversity of creativity and the various approaches for it.
We're definitely in a moment of systemic change, and I think that's, like, across industries and across so many spaces that people are now starting to realize that the systems that, that for a very long time felt completely unchangeable and unmovable are kinda crumbling, [laughs] to be honest.
And the pandemic was, like, the first sign of the system's ability to crumble.
Like, systems that, like, felt so massive and impossible to move, right? I kinda like that.
[laughs] I like the, the fact that this started to rumble at the bottom, at the foundation, because a lot of the systems that the, that, like, our current civilization is based on are so extractive and have been terrible.
Everything from, like, the climate crisis to the fact that a genocide in Palestine has taken place in a, in front of our very eyes.
It's because all of these systems in place have been shaken that they're working so hard to, like, maintain their position of power and privilege.
So what do, what can we build in its place, at least in the interim, to sustain ourselves and our livelihoods and our communities and the people who depend on us? And my-- As an artist, for me, it's about, uh, knowledge.
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3 of 8
Systems Are One Blow Away
Artists ask what can replace collapsing systems.
Money As Spiritual Language
Money can carry spiritual meaning beyond transactions.
Resistance Can Become Branding
Art loses power when resistance becomes branding.
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