In this conversation, performer Diana Oh “Zaza D” and filmmaker Ciara Leina`ala Lacy explore how their artistic practices are rooted in collaboration and care. Ciara shares her experience working across video, describing her approach as deeply instinctual, guided by a sense of personal connection to her work and the collaborators around her. Diana echoes that for them, intuition and joy fuel their creativity, particularly in music-making, which they see as a form of magic and communication. Both artists highlight the vulnerability and community involved in their practices, with a shared understanding of art as a space for healing and holding emotional truths.

Diana Oh “Zaza D”: Ciara, what are your mediums?

Ciara Leina`ala Lacy: I work in film to date, have done documentary, animation, and music videos as well. I am looking to transition into doing more narrative work. I’ve been doing a lot of screenplay writing. If the thing moves, and it’s a video, then that’s my world.

Zaza: Which of those brings you the most joy?

Ciara: It depends on what I’m figuring out. I’m always asking myself, what is my connection to the work? What drives me? Why am I going to do this? Digging into this, what does this do for someone watching? What will they get out of that experience? What do I want to offer them? What’s the catharsis through this process, both for me and for the viewer? It just depends on where I’m at. There’s a lot of gut instinct in terms of where I go next. It’s a super Hawaiian thing; we use the word nā’au, it’s your gut, listening to that a little bit.

How do you find your direction? What takes you from one thing to another?

Zaza: It’s all gut. [Laughing]

Ciara: Okay! 

Zaza: It’s intuition and very heart-centered. But more than that, I mean lower, even lower, right? Especially in a queer body and a Korean body. Especially when you have a parent who is like, I see things. I find that if I don’t feel my joy enough, I don’t feel my intuition enough to be able to latch on to the thing, to what I need to say. So that resonates hugely. What is my intuition telling me to do?

I know specifically the thing that brings me the most joy in terms of making is making music. Always. When I can sing a song for people — because that’s calibration — once I know what calibration is, then it’s about setting a mood, feeling, or spell.

Ciara: Oh, spell! I’m writing that down. I love that word.

Zaza: I can lock in. I know that that’s communication, so that’s all intuition. All I have to do is trust that I’m saying and singing something and to not close off. Someone had asked, “What is your light?” Some people will say when they’re in nature. For me, immediately, it’s people. That’s my thing. What is your light?

Ciara: Connection with people, and finding that connection between your work and that spell, right? For me, particularly in the documentary and narrative side, when you’re able to put yourself and your collaborators, whether they’re the ones on stage or the folks off-screen. (I hate saying behind the scenes, because they’re never behind, right?)

When you know that everyone is putting themselves in a vulnerable space, and they’re putting the goals of the work first, and that we’re all up in it together. That, for me, is a light. When we create with intention and we create collectively, it’s the most beautiful thing. It’s so beautiful. Then, to put your stamp, put the work out there. There’s a vulnerability in that as well. Having everyone in that space willing to say, “Okay, I’m here,” and be open to receiving whatever spell is put in front of them. What is that magic? It's incredible.

Zaza: Once I understood it as magic, that’s where I had to be. You have to believe in your invincibility to do it because it’s so vulnerable. I’m finally understanding that. You do have to go to this place of medicine, medicine, medicine. This is a service. Otherwise, what are you doing? I say this thing about what artists do: they say the thing that people are too afraid to say, that needs to be said, at the expense of their vulnerability being punched in the throat.

Ciara: But then the moment you do that, we’re all seen. That’s the validation, and you know what? This digs into something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, which is, then you’re less lonely. Then you’re not the only one. The moment it clicks in you, you as the artist, you as the audience, the viewer, the experiencer of the work.

We talk about connection and people, the idea of feeling like you’re part of something, even if for that brief moment. Somebody else was thinking the same thing you were, but you don’t have the words or the ways. You haven’t figured out how to express it.

Zaza: Okay, so you just helped me understand the math equation of hope. Hope is just trusting that somebody is on the other line of what you’re throwing out there. You are not alone. And that is why this is worth intuition.

Ciara: I have to write this down. It’s too good. The idea of making anything, the physical, emotional, collective energy it takes to bring something into the world, the vulnerability, there are so many layers to it. There are so many yeses that have to happen along the way to get to the work being finished, but there are a lot of nos too. Being able to shoulder all of that and get your work to where it needs to be, it’s a very “film thing” where there’s a lot of navigation that you have to do to get to your vision and how to stay as true to that in the process. And use that as the antidote for loneliness, or the way to find as you so, beautifully said: hope. It’s so complex. When you’re working on a project, what do you use to keep you in motion and keep the work moving?

Zaza: Wow, I’m so thankful you’re bringing up the topic of no. I feel that as somebody who creates a lot of unboxable art, and in mediums that are also unboxable, because that’s part of the expansion of self, expansion of love, expansion of identity. Immigrant identity, American identity, queer identity, femme identity, all the things, the-category-doesn’t-exist identity.

My art is creating and gathering, healing, ritual music, a DJ dance party, a somatic dance party, brain massage, binaural, calm, binding, a concert, a play that’s definitely not a play, an installation outside and an indoor installation. Sometimes I don’t even know how to describe my own work until it’s done. Even then, I don’t really know.

Once, I got pulled over at the Canadian border because they asked me, “Why are you here?” And I said, “I’m giving goats brain massages.” I f—ing made the mistake of telling the truth because that’s what we do. We’re artists; we tell the truth. 

Don’t tell the truth at the border of anything. 

They pulled me over for six hours and I got searched twice. They looked me up on a website to ask, “Are you legitimate?” and then they were like, “Oh, it says here on this website, you’re an actor.”

“Yeah that’s one of the things I like to do.”

“Why do you do it?”

“I enjoy it.”

“What is brain massage?”

“Okay, all right, let me explain.”

And then they asked me, “Do you know these goats’ names?”

They can’t know until I bring out all of my equipment, my synth, my mic, my pedals, the Bose PA system that I have, and I do it in front of them to receive the brain massage. For them to know that I’m a legitimate human being, an artist with a messy backseat and I’m not doing anything bad, and you’ll get the medicine. So can I go?

Ciara: One thing I take away from that incredible story is sometimes you don’t get it till you get it. You’re not going to understand the beauty of the work until you can experience it. We can do all we can to describe it, practice the words, and write our artist statements. But until you are immersed in the work, it’s hard to understand. Every work is so specific, and until you experience its details, its fullness, it can be hard to really convey what it is with words. Especially for some artists, it sounds like you’re existing in so many disciplines and forms, and creating forms and not even letting form be restrictive, just creating!

Does that feel right to you?

Zaza: I describe myself as an open channel to the art that feels good to my body, driven most by pleasure, mutual care, and keeping things heart centered. That’s it. And I’m realizing that I am hanging on to your original question: how do you hang on to the yes of it? And it is that exact thing, of just trusting that there is payoff here. I mean, how do you do what you do with your no?

Ciara: I prioritize what I need. I always say to myself as I’m thinking about the start of a project, “What are the top three things that you need? What are the things that are the core of the work?” By acknowledging the things that I have to preserve, that are essential, that will convey to the work the things that I need. That helps me be able to say yes along the way. If there are little or big compromises that I have to make, or that I can’t, then I have something to kind of guide me through it. 

It’s easier for me to collaborate when people are offering ideas. It’s like okay, as the project transforms, how do I make sure that I’m listening along the way? When it comes to life, I’m listening along the way to myself and the collaborators but still holding true to the center. Allowing it to morph.

Not everyone feels that way. Some artists say, “I plan this and this is what I make,” and that’s beautiful. But for me, in a process, this is where I start and if I’m listening along the way and growing around the way, the thing turns out different.

Zaza: Yes. Always. Having collaborators to believe in you is everything to me. It only takes two. At the end of the day, that’s it. Mei Ann Teo and Leta Tremblay, they are the ones who taught me that language of the spell. We were collaborating on {my lingerie party}, and they said they were a dramaturg. And I was like, “What the f— is a dramaturg?” And they were like, “I’m a witch.” And I was like, “Thank you!” It made so much sense.

Ciara: I don't think I've ever heard it described that way, that’s incredible!

Zaza: You have to think of what spell you want to cast along the way and they have been such a strong advocate. We have a spiritual understanding of the world that we want to live in. That’s another thing that helps me say yes to the no, but I need some examples of when you say there are things that you need to hold onto. 

Ciara: Examples of things, sometimes they are technical, and they are technical because it leads to the emotional. If I’m thinking about it, they tend to be simple things. I was working on a piece about a poet that dove into their process as an artist, and thinking about what I could add as the filmmaker to this experience that was true to the artist. One thing I knew from the start was that we were going to split screen the film, because by showing multiple images at once, we could create similes and metaphors on screen like poetry. Poetry is this non-binary thing where we can add images, and we get something different from the experience of them together. That was my way of adding to the experience of this person’s process. It was a very simple thing, but it ended up being a technical decision that hopefully added to what this artist does, who this artist is, and what they contribute. 

Especially on the documentary side, I always subsume myself into the perspective of the subject because it’s their face and concepts that we put on screen. It’s not me. They carry the work. If I’m doing my job, in my own perspective and in my own process, I have done my best to foreground the things that speak to who they are, and the things that they want to get out into the world. 

Documentary film is a very different process from something on the narrative or more scripted side, where the creation might come more from myself. Sometimes I get lost in the two because I double down so deep in somebody else’s perspective that I have to come back and revisit where I exist in it. It’s a little bit of a negotiation with myself.

Zaza: When you’re making a documentary, in terms of the point of view (POV), is it your POV, or are you collaborating with your subject? Are you the deep listener? How do you find the POV?

Ciara: That’s always in flux. So many of the people I’ve worked with I feel a really strong connection to and have a really strong appreciation of. I tend to lean into their perspective. It’s not to say that I don’t exist there — we’re editing and cutting — but my goal is always to create a filmmaking space where we are standing in front of each other. It is a mutual collaborative space. I am there to acknowledge and listen to the things that they might not even tell their families, because these conversations don’t necessarily come up.

It’s a very vulnerable and unique space to be in because they are offering themselves. They’re not identifying as or occupying the role of another character. My goal is to give them the opportunity to be vulnerable. If I can do that as a person face-to-face with them, then hopefully, that translates into what we've recorded on camera. That also guides how we edit it and what that feeling is.  

What do I contribute? I think through the space I’m offering. If I show up in a suit, there's a positionality to that. I’m thoughtful about how I present myself because I want to feel like collaborators, on the same level. That isn’t to say that I’m faking myself. It’s not going to work either if I show up in a costume that's not my own, that’s bullshit. But I’m not gonna look down on you, and I’m not gonna look up to you. We should be there across from each other and feel togetherness. For the work that I’ve done to date, particularly community work with other Hawaiians, that’s important to me.

Zaza: At the end of the day, authenticity is the only thing that matters. It just feels like the only neutralizer and medicine that we need. You landed on the word spell, what you had said about, what space do you want to hold. That is something that’s really hitting me. That’s what it is. It’s holding. It’s the artist. What space you want to hold as an artist. It’s the choice of like, are you gonna hold you? Are you holding space for terror, rage, love, connection, authenticity? 

Ciara: Every project is a little different, right? So the approach might differ. There are some emotions I haven’t explored. You brought some of them up, like the rage of things. Moving forward, those are things I want to tackle a little bit more. That’s not to say that I don’t want peace, joy, or love, because we need more of that. But sometimes those other parts of us need space, too.

Zaza: The rage without guilt. I’m understanding, because there is rage with celebration right? I feel like there is rage with sauce when we are allowed to feel rage without turning it inside. I have yet to find out that expression. And I’m learning now that some of it is learned behavior from immigrant parents who have always had to take it home with them. Does rage ever just get to roll off our shoulder so that we don't absorb valid negative emotion?

Ciara: That for me is something I think about a lot. When it comes to the work I do on screen, very specific emotions are only effective if they’re juxtaposed against the opposite. I can’t make a film that’s just screaming rage all the way through, because there’s no arc to that emotional experience, especially with emotions that are super powerful. There’s something to be said for building up to it, the brushstroke of it, the payoff of it in the moment, but not having to sit in it the whole way through. It's always about the contrast and the combinations of it. 

Zaza: I wonder if the opposite of rage is creativity. Is expression the opposite of rage? Somehow creating something artistic out of it, if you're able to? I create some kind of cohesive something with this rage so that I’m not just raging on people or setting fires. It’s like making a campfire that we can scream at, because then at least it’s sort of contained. Also, we look pretty in the campfire’s light. And then we can put out the fire all together. 

Ciara: Yeah, we're not gonna burn the town down. That's not the goal. The goal is to be able to access the emotion. But when you said campfire, what really struck me in such a beautiful way is that it’s communal and it's focused right? We circle around it and are together, tapping into something important. Anger is important and rage is important. The acknowledgement of the full scope of our emotions is important. But what do we do with them? Do you sit in the rage and burn or do you get to the flowers afterwards? How do you get from the fire to the wild flowers that grow after?

Zaza: Is that how it happens in nature? 

Ciara: Yeah, I mean, not here per se, but in other places, everything burns down, and then you’ve got the ash, and then out of the ash the flowers emerge.

Zaza: I need that in my life. This last relationship for sure. Thank you. Yes, I need to do that on a personal level. And then this well, so now this gives space. They’re like, yes, now you cannot. You don’t have to be afraid of your rage. And I’m not afraid of my own rage, because I know how to wield it. 

I can make it into something that makes sense to me because I have agency with my voice as an artist. So long as I give myself the space to express it. Then, we have somewhere to go here. And that’s why we have community organization.

Ciara: It’s interesting because there’s so much power. There’s a lot of laser-focused power around certain emotions when you’re angry. Well, rage is the next phase, right? There’s that clarity that doesn’t necessarily exist, but there’s a power to both emotions. For those, there can be a fear attached to it because of the power of it.

I have a friend where she will say, “Well, don’t fall to the happiness disorder, either.” We feel like we must always sit in, we always have the goal to always be happy, and I don’t know, for me, if that’s the truth. Because that’s a denial of the other parts of the human experience.

Diana: I just wanna ask for the names of three people in your support system.

Ciara: I would start with my mother. She’s a great critic. She has so many skills that I don’t have. She was an opera singer and a hula dancer. She is emotional in her performing and so incisive in how she breaks that down. She sees it and knows it’s for her. There’s something beautiful about that. My auntie Akiko Masuda, who my mother danced for as a modern dancer. The two of them were women who spoke their mind and followed whatever interested them as artists. But my mom would have never labeled herself as an artist. And my husband, for the good and the bad of it. For the times that the work makes sense to all of them, the times that it doesn’t, and that they’re still there. Because I'm not my work. It’s an odd thing to say, but it’s something that I’ve really worked on over the last decade or so. I have those people around me, and I’m grateful for them. Who would you say are yours?

Zaza: Gabriel Brown, who I call Pastor Gabe, is one of my closest friends, and I call him anytime I need dating advice, which is why I call him Pastor. [Laughter] He helps me continue on my journey. Mei, who I just had mentioned. Third is Lita Tremblay, my best friend from college. She is a Leo. She is just amazing, and a sibling at the most. She truly has taught me what love is. She teaches me the love that I want to practice.

This conversation took place virtually in September 2024.