Davos 2023 Day 4: beware of the 'Great Fracture'

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Robin Pomeroy [00:00:02] It's Thursday, the 19th of January. From the heart of the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting 2023, this is Radio Davos.

Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary General: [00:00:09] We risk what I have called the great fracture, the decoupling of the world's two largest economies.

Robin Pomeroy [00:00:15] At a Davos meeting whose theme is collaboration in a fragmented world, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warns of a rising polarisation.

Antonio Guterres [00:00:22] Tectonic drift that would create two different sets of trade rules. Two dominant currencies. Two Internets. And two conflicting strategies on artificial intelligence. This is the last thing we need.

Robin Pomeroy [00:00:35] And as global climate change is being felt more and more around the world, he makes clear his opposition to continued fossil fuel exploration.

Antonio Guterres [00:00:42] This insanity belongs in science fiction. Yet we know the ecosystem meltdown is cold, hard scientific facts.

Robin Pomeroy [00:00:51] With war still raging in Ukraine, we speak to the foreign minister of another former Soviet Union country, Lithuania.

Gabrielius Landsbergis, Foreign Minister, Lithuania: [00:00:57] War in Ukraine is not a regional issue. It touches every region in the world. It touches every country. I'm still hopeful that it's possible to have a global answer to what's happening in Ukraine.

Robin Pomeroy [00:01:07] And come with me through the Congress Centre to look at artworks painted by refugees around the world that carry a message for the people here in Davos.

Max Frieder, Co-founder & Chief Creative Officer, Artolucian [00:01:14] It's pretty crazy in the sense that that actually many of these people are not even allowed to be here in the refugee camps that they're in. So how can we have their voice heard here?

Robin Pomeroy [00:01:25] Daily coverage of Davos 2023 on Radio Davos. Follow the action live at wef.ch/wef23. I'm Robin Pomeroy at Davos from the World Economic Forum. This is Radio Davos. Welcome to Radio Davos and welcome to Davos to my co-host today Azeem Azhaar. Azeem, how are you?

Azeem Azhaar, Host, Exponential View: [00:01:45] I am doing very well. Little bit cold, but very happy.

Robin Pomeroy [00:01:48] It's quite warm in the Davos studio here.

Azeem Azhaar [00:01:51] It is really nice and warm here. I've been able to take my fleece off. All right.

Robin Pomeroy [00:01:55] Make yourself at home. Azeem writes the hugely influential weekly newsletter Exponential View, and he hosts the podcast of the same name and he's written a book on the same subject. What is this word exponential, you use in everything you do? What is it about?

Azeem Azhaar [00:02:12] I do use it in everything I do. It's really about technologies in particular that improve really, really rapidly. They they improve at ten, 20, 30, 50% every year for many, many, many years. And when you plot that on the charts, it has that telltale curve. It's flat at the beginning. There's a there's a kink, an inflection point, and then it goes off vertical and a little bit crazy.

Robin Pomeroy [00:02:37] Give us an example of one of those technologies where that has happened already.

Azeem Azhaar [00:02:40] Well, I mean, the best example is the one that sits in all of our pockets. It's our mobile phones, which are based on computer chips. And computer chips have essentially doubled in performance every couple of years for about 60 or 70 years. And that's why our phones today are more powerful than the most powerful supercomputers of 30 years ago.

Robin Pomeroy [00:03:00] There's that cliche about your washing machine has more technology than the rocket that went to the moon right?

Azeem Azhaar [00:03:06] The poor rocket that went to the moon, which was an amazing computer, partly the people, the team that worked on it ended up launching the discipline in software engineering. And it's always besmirched in these analogies. I do the same myself, but it is quite remarkable.

Robin Pomeroy [00:03:21] So welcome to Davos. Are you a Davos veteran, a Davos newbie?

Azeem Azhaar [00:03:26] This is my first time, and I have to say that for all the advice I was given about it, nothing quite prepares you for the buzz and the opportunity and the experience and frankly, the lack of food, which I've also been contending with.

Robin Pomeroy [00:03:42] I just grabbed a cookie on the way over here from the media village.

Azeem Azhaar [00:03:45] Oh, is that where the cookies are?

Robin Pomeroy [00:03:47] There's a little store look out for it. I mean, is anything so far surprised you? You know, if you bumped into anyone or heard anything?

Azeem Azhaar [00:03:56] There was so many experiences, Robin. It's really hard to pick one out. It's the gestalt of it all. It's that that sense of the bars, the conversations, you feel a little bit like a young dog in a forest. There's a squirrel over there, there's a squirrel over there! It feels a bit like that. And then you realise you have friends. I mean, I've been in business in my line of work for more than 25 years, so I know a few people and I see some of them here. That's fantastic. A couple of the panels that I've managed to attend and dare I say it, one that I hosted on Generative AI couple of days ago have been really, really good, really insightful. And I think the thing that strikes me is that when you get away from the noise of media headlines and you come here and you see the newsmakers talking sort of calmly often about quite contentious issues, it actually does make you feel a little bit more optimistic. This capability, this capacity, this compassion, this care. And so to see that happening in these panels and in these conversations, I mean, people are quite earnest about it. And then, of course, well, you know, in a month's time, we'll be back to our normal news cycle. But that has surprised me positively.

Robin Pomeroy [00:05:08] I'm really interested on how you communicate difficult, complex subjects. I mean, you've got a massive readership for your newsletter. People misunderstand AI, misunderstand all these technologies. Of course we do. How do you how do you make it a bit easier for people?

Azeem Azhaar [00:05:23] I think you have to simplify things. So, when I'm with specialists, they're often a little bit annoyed at how much I've simplified what it is they do. But I tend to be someone who tries to come up with a framework. And my framework, one of my frameworks, is: technologies are getting cheaper and what happens when something gets cheaper? Well, we buy more of it. And so I just have these simple kind of quiet processes that are described in simple English. But I think the other thing that's really helpful is to be able to have historical analogy, and I don't think there's a shortcut to that. So I've read a lot of history. I've been in the industry for 25 years, and what that allows me to do is to go back to precedents that might be more relevant to people, so if we're talking about AI, maybe I could also talk about the speed with which cars took over from horses as the main way of getting around American cities in the turn of the 20th century. I think those things can sometimes help people feel more at ease.

Robin Pomeroy [00:06:22] And your podcast is on hold at the moment. I hope it's coming back because it's a fantastic thing. You've got a pretty big back catalogue, if you could pick out one episode for people to go about and find, which would it be?

Azeem Azhaar [00:06:33] Yeah, we had 150 or so episodes. My favourite go to episode is one with a gentleman who was the second most senior military man in the British armed forces, Sir Richard Barrons, General Sir Richard Barrons, four star General in American parlance. And he and I talked about the intersection between these types of technologies and what it would mean for conflict. And by these type of technologies, I mean things like like drones, for example, and cyber attacks and sort of grey war and disinformation. And that podcast is probably three years old now, but it's so relevant to the post February 24th world that we that we live in. And Richard is brilliant because he's a ferociously intelligent man. He's also a man who served in active duty in several different continents. So sort of no nonsense about that. And I love that podcast. He's very funny. I learnt a lot. I'm a child of the Cold War. I grew up and remember being in the UK when the cruise missiles and the Pershing 2s were being put in Europe. And so there were bits of me that wanted to sort play a bit of Top Gun with Sir Richard. And I was able to do that in that podcast. I absolutely love it. I think your listeners would love it too.

Robin Pomeroy [00:07:50] I haven't heard it, I’ll definitely go back and check it out. Thanks for that. Well, let's look at some of the sessions today. We've got special addresses. 11:30 today, the president of Korea, 3:00 in the afternoon, the Prime Minister of Greece. I've looked through the sessions to see if there's one that might be of particular interest to you, Azeem, and I picked out one, it's at 9:00, The Age of Net-Zero Energy Technologies. That's an area I know you're interested in, right?

Azeem Azhaar [00:08:16] I'm absolutely fascinated by it because we obviously need to get to net zero. And these technologies are big, lumbering and heavy, and we need lots of them. So I'm trying to work out whether the dynamics are played out with electric vehicles or with computers, which is they got cheap very quickly and then we bought lots of them, putting it simply, could also play out with these much heavier, more complex net zero tech technologies. And I'm reasonably new to the area, so I want to hear some experts and practitioners talk about the reality of where these technologies are, and the reality of what it will take to scale them. Can we afford it in terms of materiality? Can we afford it in terms of dollars? I think the answer, by the way, to the first question of those two questions is, yes, we can afford the materials. Yes, we can afford the financial cost, because what we don't have is time. So, I'm looking forward to that session a great deal.

Robin Pomeroy [00:09:10] So there are four CEOs working in that field in that session at 9:00 this morning. It's called The Age of Net-Zero Energy Technologies. Okay. At 1:15, Tech Power and Cooperation. It is moderated by Alison Sneider of Axios. Formerly, she's co-hosted a podcast with me before. The vice prime minister who's involved in the digital transformation of Ukraine. The president of global affairs at Google, Kent Walker, Brett Solomon of AccessNow, and Genevieve Bell, professor at the School of Cyber Cybernetics at the Australian National University.

Azeem Azhaar [00:09:45] Well, that will be quite a cracking session. I've heard Genevieve speak a number of times and the Ukrainian minister as well. I've sort of followed what they they've been doing. It's such an important area. One of the things I think we've got wrong over the past 20 or 30 years has been how we've understood the relationship of technology as power, technology as political power, how it evokes that power and how that power needs to be managed, checked and balanced. And the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second-best time is now. It's great that we're having these conversations now. It's great that we're able to bring together people with very different perspectives because the Ukrainians obviously have used technology and digital technologies really to keep their country running over the past year. And that is a different way of looking at the problem, because actually in some of the advanced economies, historically over the last few years, we've sort of seen tech power lousy in negative terms. So I think that will be a really, really cracking, cracking panel.

Robin Pomeroy [00:10:48] Great. Well, people can watch that live. It's live streamed. They can watch it on catch up. Azeem, good luck with the rest of Davos. Tell our listeners about all of them already get your newsletter. But if they don't, where should they go to find it?

Azeem Azhaar [00:11:01] Yeah. No, thank you so much. It's Exponential View. You could just pop that into your search engine of choice. Or you can go to www.exponentialview.co and we'd love to have you.

Robin Pomeroy [00:11:11] Wonderful. Azeem Azhaar, thanks for joining us on Radio Davos.

Azeem Azhaar [00:11:14] Thank you very much.

Robin Pomeroy [00:11:16] And I'm joined on Radio Davos now by Ty Greene. He's the lead for health equity at the World Economic Forum. Hi, how are you?

Ty Greene, Health Equity Lead, World Economic Forum [00:11:22] Hi, Robin. Doing well, thanks. How are you?

Robin Pomeroy [00:11:24] I'm fine, thanks. So, you’re lead for health equity. What is health equity?

Tye Greene [00:11:27] It's a good question. A lot of definitions out there, none of them are necessarily the only one. But the way that we define health equity is the fair and just opportunity for everyone to fulfil their human potential in. All aspects of health and well-being.

Robin Pomeroy [00:11:40] Because health care is something that's very ethnical.

Tye Greene [00:11:44] Absolutely. Both health care and the drivers of health, which can be medical, but they can also be environmental, social, economic.

Robin Pomeroy [00:11:51] Okay, great. So there's something happening today that you're here to tell us about. At 10:00 this morning. What will be happening?

Ty Greene [00:11:59] Yeah. So, at 10:00 this morning, really exciting news. We're launching what we've called the Zero Health Gaps pledge. So, this is a CEO level commitment from 30 plus forum partners to embed health equity into their core strategies, operations and investments. It's really sort of a signal from the business and broader community to say we understand that we have a role to play in advancing health equity and we're going to commit to do that moving forward.

Robin Pomeroy [00:12:22] So, I mean, that sounds nice. So, you know, like the big companies saying we're going to be nice about health. What do you think will actually be the impact of something like this?

Ty Greene [00:12:31] Certainly. So the way that we're viewing this is that there's space for philanthropy, there's space for, you know, your traditional CSR.

Robin Pomeroy [00:12:39] Corporate social responsibility.

Ty Greene [00:12:40] Yes, that's it. Thank you.

Robin Pomeroy [00:12:41] I haven’t heard that one for a while.

Ty Greene [00:12:43] I know, and there's a reason for that, I think. But the point is to create sustainable change. These things like health equity, like diversity and inclusion, others need to be embedded in core strategies and operations. And so what this pledge is doing is making public a corporate commitment from the CEO to say, we're going to look at our workforce, we're going to look at our community investments at our offerings and take a health equity lens to every decision we make moving forward. So that's everything from measuring the impact that you have across those various domains of influence on health equity to working with local communities to understand what their priorities are and how you can work in collaboration with them, with the public sector and others to really start advancing those health equity priorities.

Robin Pomeroy [00:13:26] And so that will go through- when I asked you to define health equity, you talked about it's not just health care, it is the environmental side, it's pollution. It's, you know, the way people live that has an impact or where they have to live that has an impact on their health.

Ty Greene [00:13:40] That's exactly right. Up to 70% of health outcomes are driven not by medical factors, but by non-medical factors. And I think it also gives us the opportunity to say, listen, this isn't just for health care companies or biopharma companies. If you're a mining company, if you're a fast-moving consumer goods company, if you're a financial services company, you have a role to play.

Robin Pomeroy [00:13:58] Okay. And where can people find out more about this pleasure, about your work in general?

Ty Greene [00:14:03] Absolutely. So, if you go on to the Forum website, we have a Global Health Equity Network website. So that's sort of the underlying body that raised this pledge. Different partners, including Deloitte, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Kaiser Permanente, others who have really helped create this pledge. You can find that on the website. You can read about the pledge if you as an organization, whether you’re business, civil society, government want to take that pledge, there's contact information there. You can reach out to me and I'm happy to set up a call.

Robin Pomeroy [00:14:27] Brilliant. Okay, well, we'll look out for that today. Ty Greene, thanks for joining us on Radio Davos.

Ty Greene [00:14:32] Thanks, Robin.

Robin Pomeroy [00:14:33] In his address yesterday to a Davos whose theme is Collaboration in a Fragmented World, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had this to say about the new superpower polarisation.

Antonio Guterres [00:14:44] We risk what I have called the great fracture, the decoupling of the world's two largest economies. Tectonic drift that would create two different sets of trade rules two dominance currencies, two Internets, and two conflicting strategies artificial intelligence. This is the last thing we need. The IMF reported that dividing the global economy into two. Two blocks could cut global GDP by a whopping 1.4 trillion U.S. dollars. Now, there are many aspects in which the US and China relations will inevitably diverge, particularly on questions of human rights and on some areas of regional security. But despite that, it is possible, and I would say it is essential, for the two countries to have meaningful engagement on climate, trade and technology to avoid the decoupling of economies and even the possibility of future confrontations.

Robin Pomeroy [00:15:46] Addressing business and political leaders assembled in Davos, Antonio Guterres had this message on climate change.

Antonio Guterres [00:15:53] Today, fossil fuel producers and their enablers are still racing to expand production. Knowing full well that this business model is inconsistent with human survival. Now this insanity belongs in science fiction. Yet we know the ecosystem meltdown is cold, hard scientific fact.

Robin Pomeroy [00:16:17] In our interview booth, Linda Lacina continued her marathon of interviews for Meet the Leader. And this is one, Caroline Casey is the businesswoman and activist behind The Valuable 500, a campaign for businesses to be more inclusive for people with disabilities. Linda asked Caroline, who is legally blind, what was a turning point in her career?

Caroline Casey, Founder and Director, The Valuable 500 [00:16:35] I've been in space now for 23 years as a disability activist and troublemaker. I have lived experience myself, which I hid, and I came out of the disability closet in the year 2000. There was a personal turning point to make The Valuable 500 happen, and it was the unexpected death of my father. And that does make you examine, well, what am I here for?

Caroline Casey [00:16:58] But the professional reason was, when my father died, I'd been working in this space for six years, and still disability lay on the sidelines. Still, we saw companies who are 90% and claiming to have a comprehensive view of inclusion. Only 4% of disability. And you know? When Dad died, I went, well, you know what? When I have to go, I hope that is going to change. So, I think a very interesting thing, the power of grief, is a great way to challenge you. And I really bought my heart into The Valuable 500 with a lot of strong evidence base. And I think that was the magic. It's bringing the head and the heart.

Robin Pomeroy [00:17:37] Caroline Casey of The Valuable 500. Also yesterday, I spoke to Gabrielius Landsbergis, the Foreign Minister of Lithuania, an EU member state that was formerly part of the Soviet Union and a country that borders the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. A year after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, I asked Gabrielius Landsbergis for his reflections on the last 12 months.

Gabrielius Landsbergis [00:17:57] It was one of those moments where we found ourselves in the situation with a couple of words like ‘we told you so,’ because for three decades, while many of our friends and allies in the West have been rejoicing the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of history as some might have called it. We were saying, look, that this is not over. Russia is still a dangerous country with a dangerous ambition, and it has proven to have those from time to time, in 2008. Even some say that in 1990s with Chechen war first and then second, and then 2014 with the occupation of Crimea. So, you know, we said, look, this is exactly what we've been warning you about. Then again, you know, it was a year of trying to assist Ukraine to win this war because in our mentality, it's a war about us.

Robin Pomeroy [00:18:57] How do you feel European unity has held up in those 12 months?

Gabrielius Landsbergis [00:19:01] It has held up. And I think that is one of the biggest achievements of the last of last year, because I think that many believe and I subscribe to this as well, that Putin has miscalculated not just the will of Ukrainians to fight, but also of the Western community to be united. And yes, obviously, there were hiccups and issues and sanctions that we were unable to impose, or imposed not as fast as, for example, we might have wished them to be imposed, but still, we maintained unity. We assisted Ukraine and I'm quite optimistic for this year as well.

Robin Pomeroy [00:19:41] Tell us something about Lithuania. Geographically, you're in a very unique position you've got a Russian enclave embedded inside. How does the presence of that Russian enclave in your country make your situation different from your neighbours, perhaps?

Gabrielius Landsbergis [00:19:57] Well, you know, first of all, it's an interesting geography, honestly, because there is just you know, we joke that there are two countries in the world that have Russia to the west: Lithuania and Japan. Everybody would be thinking about Russia has a country towards these, but we have two neighbours. Both of them are involved in the war and the second one is Belarus, where we have 700 kilometres of border with. So, the mentality is, especially during the last year, is that we are surrounded in many cases by unfriendly countries, by not friendly neighbours. So there is a little bit of resemblance to the feeling of West Berlin, you know, being an island. You know, we think about Lithuania island, but obviously there’s a Baltic island that has a very narrow entry to Western Europe, and therefore we are so much keen on hearing our allies committing to our to our defence. Same way West Berlin did that when the US promised to assist them.

Robin Pomeroy [00:21:03] It's interesting you mentioned West Berlin, kind of the Berlin Wall, symbols of the Cold War that some of us perhaps in Western Europe thought we'd seen the back of. Where do you see the future? Is this a new Cold War or can we be more optomistic? And of course, we can be more pessimistic than the Cold War because it could be a hot war, well, it is a hot war in Ukraine. Would it be a Cold war or can there be some kind of detente with Russia? Can we have cooperation in a fragmented world, as this Davos has as its theme?

Gabrielius Landsbergis [00:21:40] Well, Cold War was defined by some sort of a nuclear balance between two superpowers or to two alliances of some sorts. Now, we cannot talk about Russia as being a superpower, though, you know, they would still claim. But this is a claim that is 30 years old and has very little to do with reality. So definitely there's no balance in between the West and Russia. We see that Ukraine, with assistance from the West, was able singlehandedly in the sense that there's just Ukrainian soldiers that are fighting in the battlefield, they were able to stop Russia's onslaught. That means that the balance is long gone. So therefore, it's impossible to go back to the continuation of 1990s. But definitely many symbols are being revived, and I think it will take a while until this phase of whatever Cold War it is will be over, because I believe in Ukrainian victory and Lithuania will stand with Ukraine until it manages to reconquer back the territories. And I think that the process it started in 2022 February 24th in Russia will lead to some sort of instability in Russia. It's almost unavoidable because they started their own demise.

Robin Pomeroy [00:23:00] And finally, how have you felt that Davos 2023 has talked about this situation?

Gabrielius Landsbergis [00:23:08] Well, I think that in many debates, the situation in Ukraine was taken very seriously. Obviously, there are more issues and it's a global forum that means that we cannot just focus on one region. But it is clear that war in Ukraine is not a regional issue. It touches every region in the world. It touches every country one way or another. Therefore, I'm still hopeful. And some votes in the UN have showed that it's possible to have a global answer to what's happening in Ukraine.

Robin Pomeroy [00:23:38] Thanks for joining us on Radio Davos.

Gabrielius Landsbergis [00:23:40] Thank you so much.

Robin Pomeroy [00:23:43] Right, I'm standing outside the Radio Davos booth now. We’ve just come out from recording a segment for the next podcast. I'm going up the big stairs. On the left is the Congress Hall where all the big speeches happen. To my right is the health bar, where people can get fresh juices. In fact, there's one called- there’s pumpkin juice, which doesn't taste as nice as Harry Potter would have you believe, and there's also cabbage and turnip juice I saw yesterday. I mean, you have to hope it does you good, you really do. So now I'm at the top of the stairs in the hallway here where there are several art installations. I'm hoping to bump into some of the artists. I’m going to try my luck over this direction.

Robin Pomeroy [00:24:29] Okay, where do we start? Tell us who you are, what you do.

Max Frieder [00:24:34] So my name is Dr. Max Frieder, and I am the co-founder and chief creative officer of Artolution. We are an international community-based public arts and education organization. What that means is we teach artists and educators in different. camps, conflict zones, conflict affected communities, how to do public art with children who've been through trauma, being able to heal through the process of creating large scale collaborative artworks, whether it be murals, interactive musical sculptures out of trash or recycled materials, puppetry, performance, dance all others forms of storytelling.

Robin Pomeroy [00:25:04] Wow, and you do that all over the world or in particular regions?

Max Frieder [00:25:08] So we have five regional hubs around the world. We've worked in 35 countries around the world, but we have five regional hubs each that has teams of refugee artists and host community artists.

Robin Pomeroy [00:25:17] Tell us about this piece we're standing in front of now. It's very tall. I guess that's about five or six metres high. Very colourful mural in four pieces. What looks to be a camp perhaps, is that a refugee camp then?

Max Frieder [00:25:32] It is. So, this is the colour of resilience. So this piece we've created in four different refugee crisis hotspots around the world. And so this piece, it actually travels in a geographic trajectory that goes in a circle from east to west or west to east, depending on the way that you look at it. So it starts here in the Rohingya refugee camps, where you can see actually all of the different communities were asked, where did you come from? How did you get to where you are and what are your dreams for the future?

Robin Pomeroy [00:25:58] So from left to right, that's where they're coming from.

Max Frieder [00:26:00] Exactly.

Robin Pomeroy [00:26:01] And they're looking happier on the right. I'm pleased to see that. So, who actually painted this?

Max Frieder [00:26:05] So this was actually painted led by our team of refugee artists. So it’s led by a team of half man, half women who are leading these programmes with children being able to have them tell their stories. There's over 500 participants on these pieces.

Robin Pomeroy [00:26:18] So what impact does involvement in art have on people who've suffered a big trauma, like being turfed out of their home and have to flee to another country?

Max Frieder [00:26:29] We do a lot of behavioural studies looking at pre and post evaluations, to figure out what does this mean? Like what's the actual impact of this work? We look at scales of psychosocial well-being and social and emotional health. So, what we've really found is that self-esteem really rises. The idea of social connectivity that you connect with others, relationship building and this idea that you have a voice, this idea of efficacy and agency, that identity can actually find measurable indicators to find that in pre and post evaluations. It rises over 20%. We found in each of those different indicators that we've been able to find. But the reality is that these voices need to be heard here. They need to be heard at the World Economic Forum and that this data needs to back up the fact that these people need to be humanized, and we need to be able to democratise resources and access to resilience, both in the sense of actually being able to create artwork, but also being able to take people who are in the private sector, people who are in the public sector, folks who are in the humanitarian development sphere and say arts and culture need to catalyse social change. So, when we look at issues around education, livelihoods, we look at resource generation, we need to be to use the strength that already exists in these communities. There are the most talented, incredible artist that exists in these communities. They just need to be able to be provided a platform to amplify their messages and to be able to take the messages that we're trying to make a difference, like girls education or food security, nutrition. And that when you take the talent that's already there, to take those messages and bring them to their community and to the world.

Robin Pomeroy [00:27:57] It's really great you've brought this to Davos, because here you've got leaders and political leaders and business leaders. And this is a message directly from people really sometimes at the bottom of the pile, isn't it? And they brought their message here for them to see.

Max Frieder [00:28:10] Right. And I mean, it's pretty crazy in the sense that that actually many of these people are not even allowed to be here. They're not even allowed to eat the locked refugee camps that they're in. So how can we have the voice heard here in a way that can be articulate and dynamic and to make sure that they can be able to have access, to actually advocate for their work, and that the real goal is that this can create a bridge, right? That this can actually take the unbelievable resources that exist in this space and say, how can we take this and provide a livelihood for people who never had this access ever before.

Robin Pomeroy [00:28:39] For people who aren't here standing like I am looking up at this huge painting, where can they see some of this art? Can they find it online somewhere?

Max Frieder [00:28:46] So Artolution, like an evolution, solution or revolution, you can find our work on artolution.org and you can find us on all the social media platforms and every dollar matters. Like for us, it's a huge deal. Like, it's not a small it's a huge deal to be able to support artists. And we truly believe that if we can find ways of being able to amplify their voices, that's the next phase in the history of the arts and education. And if we can take that one little girl, that one person that was able to paint that and say, your voice matters, that who you are matters, that that in itself is what we believe can become the next phase in the history of the artists.

Robin Pomeroy [00:29:20] So let's turn to you that you're going to show me something else down the corridor, right? Shall we just walk and see it?

Vik Muniz, Visual Artist: [00:29:24] Yeah, Let's just go.

Robin Pomeroy [00:29:25] Okay. So, tell us who you are.

Vik Muniz [00:29:28] My name is Vik Muniz, I'm a visual artist. I'm a Crystal Award winner ten years ago, and I've been here a few times, and it was a pleasure to come this time just to introduce Max’s projects to the community here. I met Max some years ago, and actually, he came to meet me because I had done a documentary that dealt with the project-based interactions with communities in Greece that was art-related. So initially I had done a project in a garbage dump in in Rio where I brought the people that lived there to work on their own project on their own portraits in my studio, and that turned into a film. That got an Oscar nomination, that's where I got to meet Max. And he actually introduced me, invited me to come to the Rohingya camps, and we'd been there a few times and we got to meet these artists and got to participate a little bit in their reality. The idea was to actually do a project that was a collaboration between my studio and Artolution, and this is the first instalment of this series.

Robin Pomeroy [00:30:39] Okay, we've moved up the corridor, we're standing in front of a still a pretty large canvas.

Speaker 4 [00:30:45] Yeah, it's a map that has two kinds of information. When we look at a map, you know, it has lines that are based on political or physical references, you know, but we don't ever get to see how people sense the space around them. Here what you have is the background that is pasted over drawings by the Rohingya children, Rohingya artists. And they were asked the question where do you come from, where are you or where do you want to go? And based on this, they produced a series of drawings, depictions that can be past, present or future. We assembled them. We put a real physical map on top of it. You know, it's interesting when you think about refugees. They were talking about lines, lines of escape. They're always perpendicular to the lines of the map. They're just people who are crossing these lines and they're sort of like taking in the difficult situation for no reason at all. Having these two things together makes you think about, you know, how we look at the world and how we should be looking at it a little bit more carefully. You know, Max is working with people and giving value to them, individual value to what their efforts are. And it's interesting to put these two things together for people to see what a real map should look like.

Robin Pomeroy [00:32:01] What a real map should look like. Yeah, and this is just a collection of fairly small drawings and paintings by the children, the refugee children of the Rohingya camp, with this map overlaid on top. Beautiful piece. Well, guys, thanks very much.

Vik Muniz [00:32:15] Thank you.

Robin Pomeroy [00:32:17] Brazilian artist Vik Muniz speaking to me in the Congress Centre in Davos. You also heard Max Frieda, co-founder and chief creative officer of Artolution, for daily coverage of Davos 2023. Subscribe to Radio Davos wherever you get your podcasts or visit wef.ch/podcasts and follow the action here live and on catch up wef.ch/wef23 and across social media using the hashtag #wef23. This episode of Radio Davos was written and presented by me Robin Pomeroy. Editing was by Taz Kelleher. Studio production was by Juan Toran. We'll be back tomorrow for the final day at Davos 2023. But for now, thanks to you for listening and goodbye.